1955 - Year of Tragedy

Auto racing is inherently dangerous. The 1955 Championship racing season was particularly bloody and brought things to a head for the AAA Contest Board, which was the sanctioning body not only for championship racing but also for sprint cars, run on one-half mile tracks, midgets run on one-quarter mile tracks, and stock cars. AAA, whose primary focus was auto safety, was subject to criticism whenever there was a racing accident. It didn’t matter if the race was sanctioned by the AAA Contest Board or not.
 
The deaths started on March 20 at the Langhorne Speedway, a dirt track outside of Philadelphia, where Larry Crockett, the 1954 “Rookie of the Year,” was killed after he hit a rut in the racetrack. Then on May 1 at the “Larry Crockett Memorial Race” also run at the Langhorne Speedway, “Iron Mike” Nazaruk hit a rut on the course and his car became airborne. The collision with a tree was so violent that his helmet was ripped from his head and his driving suit was shredded. Ironically, Nazaruk had won the race at the Langhorne Speedway when Larry Crockett was killed.
 
As practice opened at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, there were three pacesetters: Jack McGrath set a lap record of 141 mph. Jimmy Bryant, winner of the 1954 Championship title, and Billy Vukovich, who was going for his third consecutive Indianapolis 500 victory. On the final day before qualifications, Vukovich served notice when his car went 141.2 mph. He was one of five drivers to have gone faster than 140 mph during practice.
 
The first day of qualifying was cold and windy with rain threatening. In the garage area, the teams and drivers agreed not to make any qualifying attempts despite the urging of Speedway treasurer Joseph Cloutier. Evidently, Jerry Hoyt was not aware of the discussion. Late in the day he took to the track and won the pole with a speed of 140. 045 mph. Tony Bettenhausen Sr. also made an attempt and started the race in second. The next day Vukovich qualified at 141 mph. Three hours later, McGrath shattered the record. His first lap was at 143.793 mph, two miles per hour faster than any previous lap run at the Speedway. His four-lap qualifying speed was 142.58 mph.
 
Two minutes before the track closed on Monday, May 16, Manuel Ayulo took his car out for a practice run. His car, equipped with an Offenhauser engine, had developed lubrication problems. He had worked through the night on the engine and didn’t rest before getting into the racecar. He completed two laps with an average speed of 139 mph. Roaring down the front straightaway on the third lap, witnesses said he never made a turn going into the first corner. He smacked directly into the first turn and died the next day from his injuries. It is believed that part of the steering system failed causing the crash.
 
In Europe, two-time champion Alberto Ascari was racing in the Monaco Grand Prix on May 22. While braking on a narrow part of the course bordering the Bay of Hercules, the brakes on his D-50 Lancia locked up and he sailed over the low wall into the water. He was rescued by skin divers positioned in the water in case there was an accident. Four days after returning to his home in Milan, Ascari went to visit some drivers at Milan’s Autodrome. After eating lunch with a friend, Ascari borrowed Eugenio Castellotti’s Ferrari to “work some kinks out of his back.” On the third lap, the car picked up speed on the straightaway. The car failed to negotiate the Violone, a left-hand turn. Ascari was ejected from the car as it flipped end-over-end and he died in the back of an ambulance.
 
The 1955 Indianapolis 500 developed into a duel between McGrath and Vukovich. On the fortieth lap, smoke began rising from McGrath’s tailpipe, and on the fifty-third lap, McGrath’s day was over. Shortly thereafter, Vukovich was involved in a multi-car crash. It began when Rodger Ward, driving an old Kuzma dirt track car, caught a breeze coming out of turn two. Unable to control the race car, he hit the wall. Despite the spinning action of his car, Johnny Boyd and Al Keller were able to avoid it; however, their evasive action ultimately resulted in the Vukovich crash. Keller, a rookie, driving an old Kurtis-Kraft, attempted to avoid the melee by using a hand brake, but the car’s brakes locked up causing his car to careen back across the track from the inside grass. Boyd, not able to avoid Keller’s car, took evasive action but ultimately was hit, losing two front wheels and rolling over.
 
Vukovich, leading the race by nearly a lap, clipped Boyd’s car, slammed into a footbridge and then sailed over the retaining wall upside down. Vukovich’s car went as high as twenty-five feet before smashing to earth. It bounced about fifteen feet, hit three parked cars before scraping a utility pole, flipped on its back and burst into flames. Vukovich died of a basal skull fracture, probably in the first millisecond of the flip.
 
Two weeks later, the Grand Prix at Le Mans was held. Begun in the 1920s, it is the longest running road course race. Organized by the local auto club D’ouest, the race is both a test of the automobile’s endurance and speed. The 8.4-mile course uses public roads that are closed during the race with over 300,000 spectators in attendance. Le Mans is unique as it is a 24-hour race. Due to the length of time, it is run by twenty-six two driver teams with the drivers alternating four-hour shifts.
 
The 1955 Le Mans race began with a foot race to the cars at 4:00 p.m. The drivers leapt into the cars and roared off toward the Dunlap pedestrian bridge. The early race was a duel between Mike Hawthorne of the British Jaguar team and Lance Macklin, driving an Austin Healey. Hawthorne had just passed Macklin when he noticed his pit crew signaling for him to come in for refueling. Attempting to make the entrance to pit row, Hawthorne slammed on the brakes. Following closely behind, Macklin took evasive action to avoid the quickly slowing Hawthorne. Pierre Levegh, closely trailing in a Mercedes, wasn’t able to avoid the quickly slowing car. The force of the impact caused Levegh to lose control of his car which slammed into an earth embankment. Levegh was killed instantly while the force of the impact caused the car to explode. The front half of the car sailed into a tightly packed group of spectators gathering near the start/finish line across from the pits. The ensuing fireball and shrapnel resulted in approximately eighty spectator deaths.
 
The wrecks in auto racing in which ninety-one had died and over 100 were injured resulted in an outrage against auto racing. One primary cause was that the tracks were inadequate to cope with the speeds of the modern race cars. They were either road courses run on narrow roads, dirt tracks which were subject to holes and ruts, or specialty-built tracks, such as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which were designed when speeds were much lower.
 
As the controversy over auto racing raged, Indianapolis 500 pole sitter Jerry Hoyt, was critically injured in a race in Oklahoma City. Going directly into the sun, Hoyt hit a rut in the track. His racer then hit a wall, flipped, landing upside down and then bounced in the air, landing right side up. The next day, Hoyt died because of a severe brain injury. His death was the fifth Indianapolis 500 driver to die in 1955.
 
On July 13, 1955, Senator Richard L. Neuberger of Oregon called for the U.S. Senate to outlaw auto racing. The response from the Indianapolis racing community was immediate. Jep Cadou, Jr., sports editor for the Indianapolis Star, wrote a blistering article which said in part, “Senator Neuberger seems convinced that he is a better judge of what is good for race drivers than race drivers are. He adopts the all-too-familiar attitude that the government knows better what is right for the people than the people know themselves.”
 
The next day, Cadou went after the race community, in particular the AAA officials and race promoters . In part, he wrote, “In too many cases, AAA officials have done only a half-hearted job of policing the tracks on which the “500” drivers run elsewhere. Too many of them have regarded racing only as a social event instead of a grim life-and-death matter. And too many promoters have shaved costs here and there at the expense of permitting drivers to run under hazardous conditions.”
 
Although Senator Neuberger’s bill failed to materialize, the sentiment against auto racing caused the AAA to act. On August 3, 1955, AAA president Andrew J. Sordoni announced that at the end of the season, AAA would disassociate itself from auto racing as it was incompatible with its mission of promoting street and highway safety. While acknowledging auto racing’s popularity, he questioned if auto racing resulted in better cars or better parts for cars.
 
The next day, Joseph Cloutier said that the announcement came as a complete surprise to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway management and that they had no immediate answers to the questions that confronted auto racing.
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