Against Death and Time: One Fatal Season in Racing's Glory Years (13 page)

When the racers came to the "Horn," the Howard Johnson's motel
and restaurant in nearby Bordentown, New Jersey, was the center of
the action. The parking lot filled up with big sedans and station wagons hauling race cars. It was not uncommon to see crewmen and
drivers working on the race cars outdoors, their aluminum bodywork
spread out on the macadam.

In the evening, the crews gathered at local bars to share war stories
and, more importantly, to hook up with the young women who
inevitably appeared. Life on the road was long and lonely, rolling
from track to track, from cheap tourist home and motel to rooming
house. While many of the vagabonds were married, it was often in
name only, their wives left back home in distant isolation. Their
replacements were the same women who chased football and baseball
players, seeking the thrill of a night with an alpha male.

Early in March, Langhorne bit one of the brave ones. Larry "Crash"
Crockett was a burly kid from rural Indiana who had been named
Rookie of the Year at the 500 the year before. Presuming his wild
streak could be tamed, many believed him to have a bright future. But
on March 20, Crash Crockett's sprint car hooked a rut in "puke hollow" and pinwheeled out of the park. By the time safety crews scrambled through the trees to the wrecked car, the young driver was dead.

Two weeks later in Italy, a brilliant young prospect for the Maserati
Grand Prix equipe, Sergio Mantovani, had his leg severed in a crash
at Turin. He never raced again.

As March gave way to the steady rains of April, it was clear to
Travers and Coon that Goossen's V-8 engine could not be completed
in time. They suggested to Keck that perhaps a conventional
Offenhauser could serve as a replacement. Keck refused. He was
beginning to devote his attention to thoroughbred horse racing. His
stallion Ferdinand would win the Kentucky Derby in 1986, thereby
making him the only man in history with victories in the most prestigious automobile and horse races in the world.

Keck said that unless the new car was completed in time, it
would have to wait until next year before appearing at the track. He
then called a friend, Coca-Cola millionaire Lindsey Hopkins, and
offered his entire team-Travers, Coon, and, most important,
Vukovich-to him. Realizing his good fortune, Hopkins instantly
accepted, and turned over his year-old Kurtis-Kraft 500C roadster
to the dream team. The car would carry the number 4 on its metallic blue tail and Hopkins's well-known rabbit in a top hat logo on
its long hood. The Hopkins Kurtis would hardly be a breakthrough
vehicle like the aborted Keck V-8, but it would still be a first-class
machine once whiz kids Travers and Coon had finished their
immaculate preparations. Vukovich, a man who seemed comfortable behind the wheel of any race car, was pleased with the change
and spent extended periods in Travers's Los Angeles shop helping
to ready the car.

His two chief rivals, Bryan and McGrath, were also reloading.
Bryan's car's owner, Al Dean, had commissioned master craftsman
Eddie "Zazoom" Kuzma to build a new Offy-powered roadster. It
would carry a distinctive flat tail, devoid of the standard streamlined
headrest. In its place would be a small metal hoop-the first known
roll bar to appear at the Speedway. Still, it was too flimsy to offer
much protection for the hulking Bryan. McGrath would return with
the Hinkle Kurtis, much improved thanks to Jack the Bear's skills as
an engine tuner and mechanic.

As the teams rolled into Indianapolis on the first week of May, little attention was paid to a stunning drive across Italy just completed
by the dazzling English star Stirling Moss. Running for the MercedesBenz factory team with his friend and navigator, English journalist
Dennis Jenkinson, Moss won the Mille Miglia open-road race in just
over ten hours, averaging a stunning 97 mph over the 997-mile lap of
the Italian boot.

From the perspective of a half-century later, Moss's drive borders on the unbelievable. The Mille Miglia was both Italy's greatest sporting event and a national holiday. Schools, banks, and government
offices closed. Millions lined the route, which led from the northern
starting point in Brescia, south along the Adriatic coast, through the
holiday beach town of Rimini, to Pescara. From there it was a vault
over the spine of the Apennine Mountains to Rome, back north
through Siena, across the Arno at Florence, and over the perilous
mountain pass at Futa into Bologna. Then home to Brescia.

Uncounted corners and blind hills demanded sheer brilliance
behind the wheel. On the straights along the Adriatic coast, Moss let
the sleek Mercedes 300SLR roadster have its head, often reaching
180 miles an hour. Working from a scrolling roll of route notes,
Jenkinson hand-signaled Moss about upcoming course changes as
the young Englishman snaked through the Italian countryside,
leaving his Italian and German rivals far behind. He completed the
arduous run in just seven minutes over ten hours, establishing him
as the fastest open-road driver in history. Never again would such a
drive be accomplished-nor would the 300SLR ever again attain
such an honor, considering the tragedy that lay ahead for the brilliant machine.

But European competitions like the Mille Miglia were faraway
thoughts to the drivers and crews who rolled into Indianapolis.
Several European champions had recently tried the Speedway, the last
being the likable Alberto Ascari, who had competed, without success,
in 1952. But "sporty car" racing, as it was called, was generally discounted by the Indy crowd-until they were overwhelmed by its
technology a decade later.

Then came word from Langhorne. "Iron Mike" Nazaruk, the nailtough veteran of Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Bougainville, had run
one last warm-up for Indy in a sprint car event at the "Horn." Fighting
for the lead in the twenty lap feature race, Nazaruk slid high in "puke
hollow." The tail of his Nyquist Offy slapped the fence and fishtailed as Nazaruk fought for control. Snap-rolling high into the air, the impact
against a bordering tree was so pulverizing that Nazaruk's helmet was
ripped off and his driving suit torn from his body. Big-time racing had
claimed its second victim in a month.

It was just the beginning.

CROSS-COUNTRY ROAD TRIPS IN 1955 WERE STILL
something of an adventure. Interstate 40 lurked only in the minds of
road planners and legislators formulating President Eisenhower's
dream of an immense, 42,500-mile highway network. It was intended
not only to meet the nation's growing automobile population, which
was edging toward 100 million vehicles, but for national defense. Ike,
who was headed for an easy second term, advocated such a system
following his exposure to Germany's brilliant autobahns during
World War II. Those superbly designed four lanes had served not
only to rapidly transport troops and supplies for the Wehrmacht, but
had been adopted as Luftwaffe fighter bases late in the fighting.

Eisenhower's plan was to invest $33.5 billion over the next sixteen
years to complete the vast project. That was an optimistic projection; the
Interstates would not reach their planned mileage until the late 1980s.

I decided to drive my MG back east for the Indianapolis 500, having received an assignment from Liberty to do a profile on Vukovich,
who was expected to win an unprecedented third straight race. The
trip, over rough, two-lane Route 66, the "Mother Road took me
east to Kingman on the Arizona border after a slow, heat-ravaged
climb by my wheezing MG over the Cajon Pass. From there it was a
top-down run to Lordsburg, the famed destination of John Wayne,
Claire Trevor, and company in John Ford's classic 1939 film
Stagecoach. Down off the Continental Divide, the MG regained its
breath on the Texas panhandle flatlands and into dusty Amarillo for
an overnight.

Angling north, I rolled through Oklahoma City and past Tulsa,
where up ahead I spotted the unmistakable shape of a race car's tail on
a trailer. Pushing the MG to its maximum, which nudged near 80
mph, I caught up with a dazzling pink-and-white Kurtis-Kraft roadster being towed by a heavily laden Ford station wagon. The race car
was open, mounted on a trailer manufactured in Burbank, California,
that featured a distinctive third dolly wheel on its fork. The car itself
was exposed to the elements, save for a small leather tonneau cover
over the cockpit. On its long nose were painted the large letters "JZ."
This was a car belonging to Tulsa millionaire John Zink, and no doubt
headed for Indianapolis. I instantly recognized the driver of the station wagon, a lean, sharp-nosed young man with a military crew cut.
His name was A. J.-for Abraham Joseph-Watson, an Ohio native
living in Glendale, California, who was viewed as a rising star among
Indianapolis mechanics and car builders.

Watson had first appeared on the Speedway scene in 1950, when
he and his friend Jud Phillips, another talented mechanic and hotrodder, fashioned a car in Watson's Glendale garage. Using parts
cadged from other race shops and donations from neighbors and
local businesses, their "City of Glendale Special" became known
among the racing fraternity as the "Pots and Pans Special." It joined another home-built car of the day, "Basement Bessie;' which had
been fabricated by race mechanic Ray Nichols in the cellar of his
northern Indiana home. In an era when money was tight and race car
design pretty basic, numerous race cars with equally humble beginnings appeared at the Speedway.

This was hardly the case with John "Jack" Zink, the son of a
wealthy industrial-furnace-and-heating baron who had built his own
three-quarter-mile test track on the family's sprawling ranch twenty
miles west of Tulsa. No doubt his pink car on the trailer-a color
quickly dubbed "Zink Pink"-had been inspired by the pastel fashions now embraced by both men and women, and in particular the
pink button-down shirts being favored on elite college campuses
from coast to coast.

I had heard through the Los Angeles grapevine that Frank Kurtis
was building a new 500D roadster for Zink, with Bob Sweikert
assigned to the seat. With Watson "twisting the wrenches," as it was
phrased, and audacious young Sweikert at the wheel, the Zink Pink
number 6 would be a strong contender at the Speedway.