Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 29 May 1940 — Page 23
{ those signs but meehanios are care-(3 t0' 6 Years Is
Jful not to drop cigarets in the Life of Race Cor
garages. Garage floors are kept spotlessly . C. (Cotton) Henning, chief mechanician for the Boyle Racing
Speedway Garages Are Kept Spotless Hung in Gasoline Alley are white
¢| signs with large red letters reading: “No smoking. If this place burns
“The Real Pole Position Winner > Drivers Need
New S Spee ed Record Fores More Relief’
With Winner F inishing Grind ~ Some Place Near 120 M. P. H. 500 Tu 3
‘Orly Major Accident Can Slow Down the Field, At Sask; Jucitg ongiocer Jr JAR —_ Belief of Drivers, Officials and Observers Joel Thorne, insists that all the ; 1 I'm Not a
drivers should have relief drivers. “Mechanical. racing . development Gold Digge; old Digger, But - -
clean. Grime can cover up defects
and defects cause “wrecks. That is Headquarters, which competes only why the garages are as spice and (in the Indianapolis race, says the today where will' you be working) .;, oc pattieship turrets and Why|life of a race car is anywhere from | tomorrow?” loose parts never are scattered three to
; IS. There are plenty of violations of! around the floor. That's
six yed : ghty hard on/the budget.
IEA PRL RNR
has now reached a point where no man—I don’t care who he is——can efficiently hold a car in the running for the entire distance,” Sparks says
(Continued from Page One)
refords like you ‘would crush peanut shells. footed boys were blistering the track, too. : Then came the three-car crash resulting in Floyd Robers’ deatl. The yellow flag broke out. For 31 minutes the drivers held their positions at about 90 miles an hour. The averages just about fell apart. From 120 to 200 laps the 1938 records set by Snyder and Roberts still are tops fo? those distiinces. . Shaw came home the winner at 115.035 miles an hour, |: 2.165 under the average set by Roberts in '38. _: Mays gave the speed bugs an idea of what they may expect toriiorrow when he set a riew unofficial one-lap record on-May 7 this year. He squeezed 132.40 miles an hour from his Lou Mayer, motored sipteyioen super-charged Bowes
Other heavy-
“When Wilbur Shaw, an iron man, crawls out of his seat dogtired as he did last year, and when Lou Meyer himself says it’s too tough, it’s high time to recognize the need:for more relief driving. “It’s true that stock cars are being driven 500 miles in one sitting today. Most of them have 60 to 80 horsepower and weigh around 3000 pounds. Anyone who has driven over good smooth pavement Hii the fatigue of ‘distance driv-
That's what dady call me bon cause. | ask for Furnas Ice Cream _ so often. But | thin _he doesn’t “mind even though he does tease. - You see it ‘was Daddy who told
These Speedway drivers are sitting behind 350 horsepower .and 1800 pounds of weight. Instead of driving 60 miles an hour, they are
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Seal Fast Special. ; That's across the line, ‘around four turns, and back down the straightaway in 1:07.95. If they get going much faster they'll have to
, throw out a sea-anchor to
keep from heading toward the
stratosphere.
% = This little jaunt “eclipsed the previous unofficial record Rex set in 1939 when he dusted out and back agdin in 131.95 miles an hour. Snyder set the official one-lap last year when he toured the track in 130.757 in: the qualifying trials. Rex can be ‘a dangerous contender if he'll just conquer that Hijet, to win going away. He and ’tillo are two of a kind when it imes to speed. They can take the ishment of screaming 130-mile-~hour driving but their cars can’t. Usually they don’t finish.
Kelly Out to Win Again
St Kelly this year is talking about achievement and less about speed. “If there’s anyone who can beat out Shaw, my car can do.it,” he said. “Four times in a row I've gone out on the qualifying line and I can't resist barreling around that track. In the.race I'm going to hold back until about the 250-mile mark but dlways be in position fo challenge the leaders.” Dapper, sophisticated Shaw will
‘be trying mighty hard for his third
victory to ties Meyer's record. Shaw has a fast tar, powered by a Maserati and expertly tuned by the
’ Boyle racing team mechenics, in-
cluding the noted “Cotten” Henning. And you can always count on Wilbur to drive a “heady” race.
Horn Is Another Threat
His teammate, Ted Horn, has had the same mechanical brains behind the creation of his mount. Ted qualified it at 125.545, well up with the leaders and ‘he hasn't finished less than fourth in the last four years. Another car whigh has run nearly as fast as anything ever seen on the local oval is Bob Swanson’'s Sampson Special powered by, the 16cylinder motor developed Yor Frank Lockhart’s assault on the Daytona Beach straightaway speed record. Swanson qualified it last year at a speed of 129.431 miles an hour. It went out at 47.5 miles with differential trouble. Experts say it is 10 miles faster than anything on the track in the last two years. If
should be one of the chief contenders. What the foreign drivers. will do depends entirely upon how soon they can get over that road-race method of hitting the turns, All during practice and qualifying runs Raul Riganti pushed his Maserati into the turns much the same- way he long has done in road racing.-He did this so often that one of ins pitside group cracked: “Every time he goes into a curve he holds out his hand before turning left.” His relief driver, Osvaldo Parmiggiani, consistently drove their mount 10 miles an hour faster than Riganti. American drivers are used to hitting that throttle the minute they get well into the turn and roaring into the short stretches nearly as fast as they do in the long straightaways. Coasting into the curves only loses part of the speed you've worked for in the stretches.
" French Drivers Are Good
.The two French drivers look like more ofa threat than Riganti. Both LeBegue and Dreyfus have splendid records as European drivers. They have beaten the best German drivers in their famous Auto Union and Mercedes cars and they also have had experience in circular tracks about the size of the local
plant » ng younger, LeBegue is 25 and Dreyfus 35, they undoubtedly will be more daring than Riganti. Too many things can happen to predict who will win the five-cen-tury. But of one thing this writer is.sure—the 1938 record is going by the boards.
Fast Boys Contend They're Safer Drivers believe they have a pelier
chance of escaping death if they are traveling at top speeds than if their
mounts are running slower than].
most of the rest of the field. As proof, they cite the case of Billy | Arnold, winner here in 1930, who "in two later races hopped the
wall at around 125 miles an hour|
and came out alive. Also the fast boys like Rex Mays and Kelly Petillo, who are always heavy-footed, come close a :lot of times but have never been serious-
ly hurt, while comparatively slow|:
drivers are reported as casualties at half dozen tracks in the country.
Each year an early bird fan arrives at least a month before the race to cop that No. 1 spot at the gate. fan was Francis Carson of Greenfield, Mass.
April 21 ... six long weeks ago . .’
gate pole position the next morning in his house car. Tomorrow he'll be escorted into the Speedway grounds by an honor guard and given. his choice of any parking place in the infield.
During the Speedway siege he has
wheels and spent his days watching tuneups on the track. He has
had only his dog for company. “I've been trying for years to
race,” he said, “and the days slipped by pretty rapidly whilg I waited
to realize hat ambition.”
Auto Engineers Studying Maseratis' Shoe Brake
“Automobile racing is still an important adjunct to the automobile industry,’ says Robert T. Jackson, engineer of the Boyle racing team. ‘It is true that many of racing’s modern contributions to automotive
knowledge have been refinements in
tions,” Mr; Jackson says, “but enough major improvements in
still emerge from racing’s crucible.
Leave It to Leon To Give the Sign A Real Wallop
Z THOUSANDS OF TIMES during the nearly five-hour grind for -glory Dblackboards are leld up by the pit crew for the speeding pilots. “They carry instructions, miles an’ hour the driver is averaging, and words of encouragement. During the race the blackboard messages are only for the driver whose pit crew prints them, but not at the finish. Then it’s praise . for the victor. ; When Shaw flashed across the wire the winner in 1937, the veteran Leon Duray held up a blackboard on which was pfinted in two-foot letters: “LOVE AND KISSES.”
it should hold together. Swanson'a
Take several “cartons along ‘with you to the races
’
SPECIAL SPEEDWAY PACK
i (pounding along twice that fast. The
This year the nation’s first He arrived the night of . and started his long wait at the
slept in his home-made house on
be the first one into the 500-mile
detail rather than Harting innovadesign
“It has been acknowledged many times-that the four-wheel hydraulic brake principle received its first dramatic tests on American speedways with the practical result that almost all passenger cars now use hydraulic brakes.” Mr. Jackson says that passenger cars in the near future may be equipped with the two-leading-shoe brake used on the Maserati entry of Paul Riganti.
“Remarkably Effective Device”
In this design, each of the customary two shoes in each brake is actuated by its own independent hydraulic cylinder, rather than the conventional single cylinder for the pair of shoes. “This is a remarkably effective device for arresting tremendous speeds,” Mr. Jackson says. “These brakes will enable Riganti to con-
stops.” Riganti’s car, like the other three Maserati entries, has each of its front wheels independently sprung by a torsion bar. This is a long round bar of spring steel anchored to the chassis frame at one end and
carries the wheel. When the wheel rises over a bump: the bar twists, supplying the required. flexibility.
Points to Torsion Springing
The use-of torsion bar springing on racing cars forecasts eventual application to passenger cars. It is perhaps the most compact method of springing an automobile chassis, and the behavior of the torsion springs may be more accurately predetermined. than that of any other type spring. Passenger car engineers adapted the modern principal of independent front wheel suspension mechanisms almost directly from the experience with European racing cars. “Racing has not contributed impressively to engine design in the United States during recent seasons,” Mr. Jackson says, “altheugh it has ‘stimulated the evolution of improved small parts such as spark plugs and piston rings” Competition by foreign cars will spur American designers toward features now used on the more powerful European engines, Mr. Jackson believes. - A Look at the Future
“Among these, all of which have
i [much for one set of muscles.”
driver now is one of the
serve valuable time in making pit
at the other to the structure which|
terrific strain of holding the car on to the track for. 500 miles.is far too
They’ll Need a New Trophy by ’61
The 1961 “500” winner is due for a brand new trophy. The one presented the winning post unusual in the world. It was given to the Speedway several years ago by the Borg-Warner Corp. Bas-relief heads of all past winners, from Ray Harroun in 1911 to Wilbur Shaw in 1939, have been sculptured on the $10,000 trophy.
a
the heads of future winners.
There still are 21 blank places. for
Pace-making Champion to be awarded to today’s winner
Speedway officials honor the car that traveled 15,000 miles in less than 15,000 minutes
me about Furnas Ice Cream in the first place. . He says he always asked for it, too, when he was my age!
The H oosier Health Habit \
FURNAS ICE CREAM
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Why Race Spins Are Called ‘Gilhooleys’
Back in 1914 Ray Gilhooley went slashing around the southwest turn and spun around three times, . Joe Dawson, the 1912 winner, coming in behind him, could not steer clear, and smacked Gilhooley’s car. The two rolled down to the inside of the track. Ever since, a bad spin has been called “a Gilhooley.”
T° stock Studebaker Champions A traveled 15,000 miles each in less than 15,000 consecutive minutes around the Indianapolis Speedway last June—the distance of thirty 500-mile races for each Champion! And so, in recognition of that remarkable feat of sustained speed and endurance, the officials of the Speedway have selected a 1940 Studebaker Champion as today’s pace maker.
Ab Jenkins drives it Veteran Ab Jenkins, mayor of Salt Lake City and holder of more world automobile speed records than any other American, pilots the pace-mak-ing Studebaker Champion around the course in today’s event. |
Studebaker president referee Studebaker has been signally honored still further by the selection of Paul G. Hoffman, president of the Studebaker
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