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LADY LUCK: Men, Machines and Chance Rule Fate in Indianapolis Auto-Race
Best-known automobile-race in America is the Memorial day whirl around the two-and-one-half mile, brick-paved speedway at Indianapolis (see cover).
Best-known race-driver in American history is Old-Timer Barney Oldfield, who long ago hung up his turned-back cap and goggles, never appears in public without a cigar clamped between his teeth.
In years of driving, Barney never won the Memorial day race.*
Moral: Luck counts more than a reputation, racing brains or a fast car on the jarring bricks at Indianapolis.
Of the thirty-three stream-lined cars that roar down the straightaway next Monday morning at 10 o'clock when Honorary Starter Henry T. ("Dick") Merrill, famed transatlantic flier, fires the starting-bomb, probably no more than a dozen will complete the 200-lap junket.
Grueling--For, in addition to offering the heftiest pot of gold ($100,000) in American motor-car racing, the Indiana oval provides the most grinding test of luck, man and machinery in the field of sport.
In its twenty-four-year history, only two men have ever won the Indianapolis race more than once.
Tommy Milton won in 1921 and 1923. Last year, Louis Meyer repeated his victories of 1928 and '33.
Three-Time-Winner Meyer is thirty-two, married, has two children and lives in Huntington Park, California. He golfs in the low eighties, spends a good part of the off-season hunting in the Sierras and usually lets his wife drive the family car through traffic.
On the track, be believes consistent, steady driving rather that blistering bursts of speed wins races.
Prophet--Before the 1928 Indianapolis race, Meyer predicted a 100-mile-an-hour average would win. His winning average was 99.482. He called 105 necessary in 1933 and won at 104.62. Last May, he was only slightly above his prerace estimate of 108 miles an hour, winning at an average speed of 109.069, fastest in the track's history.
Meyer's father was a bicycle-racer in Germany, his brother, Eddie, a former Pacific coast dirt-track champion. This year, another brother, Henry, twenty-one, will ride with Louis as mechanic.
Since 1927, when he started racing, Meyer has competed in ten Indianapols races, has won three firsts, a second and a fourth.
Of the $1,316,800 won at the speedway since 1911, Meyer has taken $67,400, another record.
In all, Meyer has raced 3,885 miles on the bricks at Indianapolis.
On Monday he will only have to complete 177 of the 500 miles to smash the all-time driving record of 4,061 held by Ralph DePalma.
Veteran--DePalma finished sixth in the inaugural Indianapolis race of 1911, won in 1915 and placed in four of the other eight in which he competed before his retirement in 1925.
Two weeks ago, fifty-five-year-old DePalma, who was born in Italy, but talks with a Hoosier accent, climbed into a stock-model LaSalle convertible coupe, drove the regulation 500 miles around the Indianapolis oval at an average clip of 82.189 miles an hour. Ray Harroun, General Motors officials proudly pointed out, averaged only 74.59 when he won the first Indianapolis race.
Of the fifty-four cars originally entered in this year's race, only the thirty-three making the fastest qualifying times will start. In the first qualifying runs two weeks ago, "Wild Bill" Cummings, driving the car in which he won the 1934 race, covered the twenty-five miles at an average of 123.455, the official "fastest" in track history.
Zipper--In an unofficial speed-trial, Jimmy Snyder, of Chicago, roared around the two-and-one-half-mile track in one minute, ten seconds, an average clip of 128.571. Snyder was driving one of the seven cars entered by lanky, twenty-two-year-old Joe Thorne, millionaire New York sportsman.
Thorne, refused a driver's license by Indianapolis stewards on the ground of "insufficient experience" before last year's race, has been racing on dirt-tracks during the last twelve months and may drive one of his own cars on Monday.
The youthful speed enthusiast owns twelve racing-cars, fourteen racing-motorcycles and three air-planes. This year he again named to his racing staff, every member of which must be able to drive faster than he can, forty-six-year-old Zeke Meyer.
Meyer looks like Lewis Stone, film star, is the oldest driver at Indianapolis and last year finished ninth in one of Thorne's cars.
Gas--Major change in the rules for this year's race removes the limit on the amount of gasoline which can be used. In 1936, drivers were allowed only thirty-seven and one-half gallons for 500 miles. Meyer, the winner, had one pint in his tank at the finish.
This year, drivers must use a bona fide commercial gasoline of a brand at least one year old and regularly sold at filling-stations.
In previous races they have used specially-treated fuel, sometimes costing as much as $2 a gallon.
Because drivers can now use as much gasoline as they like, chances are the 1937 race will be faster than last year's. Previously they have held back on the accelerator pedal to conserve fuel.
First place at Indianapolis is $20,000; second, $10,000; third, $5,000; fourth, $3,500; fifth, $3,000; sixth, $2,200; seventh, $1,800; eighth, $1,600; ninth, $1,500; tenth, $1,400.
Plus consolation awards of $10,000, the speedway's contribution to the kitty totals $60,000.
Lap prizes of $100 each and accessory prizes awarded by companies whose equipment is carried on the winning car, raise the race's total value to approximately $100,000.
Down--Still ballyhooed as "the great outdoor laboratory of the automotive industry," the Indianapolis race in recent years has probably lost most of its value as a testing-ground for devices later adopted for passenger-cars. For one thing, the race is held but once a year; for another, most of the larger automobile manufacturers maintaing their own testing-grounds.
Basically, most critics feel, the appeal is the appeal of thrills and dangers. Since 1911, thirty-one people have been killed at the Indianapolis track.
No death-defying daredevil now, Barney Oldfield is preaching safety in driving. He maintains racing has lost its usefulness to the motor industry.
"Speed, speed and more speed is the Indianapolis slogan every year," he says, "and I claim there is danger in speed.
"The Indianapolis Speedway has paid for itself many times over. The capitalists that now own it should stop bulling the dear old public. They should publicize it for what it is: a spectacle that caters to the morbidly curious."
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*Finished fifth in 1914 and 1916.
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