Auto Racing: Easy Does It

To U.S. racing drivers, just being allowed to compete in the Indianapolis 500 is like being tapped for Skull & Bones. The 500 has a special sound (the roar of 250,000 voices), a special smell (burning alcohol from the cars and frying chicken from the picnickers), a special excitement (speeds up to 195 m.p.h.) and a special danger (21 deaths in 55 years). Not to mention the special rewards consisting of the money (total purse: $628,400) and prestige that go to the winner of the world's richest auto race.

But as far as Scotland's Jim Clark, 29, lets on, the Indy 500 is a bit of a bore. Fortnight before the race, while everybody else was practicing furiously, he flew home to inspect the livestock on his 1,200-acre Lowlands farm. When he returned, he allowed as how, "frankly speaking, I'd rather be in Monte Carlo"—where his European comrades were competing the same weekend in the Grand Prix of Monaco.* Still, his boss, Colin Chapman, had signed up for the race, and Clark reckoned he might as well make the most of t. So he did. Squirming into No. 82, a tiny, 1,250-lb. Lotus painted "unlucky" green and powered by a 495-h.p. Ford engine, he tied a white silk scarf around his face and proceeded to put on a display never before seen at Indianapolis. He led for all but ten of the 200 laps, broke some sort of record practically every time he tooled around the 21-mile course, lapped the entire field twice, averaged 150.68 m.p.h. (the old record: 147.35 m.p.h.), and left the Brickyard littered with the carcasses of cars that broke down straining to keep up.

Some Battle, Some War. The experts had all sorts of preconceptions about what last week's 500 was going to be.

A disaster, for one thing: A. J. Foyt, Rodger Ward and Parnelli Jones crashed in practice, and if the three top Indy veterans couldn't control their cars, what could be expected from the eleven green rookies in the race? There was the Great Tire War between Firestone and Goodyear (TIME, May 28), and the knock-down Battle of the Enginemakers between Ford, which entered its first Memorial Day 500 just two years ago, and Offenhauser, which had ruled the Brickyard for 18 straight years.

Rarely have the experts been so wrong. The only thing that remotely resembled a crash was a brief encounter between Bud Tingelstad's Lola-Ford and the wall on No. 3 turn. The yellow caution light shone for only 13 min. during the 31-hr. race— and 2 min. of that was the fault of a careless official who pulled the switch by mistake. Rookies finished third, fifth, sixth, eighth and ninth. Seven top cars used Firestone tires, and the first four were powered by rear-mounted Ford engines. Offy Boss Louis Meyer then announced that his firm no longer would produce engines for the 500, thus coining a new slogan: "If you can't beat 'em, quit."

"I Saw, I Passed." The race itself was over almost as soon as it started when Clark tramped on his accelerator and darted in front of Foyt on the very first turn. Foyt grabbed back the lead on the second lap, but Clark later explained: "I let him go. I wanted to see how quick he was. I saw, and I passed him back." That was on the third lap, and except for a fleeting interlude after his first pit stop, Clark was in front all the rest of the way.