Drinking Wine During Pit Stops - Goux Wins the "500"

One the great and most colorful stories about Jules Goux winning the Indianapolis 500 people always like to share as soon as they hear it is that he drank wine during his pit stops. The article in attachment StarWine051331 sheds some light on a subject that inevitably gets embellished with each telling of the story. According to the article Goux requested wine on one of his early pit stops and what's amazing to me is that given this was something he typically did in other races the crew apparently was unprepared to respond. Perhaps this could be a reflection of the observations about Americans Johnny Aitken and "Red" Lime's pit management (see attachment StarAitken053113) and that they simply were unaccustomed to their French driver's penchant for consuming alcohol during races. Who knows? What's more no one really knows how much he drank during the race.
 
The article says a crewman ran into the grandstands in search of vino and finding a group of fans from Pittsburgh who had placed bets on Goux returned with six bottles. Grabbing one, Goux reportedly broke the neck of the bottle against the pit wall and poured the contents (sorry for being a wimp but my mind goes to glass slivers permeating my esophagus) down his throat. Some of the tales I have heard or read suggest he consumed six pints of wine but I'm incredulous. Perhaps it was this article that fixed the half-dozen figure into the legend. More likely Goux took swigs and spat out some of it. Nonetheless it is amazing enough that he let any alcohol between his lips in the middle of high-speed, wheel-to-wheel competition. This was not uncommon though as I have read reports of other drivers such as Louis Chevrolet drinking a bottle of beer during pit stops. It was a different world.