Indy 500

Introduced by Curt Cavin

Contributors With apologies to those we may have overlooked, the compilers of this volume would like to thank those who covered the Indianapolis 500 for The Star and The News through the years, and the collectors and historians who have helped to preserve this history.

They include:

Mark Alesia, Mark Ambrogi, Angelo Angelopolous, Vern Atkins, Jeff Atteberry, Steve Ballard, John Bansch, Randy Baughn, Major Baynes, Bill Benner, David Benner, Charles (Bud) Berry, Albert S. Blakely, Mary Bostwick , Guy Brenton, Charles F. Bretzman, H.C. Brown, Arthur C. Buck, Maurice G. Burnett, Jep Cadou, Jep Cadou Jr., Don C. Campbell, Curt Cavin, Heather Charles, Jerry Clark, Eugene R.Clifford, Bill Clouse, Horace M. Coats, Bob Collins, Hugh Connaway, Joseph Craven, Randy Crist, John Crozier, John Darlington, Bob Daugherty, Donald Davidson, Bob Davis, Laura DeCapua, Dick Denny, Matt Detrich, H.G. Deupree, Matt Dial, Bob Doeppers, Dan Dunkin, Robert Early, Bill Eggert, Frank Espich, Patty Espich, Mike Fender, Frank Fisse, F.W. Fox, Jr, Wayne Fuson, John Gentry, Larry George, Lizz Giordano, Rob Goebel, Dan Goodman, Dave Goss, Walter Greenough, Greg Griffo, Herman Halcomb, Tim Halcomb, Jim Harlan, Welton W. Harris II, Steve Healey, Val Hoeppner, Bob Hoover, Harlan C. Hunter, Paul Hurley, Terry Hutchens, Adriane Jaeckle, Harold Jorio, Eric Jungnickel, Kerry Keating, Wayne Kelly, Danese Kenon, Beckie Kern , Cleo Kern, Horace Ketring, Dennis Kinstle, Ted Knorr, Bob Kravitz, Matt Kryger, Ed Lacey, Corky Lamm, Rick Lane, Robert Lavelle, Nick Longworth, John Mahoney, Claude A Mahoney, David Mannweiler, Lyle Mannweiler, Ray Marquette, AJ Mast, John May, Ann Miller, Rich Miller, Robin Miller, Dick Mittman, D. Todd Moore, Gary Moore, George Moore, Ray Myers, William Myers, Jerry Nolan, Steven M. Noreyko, Charlie Nye, William Oates, Paige Ooton, Dave Overpeck , William Palmer, Leroy Patton, W. Baine Patton, Michelle Pemberton, Susan Plageman, Fremont Power, Keith Pritchard, Greg Rainbolt, James Ramsey, J. Parke Randall, Jeri Rauer Reichanadter, Bob Renner , Guy Reynolds, Herb Rhodes, Phil Richards, Sam Riche, Tom Rietmann , Lenora K. Ross, Justin Rumbach, Thomas J. Russo, Frank Salzarulo, Steve Sanchez, Paul Sancya, Robert Scheer, Bloor Schleppey, Patrick Schneider, Dale Schofner, Louis J. Schumacher, John Severson, Rick Shaffer , Paul Shideler, Bill Shores , Amber Sigman, Barry Smith, Steve Smith, Bob Stranahan, John Starkey, Ron Ira Steele, Tom Strickland, Marty Sullivan, George Tilford, Dean Timmerman, Mpozi Mshale Tolbert, Donovan A. Turk, Joe Vitti, Tommy Wadelton, Bob Walters, Mark Wick, Paul P. Willis, Phillip B. Wilson, Lloyd H. Wilkins, Kelly Wilkinson, David Woods, Jim Young and Joe Young.

BOOK PRODUCTION TEAM: Project editor: Michael Jesse Research and photo selection: Curt Cavin, Greg Griffo, Michael Jesse, Dawn Mitchell, Joe Young Scanning and restoration: Dawn Mitchell, Joe Young, Michael Jesse, Greg Griffo Race histories: Curt Cavin, Steve Ballard, Michael Jesse Editing: Geoff Ooley, Steve Ballard, Scott Horner Page design: Chris Fenison, Michael Jesse, Phil Mahoney, Scott Goldman Cover design: Phil Mahoney Artifacts page: Joe Young Printed by Pediment Publishing CopyrightŠ 2011 • ISBN: 978-1-59725-305-5 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright owner or the publisher.

Published by Pediment Publishing, a division of The Pediment Group, Inc. www.pediment.com Printed in Canada

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Contents Introduction – The making of an American tradition............................................................ 4 Origins – How Carl Fisher started it all.................................................................................. 6 1911 – Ray Harroun and the first 500........................................................................... 8 1920s – Chevrolet, Duesenberg, Lockhart and Meyer.......................................................... 24 1921 – Louis Chevrolet never made it rich................................................................. 26 1930s – Louis Meyer and Wilbur Shaw were multiple winners........................................... 42 Early 1940s –Shaw was a hero on and off the track.............................................................. 64 1945 – How Tony Hulman became “Mr. Speedway”................................................. 68 1946 – Duke Nalon: Postwar track was “rougher than hell”.................................... 71 Late 1940s – Mauri Rose, Bill Holland dominated in Blue Crowns...................................... 72 1950s – It was the era of the Offy.......................................................................................... 78 1955 – The day Bill Vukovich died.............................................................................. 93 1958 – The death of Pat O’Connor............................................................................. 100 1960s – A.J., Rodger, Parnelli and Mario.............................................................................. 104 1965 – Rear-engine car made its mark in 1965........................................................... 119 1967 – Fearsome turbines frustrated Granatelli........................................................ 128 1970s – Unser, Rutherford and Foyt..................................................................................... 136 1973 – It was a race even the winner wanted to forget............................................. 144 1975 – Sudden storm brought quick end to the race................................................. 149 1980s – Rutherford, Sneva and Mears .................................................................................. 160 1982 – Johncock won in a squeaker; Mears second, Mario mad............................... 166 1985 – Sullivan after his spin-and-win: I was lucky................................................... 176 1990s – Little Al, Emmo and Arie ....................................................................................... 188 1991 – Mears’ 4th win was on a broken foot............................................................. 192 1997 – Arie wasn’t derailed by yellow-green mismatch............................................ 203 2000s – Here comes Helio....................................................................................................208 2002 – A win that took a month to decide................................................................. 213 2005 – Rookie Danica became the face of the 500.....................................................220 Index..................................................................................................................................... 238 Artifacts: Joe Dawson’s goggles, 1942 ticket for cancelled race...........................................240

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A great American tradition turns 100

By Curt Cavin 2011 marks the 100th anniversary of the Indianapolis 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a birthday rich in history.

One hundred years is a period of 17 U.S. presidents, four states added to the union and two world wars. It includes the Mexican and German revolutions, China’s civil war, Korea and Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs and the Gulf War. It spans the lives of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Jackie Robinson, Elvis Presley and nearly Ronald Reagan. The Titanic sank, and the National Park Service was created.

When Ray Harroun won that first 500 in 1911, there wasn’t a blood bank in this country. Fenway Park and Wrigley Field were still just fields of dreams. Adolf Hitler hadn’t ruled. There wasn’t penicillin, affirmative action, Disneyland, NASA or even NASCAR. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones hadn’t performed; Watergate hadn’t been schemed. There certainly were no iPads.

There were a few other car races at that time, but there were no mirrors on the machines until Harroun mounted one on his Marmon Wasp. Harroun didn’t see it as a big deal, later arguing it was more introduction than innovation.

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Harroun said he borrowed the idea from a horsedrawn Chicago taxicab, and the 3-by-8-inch mirror served only to quell criticism from rivals who didn’t approve of him riding in the car alone. They saw it as a safety issue; he didn’t bother to tell them the mirror bounced around too much on the rough bricks to benefit.

The 500 grew literally from the ground up, and the Indianapolis Star and its evening rival, the Indianapolis News, documented every growth spurt. Writers and photographers over the years told stories of heroes and those who fell trying to become one.

From the early dominance of Ralph DePalma to the three wins and milk drinking of

Louis Meyer to the leadership of Eddie Rickenbacker and Wilbur Shaw to the purchase and saving of the track by Tony Hulman to the fabulous 1960s to A.J. Foyt, the Unsers and the Andrettis to Danica Patrick and Helio Castroneves, the 500 has come alive in print.

The event wasn’t initially called the Indianapolis 500. The early label was “the International Sweepstakes.” The newspapers documented that, too.

From the pages of these publications comes the story of Carl Fisher, born in Greensburg, Ind., about an hour southeast of Indianapolis. He had to help support his family when his father left home. After years working odd jobs, Fisher landed in the state’s capital city and opened a bicycle shop Downtown.

Later, his focus turned to cars, then a test facility to showcase the growing industry.

The four 80-acre farmland plots purchased on Indianapolis’ Westside couldn’t accommodate Fisher’s initial plan of a 5-mile track, so the corners were pulled together. Because the initial surface of crushed rock and tar was inconsistent and dusty, 3.2 million Indiana bricks were laid on their sides. Installation took 63 days, giving unofficial birth to the Brickyard. What stands today, plus several layers of asphalt, is the product as Fisher knew it.

The first event on the 2.5-mile oval was a motorcycle race,

and there have been others in recent years, but the Speedway’s story is rooted in cars and the brave men and women who drive them. While the early heroes were Harroun and DePalma, there has been a steady stream of crowd favorites, some of which were the cars themselves.

The earliest races were a collection of small car companies. Peugeot was the first with two winners, but its momentum was shut down by the closing of the track for World War I. Howdy Wilcox won the first race back, in 1919, for the French brand.

From the Duesenbergs and Millers in the early days to the Maserati that won consecutive races with Shaw in 1939-40 to the Offenhauser-powered machines that dominated the 1950s, cars were a large part of the story. Then there were A.J. Watson’s roadsters, the Novi, the turbines and the European invasion started

by Lotus, Colin Chapman and driver Jim Clark. In more recent years, cars owned by Roger Penske have been the ones to watch.

Speeds climbed with each generation, from 100 mph in 1919 to 150 mph in 1962 to 200 in 1977. For 61 years, Tom Carnegie excited the crowd with booming confirmation of those speed advancements. Rick Mears won six poles, Rex Mays and A.J. Foyt four each. Four others won three, including Tom Sneva, the first to break the 200 mph barrier.

Foyt is fond of saying “Indianapolis made (me), not the other way around.” He’s not alone.

Indy made legends out of Johnnie Parsons, Bill Vukovich, Rodger Ward, Parnelli Jones, Mario Andretti, Bobby Unser, Johnny Rutherford, Al Unser and Mears, to name a handful.

Families became a part of the story, too. Six Unsers have competed in the 500, winning a record nine times.

The Andrettis were plenty successful, too, even though Mario in 1969 is the only one to reach victory lane. Michael Andretti might be the finest of all the 500’s non-winners, up there with Lloyd Ruby. History will long remember the Chevrolets, the Rathmanns, the Bettenhausens and the Vukovichs.

Janet Guthrie became the first woman competitor in 1976, although she didn’t earn a starting spot until the next year. A few women tried after her, but it wasn’t until Patrick, as a rookie in 2005, that a woman led a lap in the 500.

There has been plenty of heartbreak, too, from the loss of life of drivers, spectators and crew members to 1964’s second-lap inferno to cars faltering with victory in sight.

The Speedway began transitioning to asphalt in 1939, and the facility has seen several scoring towers, Gasoline Alley and pit

boxes in various forms, pedestrian bridges, tunnels, an infield care center, the construction of a Hall of Fame Museum, a championship golf course and two administration buildings. Except for the oval itself and the creek that winds quietly and mostly unnoticed through the property, almost everything has been rebuilt since Hulman bought the track at the end of World War II. The story of this great American event with international flavor plays out in the pages and photographs that follow.

Curt Cavin has covered the Indianapolis 500 for The Star for more than 20 years.

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Fisher was the man who built the Speedway It’s a pretty safe bet there never would have been an Indianapolis 500 had there not first been Carl G. Fisher.

Fisher was a race car driver, and before cars existed he raced bicycles.

He grew up poor and quit school at age 12 to help support his family. Bicycles were hugely popular in the 1890s and Fisher opened a repair shop in downtown Indianapolis when he was still a teenager. To promote it, he once rode a bicycle across a tightrope between two Downtown buildings.

When the automobile came along, Fisher fell in love. Despite bad eyesight, he raced on dirt tracks across the Midwest, and converted his bicycle shop to sell Stoddard-Dayton cars.

Rarely at a loss for an attention-getting promotional idea, Fisher tried all manner of stunts to attract potential customers. In 1908, he attached a Stoddard-Dayton to a hot air balloon and waved from it as the balloon carried the car over Indianapolis for all to see.

That evening he drove back into town in what seemed to be, but was not, the same car.

He’d taken the engine out of the first one to make it lighter, and during the flight his brother followed below, driving the second car.

Fisher made some money selling cars, but he made his fortune selling car parts — specifically headlights. Cars still were started by a hand-crank, so there was not yet a battery to power lights. With his friend James Allison, Fisher bought into an invention for gas-powered headlamps.

Their Prest-O-Lite company became a huge success, but materials used to make the product were so volatile the company’s factories frequently blew up, damaging neighboring buildings. The main Indianapolis facility blew up so many times the city council passed an ordinance barring the manufacture of Prest-OLite products within the city limits.

When the car battery was invented, Prest-OLite bought into the new technology. It became a much safer place to work, and Fisher and Allison kept making money.

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Automobile technology was advancing almost daily at hundreds of little car-making companies across the country, but most roads were so bad the cars couldn’t safely go as fast as the speeds they were capable of achieving.

So Fisher’s idea was to build a big racetrack where carmakers could put their machines to the test. He talked a few friends, including Allison, into investing, and bought some farmland just north of town. Although he did mean what he’d said about the value of automotive testing, Fisher also wanted an excuse to race cars. And he wanted lots of people to buy tickets to see it.

The first auto race at the new Indianapolis Motor Speedway was in 1909, but there were several fatal accidents on the gravel roadway, so Fisher soon had it paved with bricks.

In 1910, the speedway hosted auto races and aviation events. The Wright brothers flew there that year. These were big events attended by thousands, but they didn’t quite satisfy Fisher. They weren’t big enough. They didn’t have sufficient ... spectacle. And then Carl Fisher had another idea.

— Michael Jesse (2011)

right: The first auto races at the Speedway were

held on Aug. 19, 1909. Louis Schwitzer won the first event, a five-mile sprint, but several other drivers crashed because of the roughness of the track.

That prompted Carl Fisher to have it rebuilt with bricks. Charles F. Bretzman/The Indianapolis News

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1911 Well before the first Indianapolis 500, Ray Harroun already was one of the most accomplished race drivers of his era and by 1910 was ready to retire from racing.

But when Carl Fisher announced his plans for the new 500-mile race, Harroun delayed retirement and entered with his favorite car, the Indianapolismade Marmon Wasp.

It was a one-seater while all 39 other cars carried a driver and a mechanic (then called a “mechanician”) to keep the car running and serve as a second pair of eyes. Harroun’s Wasp was equipped with a rear-view mirror and he won with a time of 6 hours, 42 minutes, 8 seconds before a crowd of about 80,000.

One man died in the race, mechanic Sam Dickson.

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Above: Bob Burman sits at the wheel of the car he drove in the first 500. He finished 19th in the first race and competed at

Indianapolis each year through 1915 but was killed in 1916 in a race in California. Star/News Archives below: Drivers prepare for the start of the first Indianapolis 500. The front row drivers (left to right) were: Johnny Aitken (4),

Harry Endicott (3), Ralph DePalma (2), and Lewis Strang (1). In the early years of the race, qualifying times had no bearing on starting positions. The front row spots simply went to whoever signed up first. DePalma, who finished sixth, was the only front row starter to finish in the top 15. The race’s winner, Ray Harroun, started 28th in the 40-car field. Vern Atkins Collection

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Above: Ray Harroun sits in his Marmon Wasp. He averaged 74.602 mph in completing the first 500 in 6 hours, 42 minutes

and 8 seconds. He won $14,250 from the $30,150 purse. The Indianapolis News Left: The pace car leads the pack as the first Indianapolis 500 is about to begin. The pit area is in the lower right-hand

side, where cloth covers were used to keep the hot Indiana sun off the crew members. Star/News Archives Below: A rare panoramic view of the track in 1911, the inaugural Indianapolis 500. Vern Atkins Collection

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1912 Ralph DePalma dominated the race until the last few laps when his engine began to give out. With a fourlap lead, he tried to nurse the crippled Mercedes along and when it would no longer move on its own, he and mechanic Rupert Jeffkins got out and pushed.

Lap after lap Indianapolis native Joe Dawson’s National gradually caught up and on lap 199 he took the lead and won the race.

In those days, a driver shared in

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the purse only if he passed the finish line, but DePalma eventually gave up.

Another driver, Ralph Mulford, also had engine trouble but his car could still go at slow speed. Long after the other drivers and the audience went home, Mulford puttered around the track to earn his payday.

It also was the first 500 for a young driver named Eddie Rickenbacker, who completed only 44 laps before a bearing went out. He finished 21st in the 24-car field.

Right: After leading the 1912 Indianapolis 500 since the third lap, Ralph DePalma’s

Mercedes cracked a piston. With only two laps remaining, he and mechanic Rupert Jeffkins (behind car) had to push the car across the finish line, taking 12th place.

Star/News Archives

Opposite Top: Joe Dawson, 1912 winner of the Indianapolis 500. Star/News Archives Opposite Bottom: Driver Charles Merz races past the judge’s stand in his Stutz

during the 500 in 1912. Joe Dawson won the race that year, with Merz finishing fourth.

The Indianapolis News

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1913 Indianapolis race fans had come to assume their city would be able to boast of the winning car, the winning driver or both. But in 1913, French drivers arrived and brought with them the superior Peugeot.

Taking an early lead in the race, Jules Goux won over much of the local-leaning crowd with his showmanship and speed. In his pit he famously called for and was given a bottle of wine to quench his thirst, and when he won he danced with his crew.

American drivers also did well and Hoosier fans consoled themselves with the fact Goux at least had not broken Joe Dawson’s speed record. Charlie Merz finished third, though his car was on fire as it crossed the finish line.

Top: Jules Goux, 1913 winner of the Indianapolis 500.

Star/News Archives

Right: Goux sits behind the

wheel of his Peugeot and talks with Charles Faroux, a Parisian sportsman who served as the unofficial team manager for Peugeot during the race in 1913. Star/News Archives Opposite: Ralph DePalma

(right) works on his Mercer in the garage area. DePalma completed only 15 laps before mechanical problems knocked him out of the race. He finished 23rd in the 27-car field. Star/News Archives

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