Racing's Rough Road

Racing Driver Bob Wilder, 32, gunned his English-built Oldsmobile-Allard out of the short curve, tires screeching, and sped on toward the little hump-backed bridge. Driver Wilder, a veteran of sport-car racing, knew what to expect at the crest of the bridge: a brief, soaring pitch with all four wheels off the ground, then a jolt as the car settled to the roadway again--then a strong foot on the gas for the next hill. But Driver Wilder never made the hill. His Allard smacked down askew on the roadway, veered, skidded up a bank and turned over. Driver Wilder, his skull crushed, was killed instantly.

Loudspeakers blared the news up & down the length of Long Island's Bridgehampton road-race course last week, calling a halt to the trial spins of other drivers. They wheeled slowly back to the pits, then gathered in gloomy little knots to discuss the accident. The Bridgehampton town board held a hurried meeting to decide whether or not to run the next day's races.

Lucky Break. Bridgehampton (pop. 1,499) was chiefly worried about danger to spectators. Road racing had got a black eye when a youngster watching from the sidewalk was killed at the Watkins Glen race last fall (Lloyd's of London jacked up the insurance rates for road-race organizers after that one). Moreover, earlier last week, road racing had taken another blow when New York's Governor Tom Dewey banned road racing from all state highways. Bridgehampton's town board decided to double the number of special policemen (increasing them to 240), let the races go on over the town's road next day as scheduled.

On race day, the special police had their hands full trying to control the crowd of 25,000 scattered around the four-mile course. Rounding into the second turn, Tom Luck's little Siata spun out, turned over and smacked into a protective row of hay bales. Driver Luck escaped with a broken collarbone, and no spectators were injured.

The European View. The main-event race was a 100-miler for big cars like the one that had killed Bob Wilder the day before. On the eighth lap, with last year's winner, Driver Bill Spear, leading in his Ferrari-Mexico, the spectators got another jolt. Some 55 seconds behind Spear, in fourth place, was Harry Grey, 37, one-time British professional driver and now a Long Island sales manager for European cars. Pushing his Jaguar at an 80-m.p.h. clip, Grey went into a spin, flipped over a time and a half, skidded to an upside-down stop just 20 feet from a conspicuous sign: "No Spectator Area." Grey crawled out of the crack-up with only a few bruises. Two spectators were not so lucky. They ended up in the hospital with broken ankles and other assorted injuries. Unable to control the crowds, the race committee of the Sports Car Club of America stopped the race and called off the whole show.

Charles Moran, executive secretary of the S.C.C.A. and a veteran of France's famed Le Mans 24-hour race, spoke up for the disgruntled drivers. "It's the European view," said Moran, "that these accidents will happen occasionally. But at Le Mans, the spectators never trespass in a forbidden or dangerous area."

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