Safe at Any Speed?

AUTO RACING

"Let me sit down," gasped that grand old daredevil Ray Harroun, as he clambered from his Marmon Wasp after winning the first Indianapolis 500 at an average speed of 74.59 m.p.h. Not finding any place else to sit, Harroun climbed back into his car and nearly fainted dead away.

That was half a century ago. Today the posted speed limit on the Kansas Turnpike is 80 m.p.h. "Comet," "Tempest" and "Fury" are synonyms for "car." Legislators in Washington are worried about too much speed and too little safety, and the U.S. Automobile is praised more faintly than the Teen-Ager and the Pill. All of which is likely to make this year's 500, coming when it does, the most controversial ever.

Anybody Can Do 150. It will certainly be the fastest. A few years ago, an average speed of 150 m.p.h. on the poorly banked 21-mile oval seemed the ultimate. Last week, at the qualifying trials, the slowest car screamed around the "Brickyard" at 157.9 m.p.h., and one driver sighed, "Heck, anybody can get in a car and go 150 m.p.h." The problem is avoiding a sudden stop.

At such speed, even a gust of wind can spell disaster--as two-time 500 Winner A. J. Foyt discovered last week when his Ford-powered Sheraton-Thompson Coyote was blown into the outer retaining wall at 162 m.p.h. The car was totally demolished, but Foyt was unhurt. Chuck Rodee was not so lucky. Rodee already had gunned his 500-h.p. rear-engine Offenhauser through one practice lap at 159.9 m.p.h.; now he was trying to top that. Drifting through the speedway's No. 1 turn, he was suddenly blinded by a bit of rag or paper that blew into his face. The car spun wildly, slid 450 ft. backward into the wall so violently that the starting shaft penetrated 5 in. into the concrete. Rodee died of a ruptured aorta--the 30th driver fatality at Indy.

Another driver was injured when his car piled into the wall; Bob Veith narrowly escaped a barbecue when his MG Special blossomed into flame at 175 m.p.h. Everybody's target was A. J. Foyt's 1965 record qualifying average of 161.2 m.p.h. And before the week was over, seven drivers had beaten it.

On the Pole. So small (5 ft. 6 in., 138 lbs.) that he could barely see over the hood of his Dean Van Lines Hawk, Italian-born Mario Andretti, 26, averaged 165.8 m.p.h. to sew up the pole position. Scotland's Jimmy Clark, the 1965 winner, came next with a clocking of 164.1 m.p.h. The once reliable Offenhauser engine, winner of 18 out of the last 19 500s, but consigned to oblivion after Ford swept the first four places last year, made its comeback--in the hands of Parnelli Jones, who clocked 162.4 m.p.h. A. J. Foyt was not ready to be counted out either: he and his crew assembled a brand new Lotus-Ford from packing cases in nine hours. After only seven practice laps, he qualified at 161.3 m.p.h.

Obviously, the boys at Indy think they're safe enough at any speed. The talk in the pits last week was of 200-m.p.h. laps in a year or two. And the sound of the future at Indy may well be the whine of a jet engine. Piloting a 1,200-h.p., turbine-powered Jack Adams Aircraft Special through practice runs, Veteran Indy Driver Bill Cheesbourg exulted: "I've driven this car down the straight at 200 m.p.h., and I was spinning the wheels all the way."

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