Evening Star Newspaper, October 11, 1936, Page 78

2 CRASHING AGAINST THE WALL: NEITHER MAN WAS BADLY HURT ILLY ARNOLD, the baby-faced speed- way star who won the Ingdianapolis 500-mile race in 1930, was leading the 1931 race with only 33 laps to go. Disconsolately I sat on the pit wall. I had been forced out after travelling only 70 miles in my car. Some days it’s like that. I envied little Billy as he breezed around the track, miles an hour faster than was necessary. He was far in the lead, but Billy liked to wheel them. And Spider Matlack, Billy’s tiny mechanic, waved at us every time they whirled past the pits. He seemed to say, “Okay, Pal, we'll be winners in a few more laps.” ‘Then, coming out of the turn leading into the long home stretch of the Indianapolis speed strip, Billy went into a wide slide. He fought the car as it slithered toward the outside wall. I didn’t think he could hold it. He missed the wall by inches, but immedi- ately went into another wide slide down into the inside wall. He caught it again, but careened into another slide — again to the outside. He had just got the car under control — by fighting and tugging and a smile from Lady Luck — when Luther Johnson, nearly thirty laps behind Arnold in the dash to the finish line, came racing onto the scene. Johnson saw Arnold spinning as he rode through the turn. He couldn’t stop. So he had to guess which direction Amold’s car was going. He guessed —but he guessed tc forty or fifty miles an hour, Johnson hit him. Johnson was moving about 100 miles an hour, and he boosted Arnold’s car right through the wall and out of the park. Johnson followed. Both cars burst into flames. The mechanics were both thrown clear. Arnold and Johnson ran from the burning wreckage. Tony Gulotta, riding second to Arnold, automatically went into the lead. It looked like a soft touch for Tony. He was riding to win and had a good lead over the other con- tenders. Then, in the same turn that tripped Amnold, Tony went into a slide in the oil left by the Amold-Johnson crash. And fifty or sirty yards below the spot where Johnson bumped Arnold through the wall, Gulotta crashed onto the soft grass, unhurt but out of the race. These two accidents won the race — for Lou Schneider, former Indianapolis motor- cycle cop. He had been riding a good, con- sistent race with a car which was not as fast as either Amnold’s or Gulotta’s. A minute before those accidents he would have sold his chance to win for a song. : But that’s automobile racing. Danger? Certainly. Skids? Of course. Crashes? Yes, too often. Sudden death? Well, it’s best that way if it's time to go. THIS WEEK 27, HELL 7% HAZARD!" Magazine Sectic Forget danger— in racing it's speed that counts: So says this ace of ' the automobile speedways. LT R TR Now he will drive in the first contest on America’'s newest track by Louis MEYER Only Throo-Time Winner of the Iadionapelis 500-Mile Speedway Classic NORMAN BATTEN STEERING HIS BLAZING CAR TO SAFETY IN THE 1927 RACE I've seen a tiny skid sweep a car out of control and send it spinning up the banked track to crash through the fence and land upside down — a mass of flames. I've seen cars leave the track at high speed and turn half a dozen somersaults be- fore they finally came to rest. I've seen six or seven cars pile up into a twisted mass of wreckage when the machine ahead went out of control and the drivers who followed were unable to steer clear of them. I've seen competitors killed when for all their skill they were unable to avoid the threat of danger at high speed. Do race drivers think about such things? Sure we do — after a race is over. But not while we're in the race. We couldn’t and be good race drivers. When we’re actually on the track —and buming up the roads at two miles a minute —it’s got to be “to hell with hazard!” all the way. We know we can drive. We prepare our cars with all possible skill and safety. The major tracks have adopted every plan of safety. But accidents will happen. And it’s the accidents that teach engineers how to make your car safer for you and your family. Sometimes there's a funny side even to a brush with death on the automobile race track. I remember the day Eddie Hearne, bending down with his back toward the track, was working on his car in the pits at Indian- Copyright, 1936, United Newspapers Magasiane Corporation apolis. A car roaring past on the straighta- way lost a left rear tire. For a hundred yards the tire rolled along at a terrific pace, to score a direct hit on the bent-over Eddie Hearne. It knocked him flat. He lay there for a moment on the bricks, then yelled, “All right, all right. Come on. Where’s the rest of your car?”” The rest of the car was wrecked up against the fence a hundred yards away. Then there was the time on one of New England’s smaller tracks that Harry Hartz, winner of second place three times at Indian- apolis, crashed. His car turned over, but Hartz was thrown clear. He hit, rolled up like a rubber ball and rolled along the track eight or ten times before he landed, mir- aculously, on his feet. But his momentum was 80 great that involuntarily he started to run. He ran for eight or ten strides, then slid for- ward on his face. It was so ludicrous that the drivers roaring past couldn’t keep from laugh- ing. As a result, that lap was the slowest of the race. - In the end I guess most of us become fatalists. I'm thinking now of Indianapolis and last May 30. The race was well under way under the blazing Indiana sun, with more than 160,000 people watching the 500-mile classic. I was running in tow behind Al Miller, a veteran and capable driver. “Running in tow” is an old racing trick that goes back to the days of board track racing. The idea is to get close behind a car running at about your own speed and let it break the wind for you. Much less fuel is required. It’s dangerous, of course,. But this was an emergency. I wanted to save fuel so as to keep under the gasoline limit. For many laps I clung to Miller's stern at about 117 miles an hour. Then I had to pull into the pits, and I cussed my luck because I hated to lose the tow. In a minute I was on the track again, but that minute had taken Miller a long way. As I rounded the turn into the straighta- way, my heart jumped. There was Al Miller's car up against the fence and they were carry- ing him away. A crank-shaft had broken on the turn inta the home stretch, and Miller’s car had gone into a wide, dizzy spin and had crashed. Luckily Al wasn't seriously injured. But what would have happened to me if, at that moment, I had been “towing” five feet behind him as I had been doing for nearly a hundred miles before? I couldn’t stop to think about that. There was a race to be won. But I have thought about it since then. Not with any sense of fear, of course. Those things don’t worry a racing driver. If they did, there would be no 400-mile race for the George Vanderbilt Cup at Roosevelt Raceway this Monday — a race which in many respects holds more (Continved on poge 15)