Strang Triumphs at Briarcliff

The article in the attachment below comes from the April 25, 1908 Indianapolis Star and reports on a pretty amazing road race that occurred that year. The race kicked off the best year of Lewis Strang's brief career. He would go on to win two other major road races that year at Savannah, Georgia and Lowell, Massachusetts making him, along with George Robertson who won the 1908 Vanderbilt Cup the most respected driver of the day. This article is very brief and therefore misses some important details. For example, there is no chart (you can find a chart in another post to an article with its own limitations) with the finishing order and when the cars are described they are noted by the nationality of their manufacture, not their make. For example, fourth-place finisher Herb Lytle's car is described as "American" and not an Apperson (built in Kokomo, Indiana). This is a little misleading because there was a manufacturer named "American" and taken out of context this detail could lead to misunderstanding.
 
The article is worthwhile, though, as it documents the date of the race (April 24, 1908) and is another confirmation of the massive crowd of spectators that gathered - an estimated 100,000 which was not unusual in these early days of no admission fee (how do you control people lining public roads courses of dozens of miles?) and general curiosity about these still-new contraptions. In this regard the article also expanded my vocabulary by one English word - "serried." You probably already know, but just in case: it means tightly formed lines of people or things. In the context of the article it described that mass of humanity that serried the edge of the course. Good visual and probably a little terrifying for the drivers who were almost surely bounced around and barely hanging on given a notoriously craggy course and primitive suspension systems. In reality this was less a road race and more what we would see today as an off-road, Baja kind of adventure/race.
 
The race, destined never to be conducted again, is in reflection a poignant moment in history as it was second place finisher Emanuel Cedrino's final big go as he lost his life just a few weeks later.