The motorsport world is full of fantastic and particular experiences, but there is one driver’s life story that has always particularly fascinated me — that of Roberta Cowell.

See, Cowell was a fighter pilot, a prisoner of war, and a racing driver, which alone would have been enough to build up an impressive resumé. However, she was also the first documented person to receive gender affirming surgery in the United Kingdom, making her the first known trans woman to compete in motorsport. Today, we’re discussing her life and her experiences in an era where her mere existence was criminalized.

Before we get started, I’d like to offer a disclaimer. As with all language concerning how we identify ourselves, the language surrounding the trans experience has dramatically evolved over the years. Many terms that were once widely accepted have fallen out of fashion. But more pressing for this episode is the fact that much of Roberta Cowell’s experience is couched in medicalizations and psychoanalyzations that can be considered harmful today.

Because this is an audio podcast, and because I am a cisgender person, I will not be using any specifically outdated terms that are no longer used. However, because this is a history podcast, I will be sharing some of the problematic aspects of Roberta Cowell’s life and her transition. I intend to contextualize Cowell’s experience by offering a contemporary understanding of what she describes, but I want to acknowledge right off the bat that many of Cowell’s words or experiences may be problematic or even harmful to someone who may be tackling complex questions about their identity and presentation.

My intention with this episode, as with every episode of “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” is to share a sympathetic recounting of the past while also illustrating how our mindsets have evolved. No human is perfect, and at the end of the day, Roberta Cowell is a human, just like me and you. Her experiences deserve to be shared, but her mindsets also should be challenged, and I hope to offer a respectful challenge here.

That being said, if you’re not currently in a state of mind where you would feel comfortable hearing about these experiences, I would recommend looking after yourself and skipping this episode. Likewise, if you are unable to be kind or respectful of an experience that may not reflect your own, I recommend you skip this episode as well.

A brief history of the transgender experience

Before I delve into Roberta Cowell’s story, I want to offer a bit of contextualization. Normally, my early episode context will delve into politics or the racing world — but today, I want to talk about the long history of the transgender experience.

For as long as humans have existed, and for as long as we have been able to perceive our identity and how that identity fits within the society in which we live, there have been trans people… we just probably didn’t have a word for them. We probably would have known that the person in question challenged gendered social norms, but there was no specific label to define that experience. Or, perhaps, that experience was not considered outside of understood gender roles.

In ancient Rome, for example, a group called the Galli were priests dedicated to the goddess Cybele. Here, people looking to join Magna Mater — the name of the religion dedicated to Cybele — often castrated themselves and then adopted the clothing and jewelry of a Roman woman. As a result, the Galli could examine Rome’s gender norms from a position outside of the traditional gender expression.

In ancient Egypt, we had Hatshepsut, a Pharaoh who was born a woman but who adopted the traditionally masculinized forms of expression expected of a ruler. Her reign was marked by great prosperity and the organization of massive large-scale construction projects.

In some African cultures, there are more than two gender categories, and in others, priests adopt the physical expression of the opposite gender. In indigenous cultures in North America, the term “two-spirit” was adopted as an umbrella term to define various tribal experiences of third gender expressions. In South America, colonizers reported trans expressions in places like Brazil and Peru — where, in some societies, those third-gender persons were revered. In certain Asian cultures, the trans experience has been readily documented for centuries.

It wasn’t until the early 20th century that European doctors and researchers tried to medically define the trans experience — which, given the technology and scientific knowledge available at the time, could be a clumsy process.

In 1919, doctor Magnus Herschfeld founded the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin, Germany. There, he carried out early examples of hormone therapy and crude attempts at gender confirmation surgery.

But for a lot of researchers trying to define the trans experience, there was an instinct to pathologize the experience.

See, even though we were loaded with unprecedented access to diverse cultures in the early 20th century, that access could also result in a concretization of one’s culture. If you went to a friend’s house as a kid and realized, for example, that they always have a glass of milk with dinner whereas your family doesn’t mandate any specific dinner drink, then you’ve experienced this. When you were served your milk, you probably thought, “huh, that’s weird! That’s not how my family does it!”

That’s a very low-stakes example of cultural concretization. Other examples include colonizers forcing their religions on their colonized communities, because the colonizers couldn’t understand that a different community’s way of living could be as valid as their own.

And in the medical world in the early 20th century, we had an idea of what we should see as “normal,” which basically just meant you conformed to societal expectations regarding everything from the way you do your hair to the kind of career you can achieve. Unfortunately, though, a lot of the folks doing that medical work were wealthy white men — and so much of the medical literature that still dictates our ability to access care today kind of assumes that, at default, you’re a wealthy white man. If you were anything else — a woman, a poor man, a person of color, or a member of the LGBTQ+ community — then you deviated from the default and would probably be diagnosed with some physical or mental ailment.

As society has evolved, we’ve largely grown to understand that certain facets of one’s identity can’t just be pegged on a faulty gene somewhere in our makeup. Many aspects of who we are depend on the physical location where we were born, the socioeconomic status of our family, and the choices our ancestors made centuries ago. Many other aspects are just simple facts that have legitimate genetic origins that aren’t a result of any moral failings. Yes, if you’re a human who exists on this earth, you’ve likely encountered someone who believes you’re a bad person because of some unshakeable aspect of who you are as a person — but there’s a much better chance that you wouldn’t be institutionalized for, say, having hormone-related emotional fluctuations, or being born with red hair.

But in the early to mid-20th century, Western society was still firmly in that flux state, where we were slowly beginning to learn more of the hard scientific facts that could tell us, perhaps, that the simple fact of having a menstrual cycle was not indicative of a moral failure — but we were also still trying to find something “wrong” with that, because our social culture hadn’t progressed at the same rate.

This is the society in which Roberta Cowell transitions.

Roberta Cowell

Robert Cowell was born in Croydon, London, England on April 8, 1918 to parents General Sir Ernest Marshall Cowell KBE CB and Dorothy Elizabeth Miller. From here on out, I will exclusively be referring to Cowell as ‘Roberta’ and using female she/her pronouns; even though Cowell actively identified as male for the first few decades of her life, I will be referring to her as a woman out of respect for her experience.

Cowell attended Whitgift School, which was an all-boys public school, and her parents were both well-educated and in great standing in the community. She struggled with religion and self-presentation as a child, but she soon found solace in just about everything with wheels. First came an obsession with a scooter that she loved riding down a hill at full bore, and that evolved into a love of all things mechanical as she approached her teenage years.

She joined the Motor Club at school, where she got early experience learning how to drive motorcycles and cars, and she later joined the Officer’s Training Corps with the intention of one day becoming a fighter pilot. Doing so offered her opportunities to travel throughout Europe as a child.

At 16, she left school to join General Aircraft Limited as an apprentice aircraft engineer, and she started turning up at the Brooklands race track to find any opportunity she could to get hands-on experience working on race cars. When she turned 17, she received her license and began entering plenty of small local racing events — but she also enlisted in the Royal Air Force.

It wasn’t easy. During training, Cowell found that she readily succumbed to airsickness and was deemed unfit for flying. Instead, she entered University College London to study engineering in 1936. There, she met a woman named Diana Carpenter whom she later married, but her primary interest was racing.

In 1936, she won her class at the Land’s End Speed Trial behind the wheel of a Riley. Three years later, at just 20 years old, she owned three racing cars that she maintained herself, competing in both the Donington and Antwerp Grands Prix, among countless other events all around England. Such was her love of racing that she brought a tiny bottle full of fuel and oil with her when she was sent off to war; when she sniffed the bottle, she was reminded of her favorite place, the race track.

Even though she had been previously deemed unfit for flying, Cowell applied for a job at the Air Ministry and was instead given the opportunity to move up through the ranks by starting off in the Royal Army Service Corps. In June of 1941, she married Dian Carpenter and then quickly jetted off to join the Royal Air Force. She passed her medical exam and avoided vomiting during a slew of aerobatics, and that was that. She began training as a fighter pilot, just as she’d hoped.

In her autobiography, she recounts a moment where she passed out while flying due to a lack of oxygen before she came to and managed to fly back to her squadron’s base — but that wasn’t the worst of her troubles. A few months later, her squadron was stationed outside of Belgium, where they battled off Nazi troops.

On November 18, 1944, Cowell was piloting one of two Typhoons on a low-level sortie over a small German town — but anti-aircraft fire damaged her plane. She couldn’t bail out and instead had to effect a deadstick crash landing. She made it to the ground unhurt, but German troops scooped her up. Roberta Cowell was then a prisoner of war.

She attempted to escape a few times early on in her capture, but both attempts failed, and she was brought to a POW camp deeper into Germany. In her autobiography, she details the five months she spent as a prisoner, where she taught automotive engineering classes and designed her ideal Grand Prix car to pass the time.

Her account of that time is pretty harrowing; she writes of splitting one slice of bread with 14 other prisoners, and of being so hungry that she killed cats just to have some raw meat. She writes of a fellow prisoner who wrote a letter of thanks to a woman who had knitted a sweater for the Red Cross, a sweater that found its way to that prisoner in the POW camp. The woman wrote back, “I am sorry to hear that you have received my sweater, as I had knitted it for a fighting man.”

She also describes an aversion to homosexual behavior. While at the camp, she rejected a part in a play because her fellow inmates wanted her to play a woman; because she identified as a man at the time, she thought that playing a woman would make her appear homosexual. She also writes of her disgust at men who propositioned her in the camp.

By April 1945, when it became clear the Red Army was closing in, German soldiers attempted to evacuate the camp in which Cowell was held prisoner, but the prisoners refused to leave. Eventually, the German soldiers just abandoned the camp, which was found by the Red Army late in the night on April 30. Riddled with scabies and 50 pounds lighter, Cowell was soon sent back to England where she, as well as her fellow prisoners, would be expected to find a new path in life.

From motorsport to a major transition

After she returned from World War II, Roberta Cowell began to wonder what was next for her.

She writes in her autobiography that, as a fighter pilot, she had “never seriously considered what I should do after the war.” She set up a small automotive engineering business with a business partner that all fell apart, and she threw herself further into the racing world.

It was only one of many ventures she embarked on at the time, and by 1946, she had put together a ‘stable’ that competed in events around Europe, including a Grand Prix at Rouen-Les-Essarts as well as the Brighton Speed Trials in the United Kingdom.

However, even motorsport couldn’t take her mind off her sheer unhappiness. See, Cowell was married, and she and her wife had had two daughters, Anne and Diana. They had purchased a beautiful home, and Cowell’s business were strong — but she reflects of this period in her autobiography that “I was not at all well, physically, and it seemed that something was drastically wrong somewhere.”

Things seemed to change when she watched the film Mine Own Executioner. The hero of the film is shot down by anti-aircraft fire, and Cowell’s reaction was visceral.

“I felt all the pent-up emotion released that I must have experienced when my own lane was shot down, but this time I was an observer, and was not so preoccupied with what I was doing that I could feel no emotion,” she wrote. “Now I felt the full impact of stark terror. Fear that I would be burnt alive, fear that I would be lynched by the soldiers, fear that I would be terribly injured by the crash. It was a full hour before I was able to pull myself together and walk shakily out of the cinema.”

While that experience wasn’t necessarily the only aspect of life she found she was struggling with, it was enough to finally encourage her to consider that she should find a way to move forward from her experiences.

So, still identifying as a man, she decided it was time to seek out a therapist.

Here, I want to tread lightly. Psychotherapy in the late 1940s was drastically different than what we’d consider therapy today, and Cowell initially opted to see a Freudian therapist. As she writes in her autobiography, this school of psychotherapy founded by Sigmund Freud generally ties everything back into sex.

Basically, Freud’s work posits that our development as humans involves a series of pseudo-sexual progressions as we age. For example, infants explore the world by mouth, and their big focus of that period of their lives is seeking sustenance via mouth from their mother’s breast. In the next stage, the child’s attention turns to their ability to control their bowel movements. Freud posits that if there is any disturbance or discomfort or trauma associated with any of these stages of life, they’ll manifest in disturbances to our later sexual growth.

There’s just one problem. Scholars now believe that Freud’s theories were developed by ignoring rampant childhood sexual abuse in his patients.

In effect, Freud’s initial research was conducted by speaking with children or adults who often reported sexual abuse by adults in their lives. The sheer number of people reporting that abuse was disturbing. It seemed impossible to him that abuse could be so rampant, and if it was true, it would result in a serious societal upheaval among the intellectuals and upper-class folks he was liaising with.

Whether it was simply hard for him to believe, or whether society would have effectively decimated his career for reporting his findings, Freud built a school of psychoanalytic thought that posits these children were not necessarily abused, but that they experienced some seemingly benign disruption in their sexual development that compounded and manifested in “fantasies” of desire or abuse.

But when Roberta Cowell headed off to pursue a Freudian line of treatment, society hadn’t quite put all this together yet — that didn’t happen until the late 1970s, when feminist scholars began to find that, yes, many children actually did report sexual abuse in childhood.

By speaking to her therapist, Cowell says she learned that “the real conflict” she was facing “was due to the dynamic energy of primary urges with their inhibiting elements which were denied expression.” She described her dreams to her therapist, and he helped her work through their meaning. But it wasn’t until she moved on to her next therapist that her world and self-perception changed.

Her second therapist put her through a round of tests: word association, Rorschach ink blot tests, and more. Here came the conclusion that her “unconscious mind” was “predominantly female.”

Reflecting on this discovery in her autobiography, Cowell wrote, “I had confidently expected that the result of the analysis would be a discovery of the fact that I had an unconscious fear of losing my masculinity. I expected to find traces of the Oedipus complex and signs of repressed conflict between animal instincts and moral upbringing. I did not expect to find that, freed of repressions, I was psychologically a woman!”

From here, Cowell goes on to share a lot of problematic rationale for her understanding that she was mentally and physically a woman. She points to “typically feminine” traits, and to “typically feminine secondary sex characteristics.” These rationalizations helped her come to the conclusion that she should begin a physical transition, and that she should begin living as a woman.

Mentally, Cowell had accepted that she may have been living inauthentically — but she needed physical confirmation as well, especially after a friend named Lisa made a passing joke about how Roberta should be using a brassiere. She visited a “sexologist” at Harley Street in London who determined that Cowell had “prominent feminine sex characteristics” like wide hips, narrow shoulders, a “female type” of pelvis, small hands and feet, no Adam’s apple, and a “typically feminine” though “underdeveloped” breast formation. She also notes that there was “some degree” of hermaphroditism present.

This kicked off a greater period of medical self-discovery. Cowell visited gynecologists, endocrinologists, general practitioners, and even a professor of anatomy. They all seemed to agree that she exhibited more female characteristics than male characteristics, and that they were somehow surprised that she was even as masculine as she was.

Cowell says that, with that medical confirmation, she now had a choice. She could continue to live as a man — though she says that in doing so, she’d still have to undergo surgery and hormone therapy. Or, she could live as a woman — again, requiring surgery and hormone therapy. The latter option somehow seemed preferable, as Cowell felt that her body was trending in a more feminine direction.

Let’s pause here and take stock of where we’re at. Cowell is effectively claiming that she is intersex, which means that her sexual characteristics are not traditionally male or female… but Cowell is incredibly vague — to an extent that many people have theorized that she has effectively just made this whole story up.

Reading her autobiography, I can see how they’ve come to that conclusion. Cowell never actually names any actual sexual characteristics, such as ovaries or testicles, that she has or does not have. She breezes over a lot of the medical discussions and kind of asserts that her transness is more readily found in the way she feels about women’s fashion. She later stated in an interview that she had XX chromosomes but also a penis and testicles, but folks with that intersex expression are generally infertile, per current medical understanding — and Cowell had two children.

Cowell also makes another compelling claim. Mainly, she says her doctors were unclear whether or not she was born with these characteristics, or if they were kicked off by the trauma she experienced as a prisoner of war in World War II, or due to the flashbacks she experienced afterward. She seems to imply that this latter suggestion is the more likely one, that a post-war shock led to a change in her glandular structure, but she also notes that her doctors said her body had been slowly making this transition for years.

Basically, there is a lot of ambiguity here. It seems a little fantastic that Cowell would have had no indication that she exhibited female sex characteristics until she visited multiple doctors, who all universally agreed that she did so. But it’s also not totally impossible.

Perhaps the most gracious explanation here is that Cowell is a trans woman who is attempting to present an explanation of her existence to a society that otherwise would not accept her. At the time, it was illegal to perform gender affirming surgeries; however, there was enough ambiguity surrounding intersex expressions of genitalia that identifying as intersex could have provided the necessary legitimacy for Cowell to gain access to the healthcare she needed to make a full transition.

This is something you’ll see fairly regularly in stories about folks undergoing those early transitions. It’s not necessarily that this person is lying about their experience, but it’s more that they’re trying to present the most socially acceptable version of themselves to have their experiences legitimized. Cowell positioning herself as existing between both binary genders and having to select one to fully “become” can do a lot to take the burden of identity off her shoulders and make it perhaps easier for others to understand why a surgical transition was necessary.

It is, however, still an appropriation of the intersex experience, or the experience of having been born with ambiguous genitalia, and I want to make it clear that his mindset should not be encouraged. Claiming to have been born or to have become an intersex person has historically offered some trans people the ability to undergo a transition in a way that may seem more “legitimate” or “medically necessary” than transitioning without a clear medical “need.” That has created a lot of confusion about the actual intersex experience, and a lot of queer scholars are still doing the work of untangling the knots that have arisen when trans and intersex experiences overlap.

Cowell writes of the pain and embarrassment she felt throughout her life, but when she makes the commitment to begin adopting a more typically feminine expression, she says, “This knowledge raised my morale very considerably. The intense shame I felt began to disappear. Once I realized that my femininity had a physical basis, I didn’t despise myself so much. I now knew of course that I was physically abnormal but I could accept a degree of involuntary femininity without losing self respect.”

I think that quote sheds a lot of light onto perhaps why Cowell presents her life’s story the way she does. She really removes herself from this process of discovery and instead presents her transition as being almost out of her control. She never seems to note any complex feelings about her gender expression — not until she’s told to see doctors and psychologists who basically just tell her that she’s trans, and that this is something her body has effectively begun pursuing. She doesn’t ever really make any decisions for herself so much as she lets others make them for her, and I think that can do a lot to illustrate the fact that she may simply have not felt like she could determine her gender presentation herself. It may have been easier for society to accept her if this was something she largely had no control over — especially when she goes on to write about her family medical history, where she alleges her aunt was born with a congenital absence of a vagina.

When she decided that she was going to commit to a typically female presentation, Cowell first started hormone therapy. She writes that this process made her look younger, that it cleared her skin and reduced her muscle mass. People around her begin to notice that she doesn’t conform exactly to their expectations of how either a man or a woman should look.

But as the hormones transformed her appearance, Cowell said she realized she would “have to give it up sometime,” or, that she was ready to commit to a surgical transition. After two years of hormones, she visited a doctor that determined her to be legally intersex, which allowed her to re-register her gender on her birth certificate — which would, in turn, allow her to undergo a surgical operation.

However, her biography makes this sound a lot easier than it is. In the Queer as Fact podcast, the hosts read from a document Cowell signed. Basically, she couldn’t find anyone to perform her surgery and therefore agreed to undergo surgery by an “unqualified” doctor with only five years of medical training — a man who had never performed this kind of surgery, a vaginoplasty, previously. This document was legally necessary if only to absolve the doctor of any legal blame should Cowell die from the procedure.

The man performing the surgery was a trans man named Michael Dillon. Cowell first met Dillon through his publisher, after he wrote a book about becoming the first person to receive gender affirming surgery to give him a penis. Cowell doesn’t share much about the relationship between the two of them, but the assumption is that she was looking to Dillon to help her access surgical care. When Dillon couldn’t find anyone to do it, he opted to conduct the procedure himself.

Basically, Cowell had found herself stuck. In order to legally change her sex on her birth certificate, she needed to remove her testicles — and at the time, laws in the UK prevented doctors from surgically removing otherwise healthy testes. Should Dillon successfully perform the operation, then Cowell could visit other doctors who could provide her with the paperwork necessary to say that she didn’t have functioning testes. Therefore, she could legally change her sex in the eyes of the government, and she would be able to pursue further gender affirming surgery at a later date.

This entire procedure is completely ignored in Cowell’s autobiography. Not only was it illegal, but it was also highly dangerous and threatened to harm the medical standing of Dillon, who performed the surgery.

After she was able to legally change her sex, it was in 1952 that Cowell underwent the first recorded gender affirming surgery in the United Kingdom by Sir Harold Gillies, who performed Dillon’s gender affirming operation as well. Cowell reports it as taking six and a half hours, though she also says she felt no pain — a great result considering Gillies’ only experience with performing the surgery had come the night before he performed Cowell’s, when he practiced on a corpse.

Two weeks later, she was able to return home.

“The operation made a tremendous difference to me psychologically,” Cowell wrote in her autobiography. “I felt quite different and very much happier. The results were almost miraculously good, and I was glad indeed to have this art of the metamorphosis completed.”

Shortly after she returned to life as she knew it, though, Cowell realized she was interested in undergoing facial surgery to remove any “residual traces of masculinity.”

She moved to a new apartment and soon made her first forays out into public as a woman, where Cowell reflects on the approval she received from men who found her attractive. Soon, she began to find her sense of style, learned how to apply makeup, and began to carry herself differently. One of the more compelling parts of her autobiography touches on the contradictory advice she received regarding diets, makeup, and more — something she never had to face when she was presenting as a man.

She describes the struggles she felt coming out to her parents, the struggles she had with dating.

Soon, though, Cowell was faced with some new challenges. Namely, she notes the appearance of other trans people popping up in the media, such as Christine Jorgenson. Jorgenson was an American who underwent gender affirming surgery in Denmark — and this is something to which Cowell takes serious exception.

See, Cowell may have transitioned herself, but as we’ve touched on a few times already, she had a very particular justification for her transition — namely, that it was medically necessary because she stated she was an intersex person. When it comes to anyone but herself, however, Cowell can be severely queerphobic. She speaks of disgust about gay men, and she derided Jorgenson because Jorgenson was “never a person with two sets of sexual characteristics, one being dormant.”

Cowell continued, “The distinctive feature of this case was, of course, the fact that the change was apparently artificially induced” — meaning, Jorgenson seemingly had no physical or medical basis upon which to occasion her transition. Cowell also makes fun of other trans people she meets when those people don’t conform to a more conventional masculine or feminine appearance.

As she got older, it seemed that those views became more extreme. In a story published in The Sunday Times in which it is reported that Cowell is looking to get back into motorsport in 1972, at the age of 53, she takes an extremely dim and controversial view of her own transition, and of the people that have allegedly mimicked her.

“I was a freak,” she was quoted as saying. “I had an operation and I’m not a freak any more. I had female chromosome make-up, XX. The people who have followed me have often been those with male chromosomes, XY. So they’ve been normal people who’ve turned themselves into freaks by means of the operation.”

Later, she goes on to say, “Many people thought they could copy me. But it’s like admiring someone without legs, like Bader, and having your legs off to be the same. Or it’s more like seeing a thalidomide child, and having an operation to be the same.”

The 1972 story goes on to say that she disagrees with the women’s liberation movement, that she doesn’t agree with the blurring of gender lines, claiming that women and men are so different as to be different species.

In 1954, Cowell was offered a significant sum of money to sell her story to the press. It isn’t clear exactly how anyone found out about Cowell — though it is possible that she told them herself thanks to the fact that she did need money. The autobiography I’m referring to in this episode is effectively the story that gets published, and it’s a huge sensation in both the U.S. and the UK.

She had left the UK by that point, determining it was best to be out of the country when the story hit the press, which turned out to be a very good thing. Journalists dug up everyone from Cowell’s past that they could find, including some of her former doctors and even her father, who would claim that Cowell had either been born a “normal” boy, or that she had reported them as saying things they felt had been either misinterpreted or misquoted.

Rather than continue its sympathetic and sensationalist bent, the press instead begins sharing scandalous tidbits about Cowell, claiming first that she is a “transvestist,” — or, effectively, that she is merely a man who finds a sexual thrill in wearing women’s clothes. People began demanding her birth certificate be amended to declare her a man, while others denied her entire experience outright. The nasty reporting just kind of circles around for a while before finally fading out of the press, and Cowell remains out of the country until it does.

We don’t know much about Cowell after her “coming out.” At least, not until after her death in 2011 at the age of 93. She continued racing, even winning the Shelsley Walsh hill climb in 1957, then declared bankruptcy the following year. However, as the 1960s kicked off in full force, she found it difficult to secure employment without effectively bringing negative press to her employer, even though she continued racing into the 1970s and even logging over 1,600 flight hours. Racing and flying were her all-consuming passions in her life.

In the 1990s, she moved into “sheltered accommodation,” which is effectively a kind of rented housing for vulnerable communities. She died in obscurity on October 11, 2011; no one — not even her family — seemed aware that Cowell had died until The Independent published a posthumous profile on her.

That story is painful. It begins, “Two years ago, a 93-year-old woman died alone. She was found lying on the bedroom floor of her sheltered-housing accommodation in west London. The flat was so cluttered that the wardens struggled to remove her body. Half-a-dozen people attended the cremation, and news of her death did not spread beyond Twickenham. This is now how Roberta Cowell should be remembered.”

The paper contacted Cowell’s two daughters, Anne and Diana, who did not know that Roberta Cowell had died until that moment. Cowell had last contacted her daughters in 1948, and avoided contact with them in her later years.

“Nobody told me about the sex change,” Diana, the younger of Cowell’s two daughters, is quoted as saying in The Independent. “I read about it in a newspaper. They were trying to protect me. But it was the biggest shock of my life. I must have been 12 or 13. The worst thing was that suddenly, I knew this was reality. Your father’s not coming back to you. Ever. And that’s why it hurt so much.”

Diana is later quoted as saying, “It’s a relief to know something at last,” and that “I was 17 when I got married, and had my first child at 18. I think part of me wanted to prove that there was nothing wrong with me.”

“I just think it’s sad we could never be friends,” Anne, Cowell’s eldest daughter, said, “especially now we know that at the end she died alone in sheltered housing.”

Cowell was buried, not with flowers, but with a white enamel sign reading “Roberta Cowell Racing” in bright red letters.

Why it matters today

Roberta Cowell’s life story is a complex one, but it’s one that I felt was deeply important to share in “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” for one specific reason: Establishing the roots of visibility to show that trans folks have had a long and storied history of participation in the motorsport world is hugely important.

As we’ve touched on in other episodes centering on women or people of color, motorsport history is often written in such a way that it centers around a white, wealthy male experience. In much the same way that it’s important to note that women and Black folks have been part of the racing world, so too is it important to note that trans people have been here for ages, too.

Roberta Cowell states several times in her biography that, after she transitioned, she lost all inclination toward “masculine” things like motorsports — but that was pointedly not true. She did step away from the racing scene while she was actively transitioning, the same way that she stepped away from a lot of public-facing life during that period as well. But both before and after her transition, Cowell was a regular fixture behind the wheel.

As an early example of a trans person experiencing gender affirming surgery, Roberta Cowell is full of contradictions and problematic mindsets. Her queerphobia is impossible to deny, as is her belief that she was somehow a legitimate trans person, compared to other, illegitimate trans folks who had no “medical” basis for transitioning. These mindsets are harmful. They are problematic in the extreme, and they should not be looked upon as an example of appropriate conduct.

But the reason I want to share those mindsets with you is the fact that history is never straightforward or simple. Cowell should be commended for her strength in pursuing an authentic form of self-expression in her life, even though it was both socially reprehensible and also literally illegal. But her belief in her superiority over other members of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as the harmful perpetuation of the mindsets about who should be allowed to transition, need to be held to task.

More than anything else, though, I want to show that we should be creating space for all kinds of diverse experiences in racing, because all kinds of people have always been involved in the motorsport world. Cowell may have been problematic, but she also clearly showed that she deserved to have a place in motorsport. I’ll take it a step further to say that all trans people should feel welcome in racing, the same way that women, people of color, other members of the LGBTQ+ community, and more all also deserve to feel welcome in racing.

Thankfully, we’ve made a lot of progress when it comes to trans and LGBTQ+ representation in motorsport. Organizations exist now to promote and support all members of the queer community in the racing world, and many people are no longer afraid to be themselves in paddocks and grandstands around the world. We also have fantastic ambassadors of the trans experience competing these days, like Charlie Martin.

But things aren’t perfect; in fact, they’re far from it. Trans folks are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime, much of it stemming from prejudice and hate. There is still ample pushback against the mere existence of trans people, with fear and paranoia running rampant in courtrooms and in legislatures around the world. In the racing world, gender nonconforming people often face insurmountable barriers based on unreasonable and unfounded biases about their capabilities.

I wanted to tell the story of Roberta Cowell to show that trans people exist in motorsport, and that they have done so for decades. I wanted to pay respectful tribute to a pioneer of queer history while also clarifying the misconceptions about queer folks that even Cowell possessed. More than anything, I wanted to reinforce my firm belief that motorsport is for everyone, and that we all deserve a place in the racing world.

“Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” is a project by motorsport historian and journalist Elizabeth Blackstock that is dedicated to uncovering the sport’s forgotten tragedies as well as opening up motorsport to aspiring future journalists. If you’ve enjoyed this Substack, please consider a paid subscription; all posts here will be free for anyone to view, but your donations directly support the kind of content you cannot find at any legacy media site.

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This interview was conducted for an episode of “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” titled “1975 Spanish Grand Prix: Formula 1's forgotten disaster and its historic first.” It has been lightly edited for clarity.

Elizabeth Blackstock: Just for a little background, I’m Elizabeth Blackstock. I’ve chatted to you before for my podcast, Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys. Last time we talked about your career in your championship season in Formula One. This year I’m working on a podcast episode about the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix. I think a lot of folks see that race in different lights. So there’s obviously the safety aspect that people talk about, but there’s also the aspect now of Lella Lombardi scoring points that weekend and becoming the first woman to do so. But the more I research, the more I see that the driver’s voices aren’t quite heard on that event and the boycotts that were going on and the pressure. So I wanted to speak with someone who was there to kind of get a sense of what that event was like.

Mario Andretti: Going back in time, huh?

Elizabeth Blackstock: Yes. I love my history.

Mario Andretti: Well, from my standpoint, my memory, vivid memory of that race is the fact that actually I felt that if I would’ve finished, I would’ve won it. Not because there was so many cars that dropped down, but I had to overtake all the top... Actually, the last one I had to overtake was James Hunt. He was leading. And I went for the lead. And what took me out of the race was something that happened at the very start. When you go at the top of Montjuich, the transition between the uphill and over was one of those airborne situations. And then right at the very start, I take some responsibility. I was a little bit too aggressive. And Clay Regazzoni and I, he was in a Ferrari. We touch wheels. And in those days we had really, really wide rear wheels especially, which means that there was quite a bit of loading on the suspension. And ultimately what broke was a tow link in the right rear suspension, in which I’m sure it was compromised at that start.

And that’s what took me out of the race. And unfortunately, here it is. Yeah. But up to that point, I felt... Because with the Parnelli car, I felt we were at a disadvantage. The car was not really spectacular, unfortunately. But in this particular race, I really seemed like I had the setup. And so as far as the incident that caused the fatalities, well, I was already out of the race on that one at that point. And I learned pretty much everything that happened afterwards. The other questions that came up were, were the guardrails safe enough and all of the issues that we were dealing with in those days, because there was really no specific direction or standard had to be followed by any of the organizers as far as that safety aspect of it.

And unfortunately, it always would take an incident like this where you have fatalities that would wake everybody up and say, “You know what? We must do something about it.”

Again, it just was over and over during those decades, things like this, unfortunate incidents like this. We’re at least moving the efforts forward, rest, the shortcomings that the sport was living with. And I said this a million times that as the sport was becoming more and more commercial, unless safety was going to be dealt vigorously, the sport would have not survived in more decent modern times, but we can go back and actually analyze so many aspects of tragic situations, fires and all those things

That had to be dealt with. And fortunately, the sport has become very responsible and because of all that, all of the sacrifices, all of this painful situations that went on did not go in vain, that today’s drivers are obviously enjoying the best moments ever from a standpoint of safety, because they have the best chance ever to retire on their own terms. So that’s huge. I’m sure that there could be a book written for every situation like this, like even the Niki Lauda’s situation at the Nürburgring, blah, blah, blah.

Elizabeth Blackstock: Everything at Watkins Glen.

Mario Andretti: At the Glen, yeah. There’s always an example that at least showed a forward move to improving the situation. And you could say, “Well, it wasn’t happening fast enough, but at least it was happening.”

Elizabeth Blackstock: One of the big things about the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix was the Grand Prix Drivers Association kind of banding together to basically boycott practice. Were you part of that boycott? Was that something that you were involved in?

Mario Andretti: No, I wasn’t actually. And I’m reading on it now, trying to bring back as much as I could as far as what I remember. I don’t remember being or having that as an issue, because you accepted what it was, but I fully agree with the organizing as drivers to try to have a voice, because let’s face it, we were the ones that ultimately were going to pay the ultimate price. And then again, but here we got the corner workers and spectators that were involved.

So something like this, it drew a lot of attention. But going back to what you’re asking, I don’t remember specifically having any of those demands or maybe potentially trying to boycott. I don’t remember, but I’m sure it happened. Yeah, I’m sure. But being there with the new team, this was the one and only season that we had with the Parnelli, and it was my way of returning back and trying to commit to full-time, to Formula One. So as you could see with the new team, all I was worried about is just having a car that I could compete with, and I figured I’ll do it if I have to go in and open fire.

Elizabeth Blackstock: I was wondering about that as well. Like you’re here with Parnelli Jones, you’re here with this new team, an American team coming from American racing into Formula One full-time. Did you notice any differences in the way that drivers talked about or responded to safety concerns that were different between America and Europe?

Mario Andretti: Well, I think in America, in my opinion, we were a little more advanced in that respect, because the violence of some of the accidents on the Ovals were really terrible. I think as far as some of the safety, but not just the track safety, but the car safety were a little bit ahead of, because I can tell you that even the sports cars I brought to them, to Ferrari, the system that the aviation type refueling, the buckle that they were using, whatever. And after I got half of my body flooded with fuel, because of...

Elizabeth Blackstock: Just dumping it in.

Mario Andretti: Dumping it into the side and oh my goodness. But anyway, yeah, but nobody could argue. I was totally, totally with the GPDA to be great to have a voice, great to make demands and all that. When we started with the catch fencing, which actually by far a bit was creating another problem, but at least there was a move forward. But again, the top drivers of the moment are the ones that had to speak up, because those are the ones that everyone listened to. And me as a one-off and so on and so forth, I was just trying to exist at that point, just to come back full-time and try to fit it even though I had driven, I already had one for Ferrari and so forth, but this was finally a full commitment for me to say it’s now or never, 35 years old. But again, believe it or not, the safety aspect was not my priority at that moment.

Elizabeth Blackstock: I can’t blame you. You had bigger fish to fry on that one.

Mario Andretti: That’s exactly right.

Elizabeth Blackstock: When I read the reporting from that era, there’s, I think like Denis Jenkinson, one of the journalists who I have a massive respect for, often prods the drivers for the way that they handled safety. He was very unhappy with Emerson Fittipaldi arguing against these safety measures or changing things or demanding that things change. Did you feel that there was a difference in those attitudes between comparing the drivers to like journalists or even team owners?

Mario Andretti: Well, yeah, sometimes the journalists thought maybe the drivers were too demanding. And you just mentioned Emerson. Emerson was one of those that he was not afraid to speak up and that’s what it took, because most of the complaints were going to deaf ears, quite honestly. And so, it wasn’t until the doctor was, the British doctor...

Elizabeth Blackstock: Sid Watkins?

Mario Andretti: Sid Watkins, until we brought him on the phone, I said, “Please, you’re the man. You’re the one that actually can start making some demands for the FIA and so forth.”

And he was tremendous, not just help. He was the voice that was being heard, that the driver said the drivers are always complaining, especially if they’re okay, they figure they complain because maybe they’re not winning. God knows, but drivers alone will never look at what’s going on today with the new rules. And so you listen to this, but you don’t. And the press, sometimes they have a way of judging, “Oh yeah, if you don’t want to be here, just stay home,” and so on and so forth.

Elizabeth Blackstock: Was that frustrating to experience as a driver?

Mario Andretti: Frustrating. Yeah. Yeah. And Denis Jenkinson was one of those that was not afraid to express, to put out some criticism for someone to drive, quite honestly, knew quite well, like everybody else. But again, even in the media world, everybody has an angle. I know how I’ve been treated like in my situation, somehow some of the Spanish press, just at one point before the season started, I said that among other things, of course, expectation, the question was, what was your expectation in the first race? I said that I think we have to be very careful that there’s so many factors involved. I said even the drivers could be a little rusty.

But here they took that on, they said, “Mario thinks the drivers are rusty.” Things like that. So you could see that the press sometimes they try to just create problems that are not there and I’m totally upset over that, because I have to try to defend myself on somebody that’s taken totally out of contact, for the drivers actually from the race on. I was there the first race, they showed they were in absolute form. There was possibilities since they both were out of the cockpit for full season, but it was not a criticism.

Elizabeth Blackstock: Just a thing that could happen.

Mario Andretti: Yeah. They go to Checo, says, “What’s your response?”

They say, “Mario said that you’re rusty.” There’s a big difference.

So that’s what you have with the press. You have to take it with a grain of salt. And this whole, all along in these decades of change that was coming, a lot of the purists, like Jenkinson was one of them, you have to accept the risk. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what makes your man. You see? There was some of that.

Elizabeth Blackstock: Yeah. Did you feel like that was more prevalent in Europe than in the United States? I feel like I read so much of it, but I think that’s just because I have so much access to the Motorsport Magazine archives that I can see much more of the European side. Did you feel like that was more prevalent there?

Mario Andretti: No, not really. No. I think it was something that was prominent. It was the same way here as well. Yeah.

Elizabeth Blackstock: What is something that you wish you could have told journalists at that time? Something that you wish they would have understood from the driver’s perspective?

Mario Andretti: Well, depends. I mean, like I said to someone there, “Wake up.” I mean, let’s face it’s a negative. It’s something that we can do something about. Maybe no matter what we do, the sport will never be 100% safer. I mean, that’s what makes it interesting as well, obviously. I said, “But there are things that we can do.” Look at for the longest time, we had fatalities, whether it was in Formula One, INDYCAR, or drivers burning to death without single broken bone from fires. Tell me we didn’t have to do something about the fires.

I had been part of that. I had my face burned. Luckily, I got away with a lot of it, but some like Niki didn’t, disfigured for the rest of his life, even though he could still function properly, but that affected him and all those things. But again, how could you just not say, “Let’s do something about it and be part of it.”

But some of that, as I said, so called purists said, “Oh, be a man.”

A lot of people made some comments even about the likes of Emerson that was complaining openly and being a real man to do that, having that courage, yet he was belittled by some of the so called purist press individuals that said, “You know what? Just drive the race car, man, and be quiet.”

Elizabeth Blackstock: How did you personally feel about those arguments? Especially, I hear the one of if you don’t feel safe, drive slower, if you can’t go all out, maybe don’t be a race car driver. Was it something that bothered you as a racer?

Mario Andretti: No, no. Nothing like that. Nothing like that. Nothing actually. To be honest with you, I mean, let’s face it, we all knew what we were facing regardless. And if we would have dwelled on the negatives or the sport at that time, you could never go on. I mean, there was plenty negatives around to justify, I have a young family, have this and that, I can’t deal with it. I never ever tried to overemphasize that, to vote too much thought to it. You had to know.

And that’s why a lot of these things, even when we were at the racetrack and trying to... I was always against trying to, what’s the word, not to race. I said, “When we’re here, we race. Let’s talk about it later.” You know what I mean? So I was never part of that side of it.

Elizabeth Blackstock: And you mentioned something interesting with the catch fencing where that was something you guys were pushing for and it kind of turned out to backfire. What was your reaction to that? Was that like, “Oh no, we pushed for something and now someone has gotten hurt or it’s caused a problem?” Or was it more along the lines of, “Okay, we learned something and now it’s time to move on.” Did you kind of take it personal or was it easier to be able to externalize and move forward?

Mario Andretti: No, to be honest with you, I think you almost, you look back and say, “We did something. Let’s do something different. Let’s extend the runoff rather than try to catch the car and then all of a sudden the driver is wrapped into barbed wire or something.”

So you learn something from every incident because every incident is different and the responsible thing to do is always to learn something from it, whether there was integrity of the chassis or something else. I remember, for instance, in 1992 when my son Jeff hit the wall at a 60 degree angle, like the impact was 84.5 Gs and the car, I mean, almost just disintegrated in front of the screen, his legs were exposed out there. That was a year old car. A car that would have been the current race car, he would have probably not have, had nowhere near the injuries that he sustained. I’ll tell you why, because Paul Tracy later on in the season at Elkhart Lake, he hit a concrete barrier just about with something similar and with a current car and he had just a broken ankle or something versus my son almost losing his legs. So you see what I mean?

It’s just a matter of just as long as we were progressing, that’s all. As long as there was an effort to deal with it, and that’s when you felt that you had proper gains. And again, every incident is different, so you could not provide for every situation, but many paid the ultimate price by getting something very, very sustainable because of that incident.

Elizabeth Blackstock: And you witnessed so much of this safety change from the introduction of the fireproof overalls all the way through to today where we have the halos and Formula One and the aeroscreens in INDYCAR. Did it feel like you were on the cutting edge when these technologies were brought into the sport or did it feel more, I don’t know, kind of like a natural progression?

Mario Andretti: Yeah. To be honest with you, you should never feel like you’ve arrived, you’ve accomplished everything. I feel my driving, as long as I’ve been fortunate enough to be having a long career, I felt that I was learning that very last race and the safety aspect should be a work in progress. Never feel, oh no, now we have it all covered. I don’t think we need to go any further. I think the sport has to remain and still have some danger to it, which it will, no matter what, the speed involved. But don’t stop progressing ever. And quite honestly, like I said, I never felt we had a ride at any point, just like I never felt that I knew everything I needed to know as a driver.

Elizabeth Blackstock: Did you see anything change as a result of the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix? Was there changes that happened at the races that followed that?

Mario Andretti: Yes. Yes. There was the biggest change was the rear wing, the tall rear wing right on the uprights and so on and so forth, because there were a couple of failures on that. I even had one during practice in Kyalami fold and getting to the rear wheel and so on and so forth. Anyway, so yeah, and that was banned after when Stommelen had that accident, he had the high wing and that was banned, because there was a wing failure that made him go off into the guardrail and totally out of control. Yeah, yeah. There were many incidents where immediately something changed, because the rules didn’t cover every aspect of it at that point, because the air dynamic aspect of the car was a work in progress. There were wings, no wings, high wings, low wings, so there was no specific rule.

Elizabeth Blackstock: What was Montjuïc Park like to drive and to race on?

Mario Andretti: I liked it, actually.

Elizabeth Blackstock: When I watch old videos, I’m like, “Oh, that looks like such a gorgeous track. It looked like a lot of fun, but I could see the danger, but it looked great.”

Mario Andretti: I always loved the elevations on the track.

I mean, it provides a very special challenge that I always embraced. I always liked a very bumpy track, because anybody can drive on a smooth track. So there was something unusual like that, you figure that’s something that psychologically, if I conquer that, I have an advantage. And so the elevations, I love that. I love it because again, I felt that during that particular race I actually had a good handle on it. I had a good rhythm and everything else. So my memory of that race actually was positive.

Elizabeth Blackstock: What did you guys get right at Parnelli? What was the thing that you felt you had versus the competition?

Mario Andretti: Well, it seemed like on that particular, where you didn’t have a lot of high speed, there was a lot of mechanical balance that you were looking for, and we achieved that somehow from that particular track. And again, that design that the Maurice Philippe, basically what he designed was a three-year-old Lotus, so that’s what he did. I’ll give you just a quick for instance, how bad the car was in a sense, because just before going to South Africa at the first race of the season, we tested the car at Riverside in California, and that’s where I had done a lot of testing and racing with the Formula 5000 car, and I held a lap record there. So I figured I’m going there with a Formula One car and I have to obliterate that record, right? I couldn’t come within a second of that. And here I’m starting the Formula One season with a car that was not as fast as the Formula 5,000 car. So you know what I was up against.

Elizabeth Blackstock: Well, how do you mentally steel yourself for that? Like you know you’re going in for your first full-time season. How do you cope?

Mario Andretti: Sleepless night. Sleepless nights, but I figure, okay, got to go.

Elizabeth Blackstock: Oh, that’s amazing. And the integration of the team, I’ve always been so fascinated by... Cadillac is doing its own thing this year and it’s entering Formula One, and there’s so much that now has to go into kind of an American team coming into F1. But back in the ‘70s with Parnelli, there was less of this global connectedness. Did it feel more like you guys were just showing up and learning as you went along? Was it kind of a surprise?

Mario Andretti: You know what? We hired quite a few of the Lotus [personnel], Bob Dance, Lotus mechanic. We had Maurice Philippe who was under Colin Chapman design a car. We thought that we were doing the right thing, but obviously we put... And I had spoken with Maur. I loved the man, we worked well together, but I said, “We need Colin to help you on this one.” I was giving him way too much credit for being a designer, but he was basically designing what Colin was telling him to do. So anyway, because he designed a few of the Parnelli cars that we had. Oh my gosh. I mean, I’m the one that suffered a little bit under that, but nevertheless, here we are. We learned a lot.

Elizabeth Blackstock: You learned. Did it at least help you any when you went to Lotus in the future in F1? Do you feel like you knew some of the secrets to driving a Lotus car?

Mario Andretti: No. Well, I’ll tell you what, Elizabeth, the feel is the feel. There’s one feel about a race car. And my confidence there was Colin. Colin, he was with me. He was my race engineer. And so I felt that, you know what? He’s the one that is going to make things happen. It’s about discussion, talking. He and I had a really good relationship in that. We understood each other and the pressure was on. The objective was obviously... When I got hired, I learned after the second race of the season in 1976 that Parnelli... I was on the grid at Long Beach where Chris Economaki says, “Mario, do you realize that, or what’s your reaction that Parnelli have decided to pull the plug on Formula One and you’re out of Formula One now?”

Elizabeth Blackstock: News to you?

Mario Andretti: News to me. So the following day, I mean, actually after race day... Oh yeah. Yeah. The following day, I was staying at the same hotel at Queensway Hilton in Long Beach and I was having breakfast in the morning, and Colin was at a table by himself. And so I asked him, I said, “Can I join you?”

He said, “Yeah, yeah.”

So we were both really commiserating on the weekend. He said to me he had the worst weekend in his entire career. And so I said, “Well, join the club. And now I’m out of Formula One and I want to continue this.”

First time in my career that I’m committing. And he said, “Mario,” he said, “I wish I could give you a decent car.”

I said, “Will you have me?”

He says, “Of course.”

I said, “We'll be number one, you and me?”

He said, “Yes, we’ll make the car work.”

The season went on, we got better, we got a couple, three podiums, and then we won the very last race. And after the last race, we were meeting and it had fallen and he said, “Mario, next year’s car will make this one look like a London bus.” That’s what you want to hear.

So when you had all that energy behind, then all of a sudden then you start feeling good about everything and then the rest is history.

Elizabeth Blackstock: When you got to Parnelli and Parnelli enters F1, you’ve gone to races, you’ve done one-offs, you’ve competed, you’ve won in a Formula One before. Did you feel like you were able to bring advice to Parnelli and help build that team based on what the expectations with Formula One would be?

Mario Andretti: Well, I felt that I could, but at the same time, I think we misread some of the potential talents of our engineering side, quite honestly. I totally misread that and I put so much faith on one man and it bit us big time. So it’s unfortunate, because he had designed, he had some other issues, we designed some INDYCARs, which were not successful. And so I figured, okay, now let’s put him in Formula One. And he designed a two-year-old car. So unfortunately that’s what we got into. Yeah, we thought we had the element, but we didn’t.

Elizabeth Blackstock: Yeah. How tough was it to then go through that season? Did you at least feel like you learned something that year you’d committed to doing F1 full time? Are you at least learning the tracks and getting a sense of what Formula One was?

Mario Andretti: Yeah. I mean, when you’re on that dance floor, you got to dance whether you like the music or not. So I was committed, the team was committed and end of story. I wanted to keep going. It would be easy to say, “Oh, let’s throw the towel in and forget it.”

No, it was early in the season, you always hope, okay, the season was on, but the basic design of the car was obsolete. And yeah, we made maybe some improvement, but not really. It’s just very difficult because even the infrastructure of the team was such that you could not really react like you possibly should. And you could tell that I’m the only one that really had my heart in it.

Elizabeth Blackstock: See, that’s a problem too.

Mario Andretti: My owner, Vel and Parnelli, they only did it because I wanted... And I promoted most of the financial support from Firestone on this. So as you could see, I didn’t have all that same enthusiasm as I had with the rest of them.

Elizabeth Blackstock: Everyone’s got to have the buy-in. It’s too much of a hill to climb.

Mario Andretti: Everybody has to contribute the maximum, not do without that.

Elizabeth Blackstock: Yeah. I was wondering, with the safety conversation, it’s easy for folks today. We look back and it’s like, oh, maybe that seemed obvious that this change should have been made or should have been made earlier. And I know that maybe I don’t think it felt obvious for people at the time that there wasn’t quite the same level of understanding of the physics behind what was going on. What do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions people have today when they look back and see what Formula One was and what safety was in the 1970s?

Mario Andretti: Well, the biggest misconception is that people say, “How in the world could you not see?”

The situation was, well, that’s the point. Any small improvement was big because you accepted what you had because everybody else did. So who am I to just be, “Oh, things should be this and that.”

So it was a small process. That’s so many years. I’m looking at that. I think we were making consistent progress through the ‘80s and ‘90s. When I came out of the cockpit, I have the car that I drove my very last race INDYCAR in my garage, and I thought that was the ultimate at that point. I look at it to that, “Can you believe the difference?” When I was sitting in, how dangerous there was vis-a-vis what we have today, the seat alone, everything. And I thought, “Oh yeah, we’re doing pretty good. I think we’re reaching the ultimate situation.” No, we’re not.

That’s why today we still keep on going, keep on progressing, keep on making it better.

Elizabeth Blackstock: My last question, what did you feel was the most important safety innovation while you were active in your career, whether it’s F1, NASCAR, INDYCAR, what have you?

Mario Andretti: Containment of fire, to be honest with you. That to me, it was huge, huge, huge, for all the reasons, and that was becoming more problem more and more and more of a problem, but we lost so many that we shouldn’t have been. And so at least that was one that was eliminated and that was huge.

Elizabeth Blackstock: I was going to say, seeing those incidents is just terrifying when it goes up in flames. I couldn’t imagine.

Mario Andretti: Trust me. That was my biggest fear.

“Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” is a project by motorsport historian and journalist Elizabeth Blackstock that is dedicated to uncovering the sport’s forgotten tragedies as well as opening up motorsport to aspiring future journalists. If you’ve enjoyed this Substack, please consider a paid subscription; all posts here will be free for anyone to view, but your donations directly support the kind of content you cannot find at any legacy media site.

Subscribe now

In so many ways, a Formula 1 track on the streets of Detroit made sense. For a European series that had long struggled to actually figure out a way to integrate into American culture, a major event in the hub of the US automotive industry seemed like the perfect way to attract a little attention — both from fans and from potential sponsors or major players.

And then it all fell apart.

My name is Elizabeth Blackstock, and I am an award-winning motorsport journalist and historian who also happens to be a big fan of F1. This year, I’ll be taking you behind the scenes in the racing world to better understand how exactly this sport evolved — and because of F1’s newfound success in the US, I’m kicking off a whole series dedicated to each American track that hosted a Formula 1 Grand Prix. Hopefully, by the end of 2026, we’ll all have a much better understanding of why F1 struggled to find its footing here in the past, and why it’s working so frickin’ well today.

Obviously, the Detroit Grand Prix still does exist — but as has been the case with other F1 events like the Grand Prix of Long Beach, the race is now hosted by America’s IndyCar series. So, what happened?

To understand that, we need to understand why Detroit ended up on the F1 calendar in the first place — and how it was received.

Conceptually, it makes sense. Detroit used to be this glorious center of the American auto industry, and while companies like Ford, Chrysler, and GM were still headquartered there, car manufacturing was facing a major upheaval. As foreign brands grew in prominence and American companies started sending their manufacturing out of the country, the fine folks who once counted on Detroit-specific automotive jobs were being laid off in droves. By the end of 1980, over 190,000 auto workers had lost their jobs — which, in a city of 1.2 million people, is a pretty hefty percentage of the population.

And when you face a massive round of layoffs like that, you’re going to have a ripple effect. Most of America was facing financial hardship at this time, but in Detroit specifically, the auto layoffs compounded: State workers started to lose their jobs, too, but with more and more people turning to welfare to make ends meet, short-staffed local governments started to fall apart. The state budget was slashed. Racial tensions erupted. Teenagers increasingly turned to violence in an effort to find meaning and money that seemed entirely out of grasp now that family life, public schools, and infrastructure were falling apart.

Detroit was not yet a city abandoned, but it was very obviously on the cusp of completely falling off the map in terms of its former role as a wealthy hub of industry. And in order to try to inject a little life into the city, a group of Detroit’s most prominent business leaders — including automotive head Henry Ford II — started to inject life into the downtown region in hopes of attracting tourism to bolster the city’s financial backbone.

This is when we see the building of the giant Renaissance Center skyscraper that dominates Detroit’s skyline. It brought a fresh look to the decaying town. Add in housing offices, retail spaces, and a modern hotel, and Detroit had created something to be proud of.

But how to attract tourism? How to revitalize Detroit’s place in the world? The men revitalizing the city turned to examples of city revitalization in the United States — and Long Beach, California caught their eye.

If you’re a regular here on my channel, you know this story. Long Beach had been a depressed port city dotted by rowdy bars and pornographic theaters that transformed into a somewhat bustling metropolis thanks to the introduction of a downtown street circuit and the presence of Formula 1. In the years since the race was introduced, Long Beach had gone from being a place where you ended up when times got tough, to a place you actually aspired to go.

It was a no-brainer: If Detroit could attract Formula 1 to its downtown streets, then it, too, could expect to see a turnaround. Detroit had a greater claim on the automotive industry than almost any other city in the United States, and if it could successfully host a major motorsport event, well… it certainly would not re-employ the hundreds of thousands who had lost their jobs, but perhaps it could once again revitalize the overall image of Detroit, Michigan.

And that all worked just fine for Formula 1 czar Bernie Ecclestone. Hungry to keep growing his empire, Ecclestone was looking to tack more and more races onto the annual F1 calendar — and he likely also sensed that his investments in Long Beach and Las Vegas weren’t going to pay off as he’d hoped.

A race in Detroit, though, made as much sense for Ecclestone as it did the beleaguered city. It was a chance to wine and dine major players in the American automotive industry, to perhaps convince those powerful executives that competing in Formula 1 may very well be the answer to their financial woes.

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It would not be easy. The first signs of discord in Detroit came with the proposed track layout. Naturally, everyone — from investors to Ecclestone — wanted the gleaming new Renaissance Center to serve as the most prominent backdrop of any race circuit. It would prevent TV cameras from picking up views of broken-down homes and crumbling businesses, and it would also provide something of a home base for the international set. Drivers, teams, and sponsors could utilize the Renaissance Center hotel, while one of its meeting rooms could be transformed into the media center. If organizers could somehow tie that to the Detroit Convention Center — which would serve as both the paddock as well as a VIP viewing area — then they’d be all set.

But there were problems.

First and foremost, the Renaissance Center had been plopped down in the busiest part of town. That was by design: Start with a strong core, and hopefully the city would continue to spiral outward. But that also meant that locals weren’t exactly pleased to find that their bustling streets were about to be taken out of commission for weeks at a time as concrete barriers and catch fencing were installed, and as high-powered race cars roared over the asphalt of their morning commute. The Renaissance Center layout also twisted over tram tracks, which promised to be a pain for the racers who would have to rattle over those bumps in the road, and for the cars that would need to be built to withstand the constant torture.

But there was nowhere else to host a race. And that’s when we hit our next snag: The very first race to be hosted on the streets of Detroit would be the 1982 Formula 1 Detroit Grand Prix, and it arrived in high style with plenty of organizational problems.

The field arrived in Detroit early for the race because there was a preliminary practice session scheduled for Thursday. Why schedule that additional practice? It was in part to give Detroit’s organizers a chance to really find their footing, and it was also an opportunity for the drivers to start learning the track. If you’re a regular here on my YouTube channel, you likely know that it had been traditional for the FIA to mandate new tracks host a major racing event prior to scheduling an F1 race there. It was a way to vet those new circuits without all the cost and expense of hosting a disastrous Grand Prix.

But Detroit was kind of fast-tracked, so there wasn’t any race in 1981. The folks in charge of revitalizing the city wanted to cut straight to the punch. So, it made sense that drivers and teams wanted to have an opportunity to find their footing. As Elio de Angeles told The Daily Telegraph, “I will be looking for buildings, signs, windows, anything to act as a marker for my braking and turning.” Niki Lauda was concerned about the possibility of bumps caused by Detroit’s harsh winters. So, there were some pretty viable concerns here.

Then that first practice session got delayed. Then it got delayed again. Eventually, it was outright canceled. So, there went the first and only low-pressure opportunity to learn the track.

At this point in time, drivers would head almost directly into a qualifying session on Friday morning, but without any practice, no one wanted to go out and try to set a flying lap. So, qualifying had to be postponed, but there also only ended up being enough time to stage a one-hour practice session. That was the sum total of everything that took place at the track that day. Instead, qualifying was split into two one-hour sessions to be held on Saturday, with a four-hour gap between each session.

The only problem? Saturday was cold and overcast, and everyone was worried that rain would strike in the final session of the day. So everyone — and we’re talking almost 30 drivers — went out to try to set a lap. Everyone was pushing hard on cold tires, and there were tons of spins and trips down the escape road. But the fellas who set a lap in the morning were smart to have done so, because the afternoon session was plagued with rain.

Race day couldn’t have been more different, because it was a beautifully warm and sunny day. John Watson, a formidable master of other American street courses like Long Beach, brought home a victory ahead of local hero Eddie Cheever and France’s Didier Pironi. And, as a portent of the difficult racing still to come at this street track, only five drivers finished on the lead lap, and only 11 drivers finished at all.

But all things considered, it was considered a success. Drivers deemed the track “not terrible,” and for all of the chaos with organization, it was honestly pretty promising. Those organizational hiccups were not uncommon for cities hosting their very first street race; it’s just that normally, the city had hosted a non-F1 event before F1 came into town. But, now that everyone was familiar with the way things worked, it would be much easier to put on another race in 1983.

If that first Grand Prix was not a disaster, many of the subsequent events would put a real strain on the event. 1983 was fantastic, drawing a crowd of over 70,000 fans who spectated a fantastic race in gorgeous weather conditions. 1984 brought drama with Tyrrell’s disqualification. The first signs of actual problems came in 1985, when the track surface began to steadily break up. The problem was almost unbearable in 1988, when ultra-hot temperatures resulted in driver exhaustion, mechanical problems, and further track destruction. Alain Prost described the problem posed by the 1988 running by saying, “Over the years I’ve developed a style of driving which involves braking into the apex of a corner. I don’t think most of the guys do that, but it works for me. On this surface today, though, it was impossible to do it without simply sliding straight on.” While he said he was able to change his whole driving style to finish the race, I can’t say he — or anyone else — was necessarily happy about the extra strain required to do so. And with only two cars on the lead lap, we’re talking about some serious frustration.

I won’t claim that all was well, but I’ll say that most folks in the Michigan city thought their event was on the up and up… until the conclusion of that 1988 Detroit Grand Prix. It was then that the FIA informed the race’s organizers that they wanted still more tweaks to the track to ensure it was up to snuff for modern F1 — namely, that the temporary pit buildings erected for the race be upgraded to permanent, state-of-the-art facilities in compliance with the FIA’s ever-evolving Formula 1 standards.

And the folks at the FIA weren’t the only ones with demands. The drivers also wanted more. In fact, they wanted a whole new track. They were tired of racing on the congested, grueling downtown circuit.

Organizers set to work drafting a new circuit layout on Belle Isle, an island park in the Detroit River that overlooks the US-Canadian border. As a city park, it could be transformed into a race course for a weekend, filtering cars and crowds away from the bustling downtown streets, and it’d be far easier to erect a permanent pit facility there that could be repurposed during the rest of the year than it would be to do so downtown. The Detroit Grand Prix organizers pitched the idea to the FIA, thinking their proposal sounded just about perfect.

The FIA said no.

Well, now what? The Detroit Grand Prix found itself at an impasse. Formula 1 wasn’t happy with anything it was proposing, but the organizers had truly enjoyed hosting a major racing event and were keen to continue using motorsport as a way to draw tourists to the city. If F1 didn’t want to play ball, well — F1 wasn’t the only race series in the world. The folks in charge of the race bid adieu to the demanding Europeans and instead welcomed a home-grown American series, Championship Auto Racing Teams, or CART, which had developed a strong business model in absorbing race tracks abandoned by F1 into its calendar.

F1’s Detroit Grand Prix era represents a really fascinating time in F1’s American motorsport history. In 1982, the addition of the race to the calendar meant that the United States became the first country in F1 history to host three Grands Prix in a single season. Bernie Ecclestone clearly saw something worth pursuing in America, and he was keen to leap on every opportunity to sway the US audience into his corner.

Almost every one of those ventures failed, for one reason or another. In the cases of Long Beach and Detroit, organizers wanted to continue hosting a race but couldn’t justify paying the ever-increasing fees Formula 1 began charging. In the case of Caesars Palace and Dallas, it was just… very bad and poorly conceived tracks. F1 clearly had interest in America, but it didn’t have a sustained interest — which you can see pretty clearly in this era of quick-hit street tracks.

I suppose we can thank F1 for giving us American racing fans a cool event on the IndyCar circuit (though I will say the move from Belle Isle back to downtown has… not been my favorite). But these consistent false starts from F1 here in the US only really served to further widen the interest gap between American race fans and European open-wheel racing.

“Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” is a project by motorsport historian and journalist Elizabeth Blackstock that is dedicated to uncovering the sport’s forgotten tragedies as well as opening up motorsport to aspiring future journalists. If you’ve enjoyed this Substack, please consider a paid subscription; all posts here will be free for anyone to view, but your donations directly support the kind of content you cannot find at any legacy media site.

Newspaper headlines around the world called it an automotive holocaust. Scores of men, women, children, and animals had been killed or severely injured with a brutality, cruelty, and futility that could only signal the death of motorsport itself — and, perhaps, the end of the automobile altogether.

Such was the fallout from the infamous 1903 rally from Paris to Madrid — a rally that was brought to a premature end as crashes and death haunted it from the very start.

Over 220 cars launched off the startline at the Versailles palace. A mere 38 of them completed the first leg of the race, which would have seen the field overnighting in Bordeaux before taking off again the following morning. By the end of the day, road-racing as a concept was on the cusp of being outright banned in France.

This month on “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” we’re going to focus on the events of the 1903 Paris-to-Madrid rally, one of racing’s deadliest events. To do so, we’ll investigate the origins and impact of early city-to-city racing events before centering explicitly on the fateful race from one country’s capital to the next — the race that nearly ended all races. I want to better understand exactly how so many bystanders and racers could have died on the route from Paris to Bordeaux, and I intend to probe the various ways that event impacted the growth and evolution of motorsport around the globe. But more than that, we’ll be trying to understand exactly why racing persisted despite this race, which was branded a “holocaust” sure to end the evolution of the automobile.

What made the 1903 Paris-to-Madrid race so destructive? And why did we continue to race in its aftermath? Let’s find out.

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The Birth of City-to-City Racing

When the earliest thinkers and tinkerers of the automotive industry began experimenting with the idea of creating a self-propelled carriage, they really only had one place to test out that burgeoning technology: public roads.

We’ve talked about this before here on “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” but when it came to Europe, the roads were, honestly, pretty decent — at least compared to the rutted farm paths and deer trails we had here in the United States. I can’t go so far as to claim that all roads were perfect and wonderful, since it really depended on where you were. If you lived in Germany, for example, you were relying on a pretty primitive network of unpaved dirt paths. But if you were in France, things were much different. While there were still plenty of dirt paths in France, the country had actually dedicated a pretty significant amount of time and money into guaranteeing easy and unhindered travel.

A big part of the inspiration there came from ancient Rome. Leaders of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire understood the vital role that ease of transport played in maintaining a growing yet functional domain. If you wanted to conquer foreign lands, you’d definitely benefit from a well-maintained, surveyed, and accurate road network to get you there; after all, your army is the one traveling hundreds or thousands of miles to seize a piece of land. The last thing you want is for your soldiers to be exhausted.

But those stone-paved or gravelled roads flanked by pedestrian footpaths and drainage ditches were just as important for the expression of softer powers. They made for easier trade, so the folks back home in Rome could start adding delicious spices to their dinners or donning softer silks without having to pay an inflated fee to compensate for the pain of travel. And if those Roman armies had been successful in conquering a faraway land, then a sturdy, safe network of roads made it easier to transmit official communications and ensure a stable rule.

In the late 19th century, France started to mimic that state-sponsored road network idea. It constructed major highways called routes nationales, which were meticulously engineered to ensure stability, easy drainage, and comfort. If you took a route nationale, you could expect a macadam road featuring tightly compacted stones that would not jolt your teeth out of your skull, and in many cases, you could even expect that road to be lined with trees to make your trip a little shadier.

At the same time, major cities like Paris began experimenting with early forms of asphalt paving to replace its noisy cobblestone boulevards. But outside of the routes, which connected major cities, or outside of the very center of Paris, you were still battling unpaved dirt roads that would choke you out with dust in dry conditions or leave you bogged down in mud if it rained.

Yet these were the only roads available to travelers. Early bicyclists began to advocate for safer, smoother roads to facilitate easier travel, but when automobiles started cropping up, you couldn’t rely on your road trip to be a particularly easy one.

I don’t really think that deterred many of those early automakers. Would it have been easier to build your first vehicle if you knew you could drive it on nice smooth roads? Absolutely. But these folks were building cars to conquer the conditions in which they lived, and that meant pushing those cars to the limits of speed on whatever surface was available. If your car could survive a jolting jaunt down a rutted country road, well — that was all the more reason for folks to buy it.

And when we started building enough of these things, everyone wanted to know which car was best. There were so many strange and variable approaches to creating a self-propelled carriage; which developmental path was the right one?

There’s one easy way to find out. Pit all those cars against one another in a mad dash from one city to another. The car to traverse that distance in the least amount of time could be said to have built the best machine.

Here’s a little more of that history, from Cars at Speed by Robert Daley:

Open-road races had begun almost as soon as cars. The first was in 1894, seventy-nine miles, from Paris to Rouen. The cars actually were horseless carriages — except for the high box over the axle which contained the engine, and the long stick of a tiller which was used to steer, they resembled exactly the carriage which ol’ Dobbin used to pull.

The driver sat high up — high enough to see over the horse in front, if there had been one. The wheels were wooden, a yard in diameter, the tires bicycle narrow, of solid rubber. The driver attempted to steer with the tiller, which was long, wobbly, and liable to be jerked out of his hands if the wheels struck a rut or rock. Even on a smooth road, he found it difficult to steer accurately.

Brakes were equally primitive. They could not stop a car quickly. A block of wood was jammed down on the solid rubber tire, the driver pulled on the lever with all his might, the rubber burned, and the car gradually — if the driver’s strength held out — came to a stop.

Daley describes the other hazards that accompanied drivers on these early routes. Occasionally, drivers had to take a detour to avoid cattle or dogs on the road. They were outpaced by riders on horseback who would chase the cars down, flee down the road, then turn back to meet the cars again. Dust clouded up around the road so thick it was impossible to see, and the wagon-wheel tires kicked gravel up in a massive spray.

That first “race” lasted over seven hours, with the winner averaging a speed of 11.6 miles per hour. Daley writes, “As a sport, road racing seemed to have a glorious future, for it was tense, thrilling, romantic — it was travel.”

Daley also credits the romance of these early races with the quick adoption and evolution of the automobile, which was, at this point, kind of awful. He writes, “The glamour of the dawn starts, the stamina and heroism of the men who raced such incredible distances, the exotic places the cars went to, all combined to sugar-coat an ugly, fragile, uncomfortable, unreliable contraption. Because of the races all of Europe was talking about cars. Because of the races a large part of Europe had actually seen them. Without races the sale and dissemination of the automobile would have been so slow, so restricted to the very rich and idle, that decades might have passed before ordinary men knew more than the word.”

For us today, it’s easy to take our cars for granted, but even the most humble machine is positively luxurious compared to those early machines. We’re driving around in little climate-controlled houses that keep us safe from the elements. Our cars are pretty quiet, since automakers do a great job of dampening road noise. We have great suspension and a comfortable control of the direction we go via the wheel. We can listen to our favorite songs, and the luckiest among us can even enjoy a nice massage seat on a long drive. Even driving a modern convertible can only give you the briefest intimation of what you could expect in an early race car.

Yet there was clearly something to it. Most races at this time weren’t being run for prizes. Maybe you’d earn a plaque or a few bucks or a hearty slap on the back when you completed your journey. The primary goal, though, was to convince people to spend their hard-earned dollars on your loud, uncomfortable, difficult-to-drive monstrosity and not someone else’s. And because many of these initial races were organized by newspapers, you were sure to get plenty of favorable coverage. It was the beginning of a racing tradition.

And while I won’t go so far as to claim that city-to-city spawned every form of major motorsport in existence today, we can trace the roots of many disciplines back to this style of event. Rallying is the most obvious example, because the format is still roughly the same: Cars race from one location to another over closed public roads, one stage at a time. While there’s definitely more safety-consciousness today, rallying still possesses a lot of the same dangerous traits as those early European events.

But city-to-city racing also spawned European Grand Prix-style racing. As we’ll see throughout this episode, the folks in charge of motorsport and sanctioning quickly realized that policing the entire distance from one major city to another could be extremely difficult. It required an absurd amount of manpower and a whole lot of negotiations with various cities and small towns along the route to ensure all went smoothly. Because the races were on public roads, you couldn’t charge spectators to watch the race, and, after all, they’d only see the cars flash by a single time.

Those early event organizers began to realize that it would make far more sense to condense the race layout. Cars would still race, say, 300 miles — but rather than racing 300 miles in one direction, they’d race 300 miles in a large loop connecting a few local towns. If you were only racing on a 25-mile loop, it was much easier to close off that segment of roadway for the race’s duration. It was easier to staff it with police to keep fans away from the racing surface, and it was also now possible to close off access to the roadways and charge a fee for spectators to catch a glimpse of the action. Many of those large, looping road layouts would become the bedrock of the French, German, Belgian, and Italian Grands Prix. And with predictable layouts came the ability for automakers to design ever more specialized cars to undertake the challenge.

But Grand Prix racing was still somewhat limited, at least in terms of duration. Fans could spectate the entire event over the course of a few hours, during which time it was expected that drivers would be racing full-bore. Yet race organizers and automakers were in this business to sell money, and most standard folks buying cars weren’t buying them to drive flat-out for 50 miles and then need to replace the engine. They wanted to know the cars they were buying could be relied upon over greater distances, and for longer periods of time. So, organizers made the call to host 24-hour long events as a way to replicate but condense the multi-day affair that was city-to-city racing.

Those are undoubtedly all positive repercussions of the city-to-city racing legacy. But today, we’re going to look at the darker side — the events that forced city-to-city racing to confine themselves to those shortened courses to begin with.

The Course for the 1903 Paris-to-Madrid

The art of motor racing had increasingly drawn attention in Europe since the successful staging of the Paris-Rouen reliability trial in 1895 and the Paris-Marseilles-Paris race the following year. Organizations like the Automobile Club de France had sprung up in support of this bold new industry — not just because they enjoyed the thrill of the race itself, but because they recognized the strategic importance of a thriving motor industry.

See, it was clear from the get-go that the self-propelled automobile had potential, and the rapid advancements over less than a decade suggested that any country with a thriving automotive industry would have an edge over the rest of the world. National pride was a big deal here: while Europe was technically a united continent, each country was desperate to stand head and shoulders above its peers. The richest, most productive, and most technologically advanced nation would become the power player of the region. With its ability to facilitate travel and therefore technology and industry, the automobile was sure to play a critical role in any successful country’s future.

The desire to prove a country’s success and push this new technology to its limits is exactly what encouraged the ACF to begin organizing a daring race from the outskirts of Paris to Madrid. The car to complete that distance in the shortest elapsed time would be declared the victor, and its success would be heralded in newspapers all around the world — which would surely boost the sales of that automaker. The ACF was almost certainly confident that a French car would be the one to secure victory.

The Paris-to-Madrid course was set to be 812 miles in length, though drivers were not expected to complete that full distance in a single day. Instead, the event would be split into three different sections, with the first running from Versailles to Bordeaux. Papers reporting on the race at the time focused primarily on that first stage; if the other stages had been determined by that point, their routes did not appear to be broadcast publicly. However, continental drivers were reported to have been practicing the full route in advance of the event, while some also took part in a pre-race “tour” that saw them drive the course at a leisurely pace over the course of 12 days.

French racer Henri Fournier was quoted as saying, “I will use my 12-horsepower boat-shaped vehicle, weighing less than the one-ton limit. I will ride a mile in 40 seconds in this race.” Asked to predict the average speed of the winner, he said, “I do not know. It will be terrible, terrible.”

As the days crept ever nearer to the race, newspapers around the world announced notable participants from their home nation. In England came the announcement that Selwyn Edge would join a lesser-known racer named Mark Mayhew, then added Charles Jarrott to the mix, before Edge announced he would not be running in order to preserve his race car for July’s Gordon Bennett Cup. New York papers celebrated the participation of “yankee teams,” one of them including none other than William Kissam Vanderbilt. And in France would be Baron van Zuylen, leader of the ACF. Each name was loaded with significance, and the message was clear: the 1903 Paris-to-Madrid rally would pit the world’s greatest drivers against one another in a mad dash for honor.

In late March, a report came that one woman would enter Paris-Madrid as well: Camille du Gast. If you’re a regular here at “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” then you’ll likely remember that I did a whole episode on Madame Du Gast previously. She’d grown up a tomboy with a penchant for speed and stunts, and she was a natural fit for the early racing scene. She’d performed well enough in the 1901 race from Paris to Berlin, and she announced her intentions to compete in the Paris-Madrid in columns sent off to America. I want to read part of her announcement, just because I love both her tone and the candid nature of her observations.

“I am already in training for the Paris Madrid race,” she wrote. “One has to get ready just as a jockey does for a horse races. There is not much time, for the start will take place on May 24. I shall have to be out early, for my turn comes at four o’clock in the morning.

“I look forward with intense pleasure to crossing the Pyrenees, and hope to experience the thrill of my life. My machine will be one hundred horse power, and the automobile nations of any note will be represented. There will be about 230 competitors.

“I am the only woman entered thus far. Many of the machines are lighter than those used last year. If I win, or even if I make the distance in good time, which I am sure to do barring accidents, I shall go at once to America.”

Only one other woman would express interest in the Paris-Madrid, but as far as I can tell, she would not officially take the start. Camille du Gast remained the only woman in the field.

Competition was set to be divided into four different classes. One class featured cars weighing between 650 and 1,000 kilograms, another cars between 400 and 650 kilograms, another cars between 250 and 400 kilograms, and the final a motorcycle class up to 50 kilograms. Plenty of rules were proposed in these early days, though it’s not sure how many of them lasted through to race day, given the massive interest in the sport. In February, for example The Daily Telegraph stated that an observer from either the Automobile Club de France or the Royal Automobile Club of Spain was required to ride along with all participants of the first two classes in order to prevent any breaches of the rules. That rule doesn’t seem to have carried through, considering we likely would have heard more about those observers being injured. Other rules stated that, each night, cars would be closed off in a parc — like F1’s parc fermé — in order to prevent drivers or mechanics from making tweaks or repairs without permission.

Further, there was also a new “team” format introduced. Organizers seemed interested in crowning a victorious manufacturer, but obviously, the major manufacturers who could field tons of cars would have a much better chance at victory than some smaller manufacturers or cars entered by privateers. In order to help level the playing field, manufacturers were asked to pick just four cars to serve as their official representatives; they’d be awarded for getting four, three, or two cars to the finish.

By February, the list of entries had already hit 225, with 95 cars in the big-car class, 59 in the light-car class, 35 in the voiturette class, and 36 in the motorcycle class. Each entrant was required to submit a fee to be included in the race; at this point, it was said that organizers had raised £2,580. Adjusted for inflation and converted to US dollars, that’d be the equivalent of over $375,000 today.

On February 19, a lottery for starting order took place where drivers effectively drew lots that would dictate their starting position; any drivers who were to enter after that date would still be allowed to do so, but they’d be tacked on to the very end of the departures. Cars were set to be released at one- to two-minute intervals. It was believed that the earliest cars to depart would be arriving in Bordeaux by the time the final cars left Versailles.

Some drivers, particularly the local Frenchman who could easily access the route, began taking on trial runs for the Paris-Madrid as early as March. For some competitors, like Henri Fournier, it meant driving from Paris to Monte Carlo and back on a familiar route in order to practice racing at higher speeds. After he was comfortable with the speeds, Fournier announced his intentions to run the entire route, from the start line in Versailles to the finish line in Madrid, at least two different times.

But that route wouldn’t be easy; newspapers reported that Fernand Gabriel, a noted racer from Paris, had already raised concerns about its difficulty. The report read, “The course of the Paris-Madrid race is one more hair-raising in its character than the portion of the Paris-Vienna course that leads over the Alps. In the Paris-Madrid route there are stretches over the Pyrenees that have terrifying descends, some of the grades being one in five and there are curves in the road calculated to send chills down the spines of the bravest. Some of the turns, it is said, can be made only by stopping the car, reversing the engine, and letting it slip around by the force of gravity pulling against the back tire.”

Indeed, on May 12 — less than two weeks out from the start of the event — the roads in Spain were finally said to be “improving rapidly” after the 12-day tourist jaunt across the route discovered that crossing the border saw them hit “atrocious” roads.

As it would turn out, no racer would ever reach those Spanish roads.

The 1903 Paris-to-Madrid

The start of the Paris-to-Madrid rally was still hours away, yet hungry spectators crowded into every inch of space imaginable on the roadside, desperate to lay eyes on these new machines that could travel faster on their own than anything they’d ever seen. They had flocked to Versailles beginning early the day prior, coming on foot, on bicycle, and even via motor car — “a constantly moving crowd” of men and women who camped out in their ideal viewpoints or who spent their time drinking the hours away in cafés.

For the so-called “racing men” — the drivers, officials, and newspapermen — there was no opportunity for sleep. Over 500,000 fans had crowded into the Versailles region, and if there had been a vacant hotel room left in town, traversing from it to the start of the race on time would have been a miracle.

And indeed, by the time race day dawned, men were already dead. Two separate accidents had taken place during preliminary trials as competitors traced the early parts of the route — but it hadn’t discouraged any spectators from turning up.

A hearty breakfast was served to the competitors at 2:30 in the morning; for many, it would be their only meal before Bourdeaux.

At 3am on May 24, 1903, the Automobile Club de France announced that everyone was ready. Camera flashbulbs popped blinding blasts of light as the first cars began to depart mere moments later. Every 60 seconds would come the cry, “Allez!” and another early racing machine would growl off into the darkness.

Motor Age described the start as “one of the most spectacular affairs that has ever been enacted in connection with a sporting event,” an event “in which all of the ginger and activity of its official conduct mingled with the careless abandon of the sightseers to effect a queer contrast of strenuous intent and pure gaiety.”

I want to quote more from that article here, because I think it does a wonderful job describing the scene:

From every side persons of all conditions endeavored to give him a spoken farewell and handshake when, white-capped and waterproof clad, the rather jaunty Jarrott appeared on the scene. It was a quarter after 3 o’clock and the more dignified lights were outdone by the rapid series of photographic flashlights which jumped and blazed as the picture men on all sides tried to secure the likeness of the Ardennes winner as he stood ready for the word to start this, the greatest of all motor races.

He drove his car up to the tape and hardly had one pressed the stalwart Fournier’s hand in a cheery parting, when a sudden explosion said “Get ready.“ Sixty seconds had Jarrott yet in which to seat himself well in his car, fix the goggles that were to keep the sand and dust of nearly 350 miles of travel from his eyes, and grasp the wheel and levers.

Then another nerve thrilling report and an excited official shouted “Allez.“ It was the word to go. Down went the pedal under Jarrott’s foot, forward went the side lever and quickly moving and as quickly swinging into fourth speed the leviathan car swept into the unknown fight.

With shouts of good luck and cheers still ringing after the dust enveloped Jarrott, the devil-daring, experienced and much whiskered, Rene de Knyff, chevalier by right of his prominence in motor racing, drew to the position of ready. “Forty-five seconds, 30 seconds, 15 seconds,“ drawled the starter-then quickly “Go,“ and the heavy Panhard shot down the course – with driver and car truly a pair of old-timers.

As the first cars launched from Versailles and began picking their way through the unpaved roadways, the crush of spectators had their hopes of a spectacle dashed. While 1903 would not be one of the major drought years in Europe, it was shaping up to be a relatively dry one, all things considered. Smatterings of rain had fallen in early May, but as the end of the month neared, temperatures crested 80 degrees. Any rain left in the soil dried away, leaving behind a crumbly crust of soil. And as the early cars of the 20th century rumbled over that crusty roadway, they began to kick up dust. A whole lot of dust.

This was not ideal for the drivers, of course. The cars they were driving were not exactly the epitome of safety, and many of these folks entered would be driving at high speed for the first time in their life. After the first few cars launched off the line, every single driver after them would be hurtling, blind, into unfamiliar territory.

But the drivers weren’t the only ones to struggle. It didn’t take long before spectators — many of whom had been loitering at the roadside for hours — could no longer see. They’d been convinced they had snagged the ideal seat in the house. Instead, they were basically just listening to a loud cloud of dust.

Hoping to better peer through the fray, those spectators began to creep forward onto the road. Others, antsy after waiting all day, began to readjust positions, walking onto the track to perhaps seek out a better view. Police and military personnel were helpless to stop them.

Over in Bordeaux, motorsport officials remained at the ready hours in advance of the anticipation of the first cars. The control point, or finish line, for that first stage was about four miles outside of the town proper, and the road had been roped off and placed under watch by military guards for much of that distance. Stationed further down that road was a bugler, instructed to blow into his horn to announce the coming of the first racing machines — and just after noon, that bugle sounded away.

It was Louis Renault, the third starter of the morning. He had somehow managed to bypass the first two starters to arrive at the first checkpoint covered in dust. Even more peculiar was the fact that no bugle sounded behind him; Renault had, somehow, managed to build an impressive gap with his light and less-powerful racing machine.

Fifteen minutes passed before the bugle sounded again, yet during that time, rumors began to ripple through the throngs of spectators. There were accidents. Louis Renault had seen a few, but spectators arriving in Bordeaux by train were reporting even more. When Charles Jarrott pulled into the checkpoint, he was greeted with plenty of fanfare — and almost immediately after, questions about what he had witnessed on the road.

The third car to arrive, that of Fernand Gabriel, would be the ultimate winner of the stage. Gabriel had started well back in the running order and passed countless cars on his way to the lead. And he came bearing tales of horror.

Nearest the finish line in Bordeaux was Lorraine Barrow. A dog was believed to have darted beneath the wheels of his race car, and Barrow couldn’t avoid it. The accident pitched the car off the road. Barrow’s riding mechanic was thrown against a tree, and the resulting skull fracture killed the man. Barrow himself was said to be seriously injured. He initially survived the crash and was recovering in the hospital when he caught pneumonia and died three weeks after the incident.

A few miles back, in the town of Angouleme, a man listed only as Monsieur Tourand tried to swerve to avoid a child that had darted into the road at the same time a soldier jumped forward to push the child out of the way. The child, thankfully, was fine, but Tourand’s car struck and killed the soldier, and the impact of the collision threw the car against the tree. Tourand’s riding mechanic was killed. Tourand himself suffered severe spinal injuries. Two men standing near the road had been run over by the car as it careened into the tree. Both died.

An Irishman named Leslie Porter was making strong pace when his car burst into flames as a result of overheated bearings. Somehow, this resulted in the car losing control and colliding with a cottage near the roadside. Porter was thrown from the car and injured. His riding mechanic was trapped in the flames of the race car. Porter could only watch as the man burned alive.

Marcel Renault, younger brother of Louis Renault, was also listed among the dead. A fellow competitor had witnessed the fatal crash and told Motor Age, “Coming from the village of Couhé at 50 miles an hour at a sharp turn over a bridge spanning a river, I saw one of our cars overturned and a wheel smashed. Monsieur Marcel’s friends standing near told me he had dashed full speed around the double and very sharp corner, despite the fact that it was signaled dangerous by a sentinel waving a red flag. The car skidded and ran off the road. The wheel caught in a piece of drainpipe on the pavement, the car turned right around, a wheel was smashed, and the vehicle went full tilt for a tree, against which Monsieur Renault was hurled with great violence.”

It was the first accident of Marcel Renault’s racing career. It would be his last. Though he initially survived the wreck, Renault would die two days later.

And those were only the deaths; along the way, there were countless other injuries to both competitors and spectators alike.

An American named F. Terry crashed into a tree just 21 miles from the start at Versailles, which caused his car to flip and catch fire. No one was killed, though the driver and riding mechanic likely sustained some injuries.

Driver Georges Richard lost control of his car just outside of Angoulême, which left him with hip injuries that would plague him for the remainder of his life. Phil Stead collided with another car and flipped. Countless other wrecks dotted the roadway, with countless drivers swapping stories of the wreckage as they arrived in Bordeaux.

One woman, listed by newspapers by the name Mme. Chayssas, had joined her husband for an outing to watch some of the cars in the Paris to Madrid. They’d hopped on their bicycles in a little town outside Bordeaux known as St. Andre de Cubzac and pedaled beside the roadway. But the noise of a passing car is said to have scared a nearby horse. That horse bolted into Mme. Chayssas, knocking her directly into the path of a rocketing race car. She lost both of her legs in the incident.

But why didn’t these early drivers stop? Why didn’t they make an effort to save a fellow competitor? When Louis Renault arrived in Bordeaux, he was asked that very question, and his answer was concise: “A motorist, traveling at 60 or 70 miles an hour, does not notice other cars.” Indeed, stopping could very well have placed that driver in more danger than had he continued on his path.

Motor Age reports that, while both France and Spain had made arrangements to deploy ambulances along the route, not a single one of the crashes actually occurred within reach of those ambulances. It was too dangerous to send ambulances down a live race track, and the surrounding paths were so congested with spectators that it was impossible to move.

As the death toll climbed before most drivers even reached Bordeaux, officials had no choice. They called an early end to the race. The cars had only managed to travel 342 miles of the scheduled 812. They had not even crossed into Spain.

I also want to quote a very in-depth description of the event. This came from a British artist and writer named Joseph Pennell, who shared a first-person account of his perspective of the race. He had set up shop outside of the town of Chartres, and he was able to watch the cars basically rocketing down a hill. Pennell writes:

As the cars fell, there is no other word for it, down the slopes and approached the narrow bridge, jumped with a bound across it, and flew with a scream up the rise beyond, one could see by the twitch of the wheels, not half of which was caused by the road, how agonizing was the strain on the driver, forced to make his way through the endless, uncontrolled crowds which littered the road from Paris to Bordeaux. Much as one may esteem the broadminded views of the French government in encouraging the motor industry, the government’s neglect to protect the course was nothing short of criminal. Though on the stretch of eight kilometers between Chartres and the first village, there were from 5,000 to 10,000 people and 500 to 1,000 cars, no attempt was made to control the crowds, mostly made up of peasants and people from Paris who knew nothing about automobiles.

The horse-drawn traffic was stopped during the race but the fools on bicycles and the imbeciles on motors careened about and drew up anywhere all over the road and only escaped killing themselves and the racing men by the sheer-dumb luck which is said to protect drunken men, children, and fools. Yet people wonder why accidents happen. The conduct of the military authorities was incredible. From Chartres to the narrow bridge at the foot of the hill, the road was kept by a regiment of infantry and some gendarmes, and though pedestrians were not permitted to cross the bridge, ordinary motor cars were allowed free passage, of which they took such advantage that one of the racing cars was stopped dead in order that a person in an ordinary car might crawl over. Measures for preserving the safety of the public were either nonexistent or of the most ridiculous character.

Interestingly, it seemed to take a moment for both the French and Spanish government to reach the same conclusion, that the race should be entirely stopped. With the deaths and injuries taking place entirely in France, it made sense that officials there quickly called off the race. But Spain didn’t do so immediately; in fact, some drivers insisted that the only thing to do would be to drive — cautiously — to the Spanish border and continue the race there. They didn’t make it there before Spain, too, canceled the race.

Several days after the event, the King of Spain was reported to have claimed he was adamantly against the race right from the get-go but simply couldn’t talk the French out of hosting it. As he claimed, “I was opposed to the race from the beginning. It was my opinion the race would cost many lives, but we could not convince the French Minister of the fact, and permitted the race only from deference to him. It is evident racing motors on public highways is impossible. If so many accidents happened on the good road from Paris to Bordeaux I shudder to think what would have happened on the narrow Spanish roads. I am glad the French Government immediately stopped the races. It gave us an opportunity of following our own view and preventing, perhaps, a greater catastrophe.”

The race cars themselves were exiled from Bordeaux; officials simply did not want to have these offending machines within their city limits. Each and every car was assigned a police officer, who was to travel with the car and ensure it exited city limits safely. These cars were strictly banned from traveling under their own power as they did so. Some cars were pulled by horse. Some were pushed onto a train. Others were towed by tourist cars, which were not perceived with the same level of trepidation as the racers themselves. Once the race cars were out of Bordeaux, they were allowed to restart their engines and return to wherever they called home, though there were plenty of people keeping a close eye on them as they traveled to ensure no one reached an unsafe speed.

One major question lingered on the minds of everyone with even the slightest interest in motor racing: What would happen next? What would happen to this sport that they loved?

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The Backlash and the Revival of Motorsport

For days, the fatal results of the 1903 Paris to Madrid rally was the topic of fierce debate regarding the purpose and nature of motorsport. In an edition of The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News from June 6, one writer asks “what good purpose was served by the mad-brained motor-car race.”

“Of what advantage was it to show that a car could be constructed to run at eight-eight miles an hour when anything approaching that pace is impossible on public roads?” they wrote. “And if proof of the statement be required, there can be no better proof cited than the race itself. Those who organized the contest apparently forgot that this sort of thing is calculated to bring motoring into disrepute, just as scorching ruined bicycle racing on roads.”

“Scorching” was the name given to bicycle riders who raced down city streets in major metropolitan areas like New York, London, and Paris. Basically, these cyclists would dart around the road at full speed, keeping their heads down, totally oblivious to the pedestrians and horse-drawn carts around them. Collisions were common — at least, until the automobile began to take over. But 1903 was still quite early in that automotive evolution; the so-called “scorchers” were the closest comparison folks could draw when talking about individuals traveling at high speeds around other people.

“It is not in any sense sport,” the writer of The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News continued, “and what took place in the recent race shows how unfitted these machines are to travel at high speed along roads.”

That particular writer goes on to point out that traveling by rail features a complex system of lights, signals, regulations, and enforcers who all worked together to ensure safe and consistent function of this particular form of transit. No such thing existed for the motor car. It’s another one of those things that I think we can take for granted today; I mean, imagine you’re living in 1903 and suddenly people are rocketing past you in these loud, heavy, smelly machines… and there are absolutely no rules dictating their behavior. There are no speed limits. There are no standards of construction. There’s no one saying those big machines have to stop for a pedestrian. They’re also probably scaring the hell out of all the horses that, until this point, were the primary form of local transportation. That’s terrifying! And there’s absolutely no way that everyone along the Paris-to-Madrid route knew what was coming. There were probably a lot of folks out there who would have seen a car for the first time, would have conceived of this very specific craft, and who would have wondered if this was a specter from hell. How are you supposed to know the etiquette in this situation?

Another editorial, this one published in The Buffalo Review, begins by quoting a dispatch from the race that reads, “It is feared that it has given a heavy blow to motor racing for a long time to come.

“Well it would be strange indeed if it didn’t,” the columnist writes. “When the auto faddists get so crazy over their hobby as to drive their death-dealing machines over the public highways so as to leave a trail of blood behind, it is about time for a heavy blow to be dealt to the sport.”

Another editorial, this one from the Telegraph and Argus, paints the Paris-Madrid rally as being part of “the automobile war on mankind.”

“If motorists wish to race and risk their necks they must henceforward do so on private tracks,” the writer argues. It’s not necessarily a bad argument, but you can tell this author’s perspective on cars is quite negative when he continues, “Nothing short of a motor infirmary on a racing track would suffice. A cemetery would be added as a matter of course.” He also makes the case that we already know cars can drive fast; we know they can hit 80 miles per hour these days. But 80 miles per hour, he says, is well in excess of human control.

“The human eye, the human hand, and the human brain are unequal to the train of meeting any emergency that may arise while traveling at that terrific pace. And we need not add that the automobilist’s brain will never sufficiently develop to justify the song of speed”.

But I do want to quote here from Motor Age, because it actually presents a much different perspective. In fact, the publication went so far as to claim that the Paris-Madrid was “without question the greatest of all automobile events and may even rest in history unparalleled.” Fernand Gabriel, who won the first stage, broke Henri Fournier’s record from Paris to Bordeaux by driving the 342 miles in just five hours, 13 minutes, and 31 seconds, hitting top speeds of 95 miles per hour on downhill grades and passing 118 cars on the road while doing so, since he started down in 121st.

The article continues:

In the number of starters; in the close competition; in the average speed; in the great concourse of people who lined the whole route and bunched into great throbbing hearts of human interest at each end; in the very fierceness of the struggle itself; in the giant powers of the cars; in the array of brilliant automobilists, and in the interest which reached from one end of continental Europe to the other, swept the Atlantic, pierced the habitations of princes of power and of wealth and drew the peasant from his cottage in all these features, with- out taking into account the actual performance of the winner and without touching upon the accidents which recorded its danger, brought about its sudden ending, and which have shaken newspaperdom wherever cablegrams go the Paris-Madrid race ranks first in the list of automobile events of the world.

Paris-Madrid in title, Paris-Bordeaux in reality, the race, by whatever name it be called, was so great that it was too great. Ended after the worst had happened, it might have proceeded with thinned ranks clear to the capital of Spain without being greater. Those 343 miles of the most trying struggle in the history of speed, the fiercest battle for supremacy in the history of sport, marked a decisive epoch in automobiling – the time when an unlimited field of racing automobiles be- comes too mammoth in every way to be handled on the open road, protected only by temporary marshaling.

The race was run at a terrible cost-unfortunate in reality and unfortunate for automobiling and the automobile industry. Its mark of misfortune must accompany its mark of greatness into the records of the sport. Dubbed a holocaust of Hades, it has taught a lesson clearly and sharply silhouetted against the background of world-wide automobiling. It has shown where the battles of sport be- come battles in earnest-in fact.

Though there was some hope that motorsport could continue, there were nevertheless sure to be repercussions. Foxhall Keene is quoted as saying, “The killing or maiming of so many persons is a terrible blow both to individuals and automobiling. Marcel Renault and Barrow were both of the highest class of drivers and good sportsmen. [...] The effect will be a serious, if not irreparable blow, to fast automobiling.”

And the response to the tragedy was widespread. In New Orleans, all the way in Louisiana, local auto enthusiasts were so incensed by a newspaper article that described cars as the “murderous automobile” that they organized an entire meeting to refute the claim and figure out how to share that message with the public.

“Automobiles have done no ‘murdering,’” one man is quoted as saying. “There are from 30 to 40 machines here and there is yet to be reported a serious accident resulting from them. On the other hand, accidents caused by horse-drawn vehicles are of a daily occurrence. The trouble is that no matter how trifling it may be, an automobile accident is treated to scare headlines, while accidents caused by horses are dismissed in a line.

“There is no reason for any hysteria or adverse legislation because of the fatalities in the Paris-Madrid race. In that case the contest was gotten up by manufacturers. The aim was to get tremendous speed out of the machines and victory meant thousands of dollars to those who entered the contest. In consequence there was unusual daring and recklessness in the race and the accidents inevitably followed. Nothing like that is ever likely to happen here.”

But what exactly made the 1903 Paris-to-Madrid race so uniquely dangerous when compared to other city-to-city racing events that had gone off without a hitch? It would take a few days, but experts at various newspapers and magazines around the globe began to investigate, and they could quickly pinpoint a few major problems.

First and foremost was the sheer number of entries. For those of us in the modern era, reading about this event today, this seems pretty self-explanatory; the more cars you have in any single event, the greater the likelihood that you’ll have a catastrophic incident. But we have to remember that there weren’t really any rules or standard expectations regarding racing at the turn of the 20th century; it was still a very new and very experimental discipline.

Others argued that the number of entries need not have been a problem, if only the entries had departed more infrequently. While the organizers originally proposed that cars would be released in two-minute intervals, it seems that the idea of 10 straight hours of releasing cars from Versailles was not exactly appealing. Instead, cars were released at one-minute intervals in order to maximize the number of cars that could finish the race in daylight hours; many defenders of racing stated that this was the problem, because it meant there was no time for any car to gain ground before another would be launched into its wake. And because the starting order was determined by random draw, slower and less powerful cars were released ahead of larger and more powerful ones, which created an unnecessary amount of actual on-road passing.

Many major players at the time, including winner Fernand Gabriel, were horrified at the policing. In fact, Motor Age reported that he was “indignant at the careless manner in which the route was kept and was surprised that there were not more accidents, because of the utter helplessness of the police and officials in attempting to restrain the crowd. He said the racing men were kept in constant suspense and alarm by seeing rash spectators standing out in the road ahead, regardless of the fast-flying cars bearing down on them.” When I quoted from spectator Joseph Pennell earlier, he pointed out something similar: the police and military men really didn’t seem to understand how to keep spectators away from the racing surface, nor did they seem to grasp the importance of doing so. There were countless accidents that could have been prevented with even a smidge more oversight.

And then there was the matter of the dust. I won’t say that no one could have predicted the dust would have been such a problem, because plenty of folks already had experience driving horses and carriages through the clouds kicked up by hooves and wagon wheels. But I don’t think anyone really considered the ways that an automobile race would be different. Spectators with no idea how quick these early cars could travel likely didn’t fully grasp the danger of stepping on to the racing surface. Drivers likely wouldn’t have expected them to be there, and with their attention so preoccupied with actually racing, they wouldn’t have known to be so alert for others on the road.

What could be done? While many folks argued for the outright banning of motorsport as a whole, many others seemed to be willing to concede some ground. If motorsport overall couldn’t be banned, then surely we could get rid of these open-road races and instead compete on closed circuits, which would be much simpler to patrol?

There was another consequence of the Paris-Madrid rally; women were banned from motorsport in France.

Looking back, it’s a frankly shocking decision — one that makes almost no sense whatsoever. The only woman who competed in the trek was Camille du Gast. Du Gast was not the first woman to compete in an organized motor race, but if you listened to the “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” episode centering on her brief career, you’ll know that she was one of the more prominent and vocal women to do so. In the event, she performed well; some reports claim she made it as high as fourth in the overall standings before she stopped her car to render aid to driver Phil Stead.

Stead was one of the men who wrecked in that first stage of the race, and he ended up trapped beneath his car. No other competitors had stopped to offer assistance, but du Gast did. Because of that, she’s recorded as being 77th when the race was brought to an end.

Still, among the fierce outcry, some folks found time to claim that women simply were not equipped to race. British publication Autocar wrote, “for ourselves, we must confess to a feeling of doubt as to whether fierce long-distance racing is quite the thing for ladies.”

The Automobile Club de France agreed. In the wake of the Paris-Madrid race, women were banned from competing in motorsport.

For all of the bold claims that racing should be outright banned, that it provided absolutely no benefit to anyone, the ACF had a vested interest in ensuring that racing continued — not just in terms of the act of racing but because so many automakers were relying on motorsport to continue improving and selling their machines. As it turned out, there was no better sales technique than winning a major race, which could ensure that your cars were not only quick but also reliable enough to sustain high speeds over a lengthy period of time. That was too valuable to just give up. But women were a novelty in motorsport. Banning them from competing could demonstrably prove that the ACF had done something in response to the so-called motorsport holocaust, but it was an action that still protected almost all of the parties who had already invested in motorsport. The ACF cited “feminine nervousness” for its decision — and the ban would actually never be overturned. Women did begin competing again in the 1920s, but technically the ban still existed.

The only so-called “questionable” thing I could find about Du Gast in the post-race coverage was the fact that she’s widely reported to have written a will prior to competing in the race. Allegedly, she had some presentiment that she would be killed and simply couldn’t get the thought out of her head. So, she wrote out a will, crafted instructions for her funeral, prepared invitations for that event, and even ordered flowers. But a presentiment of danger is nowhere near enough to justify the banning of an entire group of people from competition.

Motorsport as a whole, clearly, didn’t die off. There was a lot of hemming and hawing about the mere concept of racing after this event — particularly up in the British Isles, because the Gordon Bennett Cup was scheduled to take place later in the summer. Suddenly, organizers were forced to reckon with tons of backlash and ask difficult questions about what it was that would make their race safe when compared to something like the 1903 Paris-to-Madrid Rally.

For them, the answer was simple: They would close the race course. The event consisted of seven laps taking place on alternating courses, one 40 miles long and the other 51.88 miles long. Every single inch of each course was closed to the public, which meant no cars or fans could enter the racing surface during the event. Further, the route was staffed with 7,000 police officers alongside countless course officials and military members who were tasked with keeping fans off the racing surface. The folks in charge tried to think of every eventuality and every possible issue that could arise throughout the event as it pertained to spectator safety, and they did their best to address those concerns before they could actually become problems.

It was critical they do so, not just because of the Paris-to-Madrid incident. In 1901, at least eight people were killed during that year’s running of the Gordon Bennett Cup. Organizers were not just facing down the problems in France but problems with their own race.

Thankfully, the event went off without a hitch. On July 2, 1903, a series of Irish roads were closed to the public in order to facilitate the running of a 327-mile event that saw Belgian racer Camille Jenatzy take victory. There were no deaths. There were no reported injuries. Pundits branded it “the race that saved motorsport” because it proved that it was indeed possible to stage an interesting, competitive race without putting countless lives at risk. Without that race, the future of motorsport would have likely looked a lot more grim.

There’s one last point I’d like to address, though. If the public outcry against motorsport in the wake of the Paris-Madrid disaster seems a bit… overblown… I think it’s worth taking a moment to remember where we were at this point in time, at least as far as the collision of death and technology went. Rail travel had become pretty common by this point, but a lot of folks still held a certain amount of reverence toward trains. They were these modern marvels of technology and industry that signaled the progress of society. Remember, rail travel was largely originally intended to transmit heavy goods like coal more easily from one place to another. That they then became a convenient mode of transport for folks with means created a more physically mobile society.

Train crashes and other rail-related disasters also caused backlash and demands for reform, but because rail travel was organized by either private companies or governments, and because folks afraid of trains could theoretically spend their entire lives far away from the tracks, train crashes seemed to inspire less all-around panic than crashes in automobile races. While cars were still pretty new, many folks could already predict a future where these self-propelled carriages would infiltrate every aspect of society, and because the control of these vehicles came down to individuals, there was worry that those folks may behave inappropriately. After all, this was an era well before the foundation of standard road etiquette. We didn’t have rules or laws or even signage dictating how these drivers should act, and because of that, it was entirely reasonable to be worried that some fool could drive into your small town and wreak havoc. You can see where the idea of racing these cars could inspire even more horror.

But I do also want to point out something that I feel is important. In the same way that folks today still love a good demolition derby or monster truck rally, folks in the late 1800s and early 1900s had a fascination with the destruction associated with train wrecks. In 1895, the Granville-Paris Express train overran the buffer stop at the Gare Montparnasse and broke through a wall, where it tipped onto the street below. The photos of that incident were quickly turned into postcards that positively flew off the shelves. Intentional wrecks also drew major paying crowds.

Many Europeans retained a similar morbid fascination with any death caused by these new forms of technology, which is why we get a lot of the lurid detail in the post-rally reporting. There was still a kind of novelty to this kind of thing that was still compelling.

Everything would really start to change come the onset of World War I. In that war, new forms of technology like poison gas, submarines, tanks, and more robust airplanes translated directly into a skyrocketing death toll. I won’t say that it inured people to violent, technology-assisted deaths, but death did become commonplace. Soldiers in the trenches were subject to more horror in the course of one hour of battle than spectators witnessed during the entire Paris-Madrid rally. Violent death went from something shocking to something that everyone was personally impacted by. And as tanks, ambulances, supply trucks, and other forms of motorized transportation became more common, they simultaneously became naturally accepted parts of life.

After the Great War, there was still a fear that women would be killed behind the wheel, but no one was really all that shocked that a man might choose to face death in a Grand Prix or an endurance race. In fact, no one was really all that shocked that a spectator might also get caught up in the fray.

To my mind, the next motorsport-related tragedy to draw so much public backlash wouldn’t come until 1955, when over 80 spectators were killed at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Yes, spectators were expected to have assumed some level of risk, but that crash was a breaking of the established social contract in much the same way that the 1903 Paris-to-Madrid rally was. It represented yet another critical moment where drivers, governments, automakers, and everyday citizens needed to think deeply about what they believed they should be able to expect from motorsport. And much like the Paris-to-Madrid rally, the threats of an outright motorsport ban never actually materialized. In both instances, the folks in charge managed to find ways to make the act of racing safer. In 1903, it was the development of purpose-built racing circuits and better delineations separating spectators from racers on public roads. In 1955, it was the greater separation of fans from the action and the reprofiling of existing race tracks to be somewhat safer.

The 1903 Paris-to-Madrid didn’t kill motorsport, but it did force the earliest proponents of the automobile to begin laying out the standards that would come to dictate the sport to this day.

Bibliography

• Cars at Speed by Robert Daley

• Paris-Bordeaux-The Place and the Winners – Motor Age – 11 June 1903

• The Motor-Car Race, The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News

• New Race to Follow Slaughter, The Pittsburgh Post

• Strange Presentiment Before Automobile Race, Democrat and Chronicle

• Fournier Shudders to Think of Race, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

• Paris-Madrid Motor Car Race, The Daily Telegraph

• Paris-Madrid Motor Car Race, The Daily Telegraph

• Paris-Madrid Motor Race, The Daily Telegraph

• Paris-Madrid Motor Race, The Daily Telegraph

• Parid-Madrid Race, The Oshkosh Northwestern

• Pretty Woman to Enter Big Automobile Race, Richmond Times-Dispatch

• Course Badly Protected, Hartford Courant

• Don't Do Murder, New Orleans States

• “Paris-Madrid Massacre”, The Buffalo Review

• Motor Madness, The Telegraph and Argus

“Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” is a project by motorsport historian and journalist Elizabeth Blackstock that is dedicated to uncovering the sport’s forgotten tragedies as well as opening up motorsport to aspiring future journalists. If you’ve enjoyed this Substack, please consider a paid subscription; all posts here will be free for anyone to view, but your donations directly support the kind of content you cannot find at any legacy media site.

Trackhouse Racing rookie Connor Zilisch is one of the most-hyped drivers in the NASCAR Cup Series right now — and he's paired with yet another icon in the form of Australian Supercar legend Shane van Gisbergen. These are two men from different age brackets and distinct racing backgrounds, but they're both consistent favorites on road races throughout the NASCAR season. And, maybe more importantly, they have a lot to learn from one another.

I had a chance to chat with Zilisch very briefly ahead of 2026’s Miami Grand Prix weekend. Red Bull invited me out to the event to speak with F1 drivers and to cover the race… but as I waited to sit down with Isack Hadjar, I spotted a familiar face across the Red Bull Energy Station. Connor Zilisch was there on Thursday to film a great clip showing Hadjar and Max Verstappen how to race the Red Bull-sponsored Cup Camaros that had been loaded into an iRacing simulator set-up. And I knew I wanted to snag him for a few minutes.

Aside from finding out what flavor a Connor Zilisch special edition Red Bull would taste like (strawberry lemonade, for those interested), I had one big thing on my mind: What are these Trackhouse teammates learning from each other?

Naturally, there's plenty that Zilisch can learn from SVG, but I was actually a little surprised to hear that the biggest takeaway hasn't been anything on the track.

“Honestly he does a really good job — this isn't even on the track — but he does a really good job managing his time,” Zilisch told me. “He knows when to say ‘no’ to people, which I sometimes get scared to do.

“Honestly, just how he manages his weeks. I feel like he's done it for a long time, so I learn a lot from him on that.

“And then obviously on the trace track, we talk about a lot. But I appreciate that side of him.”

When I followed it by asking what SVG can learn from him, Zilisch laughed. “I don't know!”

It's a pretty fair immediate response, if I'm honest. Really, what can a championship-laden racer learn from a young kid who was born in the thick of his career? I imagined it would be something regarding oval racing, or about the culture of racing in America.

But after a moment to think about it, Zilisch had a great reply that took me by surprise.

“I think it's refreshing — it's very nice for him to see a kid so young with so much energy and excitement about it,” he told me.

“He says I remind him of him when he was my age, just how exciting everything was, and he feels young around me. I think he enjoys that.

“I don't know if he's learning from me. Other than learning how to be a kid again!”

I had the time to ask a few more quick questions. Does he feel like he has room to grow having been so hyped up in racing at such a young age? (“I don't think anybody ever reaches their full max potential, and I probably never will in my career. I hope I don't, because I always want to be able to do better and get better and have something to strive for.”) Most surprising part of the jump to the Cup Series? (“How talented everybody is on the race track! You don't see a lot of mistakes.”) If you could steal a skill from any driver on track, who would you steal from and what would you take? (“I'd probably say Kyle Larson — his ability to always make the most of things, no matter how his car is driving. He could have a car that's fully loose or really tight, and I want to be able to maximize in whatever i'm doing.”)

And is the Indy 500 in the books — maybe doing the Double like Larson? “Obviously I'd love to, but I'm happy doing what I'm doing. I want to maximize what I'm doing before I jump ship and commit that much time to Indy.”

The weekend after I spoke with Zilisch, he and SVG had a chance to head back to the iconic Watkins Glen road course, where both drivers put on a clinic over the oval-heavy NASCAR contingent. The Cup race wasn't exactly a success for Zilisch, but it's a good reminder that there's still plenty for him to learn. And, apparently, for SVG to learn from Zilisch.

“Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” is a project by motorsport historian and journalist Elizabeth Blackstock that is dedicated to uncovering the sport’s forgotten tragedies as well as opening up motorsport to aspiring future journalists. If you’ve enjoyed this Substack, please consider a paid subscription; all posts here will be free for anyone to view, but your donations directly support the kind of content you cannot find at any legacy media site.

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This weekend, we’re coming up on the 94th running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans — an incredible, absurd race where 62 cars and almost 200 drivers will spend two full turns of the clock driving around the French countryside in hopes of taking home victory in their class.

Today, determining the winner is honestly pretty simple. The car that travels the furthest during the course of 24 hours will take home victory. But did you know that when Le Mans first started, the process of determining a winner was actually more complex? And that, technically, no one won Le Mans until its third running in 1925?

Hello everyone, my name is Elizabeth Blackstock, and I’m an award-winning motorsport journalist and historian who loves shining a light on some of the wildest forgotten stories from racing’s past — and as you can imagine, Le Mans is absolutely ripe for the picking now that it’s spent a century as one of the most important races on the annual racing calendar. But this week, I thought it’d be good to turn our clocks all the way back to 1923, and to start at the very beginning of Le Mans history in order to take a deeper look at the absolutely insane way that winners of this race used to be determined.

Now, racing in the Sarthe region of France had already been going on for over a decade before anyone thought to schedule a 24-hour race there. In fact, the very first French Grand Prix was hosted in that region way back in 1906, and local organizers had spent all the years in between transforming the region into a frankly incredible place for racegoers to spend their time. There were grandstands, yes — but there were also cafés, dance floors, live bands, and a dedicated area of the track where you could pick up a radio broadcast signal from the Eiffel Tower in Paris to enjoy some classical music. Plus, all 10 miles of the circuit were lined with generators that provided power for a public address system, lighting, and scoreboards. Honestly, that’s enough to sell me on going to a race even today, in 2026.

The scoreboards, obviously, were in place to help fans keep track of the running order. Thirty-seven cars from 20 different manufacturers entered that first event in 1923, so there were plenty of machines to keep track of. But, like I mentioned before, there wouldn’t be an actual “winner” at this race until three races had transpired. But why?

The reason had everything to do with the whole purpose of the race, which is something we need to talk about before we can talk about how the good folks at the ACO determined the winner.

In the early 1920s, motorsport was obviously already popular — and Grand Prix racing in particular had captured the imaginations of burgeoning race fans all across the European continent. Grand Prix racing obviously put cars to the test, encouraging race teams and automakers to develop faster and faster machines. But already at this point, some folks were concerned about how valuable this Grand Prix technology would be to road cars.

See, Grand Prix cars were designed to be as fast as possible. They were usually light, trim, and fitted with powerful engines that could compete at full bore for a limited period of time. Those engines were not efficient, nor were they all that reliable; you basically just wanted to build an engine that could win a race. After that, you’d make repairs or replace the engine altogether.

Production of Grand Prix cars was already getting expensive, and those cars were also looking less and less like the ones that normal folks would be driving on the road. Automakers were pushing the boundaries of technology, but maybe not necessarily in the ways that would directly benefit consumers, since most folks at the time were not trying to complete their road trip from Paris to, say, Munich at top speed with the intention of replacing their engine before the trip home.

Instead of racing flat out, some folks began to wonder what would happen if a race were to reward consistency? Or a car’s ability to last long periods of driving? Or its fuel economy? What if that race only featured unmodified cars, like the ones your Average Joe could buy off the showroom floor? That would not only prove which automakers had mastered long-term reliability, but it would encourage the automakers who were less successful in that realm to improve their product.

This was the germ of the idea that sparked the first 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1923. Every car entered in that first event had to be a stock production vehicle. All cars needed to have four seats — unless your car had an engine under 1,100cc, in which case, you could drive a two-seater. All cars had to be road legal. They needed to be able to carry 132.5lbs in each of the unoccupied seats. Only the driver could complete any necessary repairs mid-race; mechanics were allowed on site, but only to hand the driver the tools he asked for. And there would need to be two drivers per car to alternate throughout the period of 24 hours.

Clearly, the whole goal here was to replicate, to whatever extent possible, the standard conditions a driver would experience while driving normally on the road. The 24 Hours of Le Mans was basically just an extended road trip condensed into 24 consecutive hours instead of spread out over the course of a few days. It’d be the ultimate test of a car’s endurance and reliability.

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Because of that, organizers also decided against awarding a major trophy to the car that completed the most distance in 24 hours — at least, not for the first year, or even the second.

See, rather than a single-event trophy, wheel supplier Rudge-Whitworth instead offered something it called the Triennial Cup. The Triennial Cup would only be awarded to the manufacturer whose car had completed the furthest distance in 24 hours over three consecutive years.

It sounds wild to us today, but again, organizers were thinking really big-picture about how to reward reliability. It would take a whole lot of time, effort, manpower, and money to build a car capable of “winning” the 24 Hours of Le Mans in a single year, but this is motorsport. Spending a lot of time, effort, manpower, and money to win a race is kind of the whole point. The folks at Le Mans wanted to challenge those automakers to consistently craft reliable cars. They wanted to discourage manufacturers from just showing up one year with a gung-ho effort and then never coming back. The only way to get the Triennial Cup was to do well for three years in a row.

The Triennial Cup was also awarded on a rolling basis. So, while there would be no trophy presentation until 1925, you could expect another trophy in 1926. The 1925 trophy could combine a manufacturers’ efforts in 1923, 1924, and 1925. The following year, the Triennial Cup would again be awarded, but this time, it would combine a manufacturer’s efforts in 1924, 1925, and 1926.

Got all that? Good. Because in 1924, in very classic ACO style, the rules changed again. While Rudge-Whitworth had committed to awarding the Triennial Cup, it was decided that factoring in the performance of a manufacturer’s best car over the course of three years was simply too complex. After it was awarded in 1925, the Triennial Cup would never be awarded again.

But did that mean the ACO converted instead to a winner-of-one-race-takes-the-trophy format? Absolutely not. Instead, the ACO adopted the Biennial Cup, which would be awarded every two years.

The Biennial Cup would only last until 1928, which was the year that the ACO introduced a prize for the manufacturer whose best car completed the greatest distance over the course of 24 hours. It was a really major step toward transforming Le Mans into the “proper race” we know it as today.

Okay, now do you feel like you’ve really grasped the rules and regulations at Le Mans? Great. I just have another bit of bad news for you, which is a little something called the Index of Performance.

See, by 1925, organizers realized the Biennial Cup was also a pain in the ass, in much the same way the Triennial Cup was. I’ve conveyed the whole thing in a pretty… simple manner here. The reality is that, because there were so many different cars with different engine displacements and weights, there were different rules and expectations dictating every class. To determine which car went the furthest over 24 hours, the ACO was using this complex formula that took into account the distance traveled as well as other factors, like making sure each car traveled a minimum distance during specific time frames of the race to force those cars to really push.

And so, in 1925, the ACO introduced yet another metric by which it determined in-race success. This was called the Index of Performance. The Index of Performance involved a complex formula that would take into account the distance traveled by a specific car, its fuel usage, and its engine displacement. Cars had to travel a minimum distance, but beyond that, it was all about determining the most efficient car in the field. Trying to actually determine the formula used can be a real pain in the ass, though. There’s a running joke that organizers intentionally kept this vague because it was basically just designed to benefit French manufacturers and French drivers, and considering the fact that few records exist of the actual formulas and calculations….

If I’m honest, that’s the part that really stuck out to me. One of the wildest parts about doing the research for this video is realizing how little anyone… actually talked about or explained these Le Mans rules. If you tuned into my video last month about the Warner Horograph timing system used at the first Indianapolis 500, you already saw this in action; while there were journalists covering these early events, none of them were really taking the time to explain the regulations to their readers. Today, if F1 introduces a rule tweak for, like, the Monaco Grand Prix, we know there will be 50 different articles about it published within an hour of the announcement, and most of those articles will include in-depth explanations of how things work.

That does not appear to be the case for a lot of these early motorsport events! In the case of Le Mans and its Triennial and Biennial Cups and its Index of Performance, I think we’re talking about a scoring format that could not be easily conveyed in a newspaper column. I also don’t really know that all of the officials at the ACO completely understood it! And the result is that now, most folks who write stories about the “birth of Le Mans” will note these weird scoring formats, but they also kind of… brush them off. I ran into so many articles that said something along the lines of “technically there was no winner at the first running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans thanks to something called the Triennial Cup — but we all know that the folks who crossed the line first were the winners!” and then that’s it.

There are unfortunately very few efforts being made today to really explain what it was those early race organizers were trying to do, and I think that’s a shame. I didn’t really intend to turn the end of this video into my little historical manifesto, but, here we are. Today, we might look back on something like the Triennial Cup or the Index of Performance and laugh at the French making everything more complicated than necessary, but there were good reasons for them doing so! I think we owe it to them to actually try to understand those reasons; if the ACO was over here doing big-brain calculus to crown a victor, then actually understanding how and why they were doing so will help us understand exactly what it was that they wanted to reward, which helps us understand what folks back in the early 1920s considered to be the most valuable aspect of a motor race.

Unfortunately, I have also not been able to find the nitty-gritty details of Le Mans’ early scoring calculations, but I will say that I am actively looking! So, stay tuned; one day, I hope I’ll be able to sit us all down for a lil motorsport math lesson.

“Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” is a project by motorsport historian and journalist Elizabeth Blackstock that is dedicated to uncovering the sport’s forgotten tragedies as well as opening up motorsport to aspiring future journalists. If you’ve enjoyed this Substack, please consider a paid subscription; all posts here will be free for anyone to view, but your donations directly support the kind of content you cannot find at any legacy media site.

The 24 Hours of Le Mans is the oldest active endurance race in the world, and it has become legendary. Since 1923, drivers of all stripes have arrived at the Circuit de la Sarthe to test their mettle and fight to become one of the greatest racers in the world.

But not every moment in the race’s history is worthy of celebration, and today on “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” we’re going to delve into the aftermath of the crash that almost killed racing as we know it today: the 1955 Le Mans disaster.

Most motorsport fans today know about this horrifying crash. They also likely know the broad strokes of what transpired in its aftermath: that events were canceled, that racing was banned in certain countries, that legends of motorsport like Mercedes entirely withdrew from racing for decades. Today, I want to contextualize both the crash and its aftermath in order to truly illustrate the gravity of the motorsport’s deadliest crash.

The build-up to the 1955 Le Mans disaster

Pierre Levegh wanted to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans more than he wanted anything else in his life.

When Levegh made his debut at the Circuit de la Sarthe in 1938, he was nearly 40 years old and chasing a dream that had little basis in reality. When the track closed down in 1940 as a result of the conflicts surrounding World War II, Levegh — described by author Robert Daley as a “strong, phlegmatic little man” who was known as the Bishop among his few friends — must have watched in horror as first the Germans seized the track, and then as the British pelted it with bombs. The future of the race seemed in immense doubt; there may not have been any race track left.

Thankfully, when conflicts ended, the organizers of the race revitalized the track and brought it back to racing condition for the 1949 running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. That being said, the event’s revitalization came with a serious amount of national pride. The race was effectively a metaphor for the French spirit, and that spirit refused to be crushed, whether by Germany’s bombs or by the economic hardships that wracked France in the aftermath of the war.

So it was especially important when, in 1952, Pierre Levegh very nearly made history. He purchased a Talbot straight from the factory for a whopping $10,000, then spent the next six months dedicated to outfitting it for the upcoming 24 Hour race. He poured another $5,000 and countless man hours into the car to transform it into a machine capable of winning a race whose prize money would never come close to recouping his costs. He designed and built a lighter aluminum body that weighed less than 37 pounds, enlarged the gas tank to reduce necessary stops, and added a second ignition in case the first failed — among so much more. When he finished, Levegh felt he’d built a car that could hold its own against the factory-backed might of Ferrari, Jaguar, Aston Martin, and Mercedes-Benz.

Levegh was the driver to run across the track and leap into his Talbot at the start of the race — and for the next two revolutions of the clock, that’s just where he remained.

Attrition began to whittle down the field, and by 3am, the dedicated Levegh had sailed into the lead of the race in his hand-modified machine. Just before dawn, he had amassed a 32-mile lead over the factory outfits. He carved a path through the treacherous dawn mist, fighting fatigue, because the moment victory became a very real possibility, he refused to climb from behind the wheel.

But according to Robert Daley in his book “Cars at Speed,” that heroic morning effort had sapped Levegh of his strength — but not his insistence that he could fight to victory. His face had been drained of its color, and, dazed, the pleas of Levegh’s mechanic and co-driver fell on unhearing ears.

The French audiences, though, reveled in what was happening. Levegh’s feat was almost legendary — almost, only because he had still to cross the finish line. As Daley writes, “All through the town of Le Mans, the word spread. Levegh was going it alone. He led. He was holding back the German horde. There was symbolism there. There was glory in the making. Nearly en masse the city trooped out to the circuit to watch Levegh wrestle with his car, his fatigue, and his dream.”

Whether Daley is exaggerating the side of the crowd or not is beside the point. The folks watching Levegh’s efforts knew they were witnessing something special. The 47-year-old Frenchman — not a racer, at least not professionally — was determined to win this one. The hours ticked by and his lap times slowed, but Levegh clutched the lead with intense determination. He ignored stomach cramps and the exhaustion tempting him to close his eyes, if only for a few minutes. He proceeded.

Then, with just under 50 minutes to go, Levegh slowed to a stop on the course.

Robert Daley — as well as most fans and pundits at the time — assumed that Levegh’s fatigue was what had caused him to shift down instead of up, that it was his fatigue that broke his engine. More generous understandings of history say that Levegh’s failure was the result of a bolt in the central crankshaft bearing that had, under the protracted strain of the race, finally shaken loose. But whatever the reasoning behind it, Levegh had failed.

Robert Daley writes, “The crowd watched in angry silence. It felt cheated by Levegh. It had been ready to cheer itself hoarse for him, but he had not won. Instead, by his selfishness and stupidity, he had lost a certain victory for France, leaving the crowd to assist at still another victory for the hated Germans. So the crowd’s attitude, and that of all of France, changed in a few moments. Levegh should have handed the car to a co-driver. He had not. So he won no glory at all, only shame.”

As far as Levegh himself went, it’s said that when he finally climbed out of his broken car, he vomited uncontrollably, then wept in his wife’s arms.

In the aftermath, the Automobile Club of France made it strictly illegal for any one driver to race longer than 14 hours.

In 1953, Levegh finished the race, but far from a podium position. The following year, he crashed. In 1955, Pierre Levegh was invited to join the iconic Mercedes race team alongside racer John Fitch, he must have been desperate — this would be his best shot at a victory, and he had much to prove.

Levegh wasn’t the only one who had his hopes riding on the 1955 running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. In the buildup to the race, the motorsport community had been devastated by several high-profile racing deaths; it would be easy to imagine that many fans would have hoped the endurance race could revive the magic of motorsport.

Part of what I like to do here at “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” is to contextualize some of these big motorsport events to understand exactly why they were such a big deal. To fully understand the reaction to the 1955 Le Mans disaster, we need to turn our calendars back a few weeks, and to turn our attention to the 1955 Month of May in Indianapolis.

On May 16, American racer Manny Ayulo died. The 33-year-old racer from Burbank, California had crashed during time trials for the Indy 500 the day before. Ayulo had been the last driver to attempt to qualify on May 15, and he took to the track just before the day’s end at 6pm. However, Ayulo hit the concrete wall outside the first turn at over 140 miles per hour while trying to set a qualifying speed. The car slid 518 feet down that wall. Ayulo was rushed to the hospital but ultimately succumbed to a basal skull fracture. Rescuers at the crash site noted that Ayulo had not been wearing a seat belt, and that his pockets were stuffed full of wrenches.

Then, just two weeks later, the 39th Indy 500 faced another tragedy on lap 56. Driver Bill Vukovich held a strong lead when he came across a nasty crash. Rodger Ward, who was several laps down, had flipped twice and landed on his wheels, albeit facing the wrong way on the track. Al Keller turned inside of Ward to try to avoid him, then jerked sharply back onto the track, where he made contact with Johnny Boyd. Boyd’s car smashed into Vukovich, who was trying to avoid the whole fiasco. Vukovich crashed hard into the outside barrier; the force of the impact launched his car outside of the track, where it crashed into several parked spectator cars. After the machine finally came to a rest, it burst into flames. Vukovich died at the scene. It was a particularly brutal blow for American open-wheel racing, which had already seen the deaths of four other drivers that year.

Adding to the horror was the fact that, just a few days before the Indy 500, two-time Formula 1 champion Alberto Ascari had also been killed. Ascari had paid a visit to Monza to watch his friend and fellow racer Eugenio Castellotti test a new Ferrari sports car, the 750 Monza, that the two men were to share at the upcoming 1,000km of Monza. Though he hadn’t intended to drive that day, Ascari wanted to get behind the wheel and try the machine for himself, still in his street clothes. After his third lap, the Ferrari 750 Monza skidded, and it flipped up onto its nose before somersaulting. Ascari was thrown from the car and died at the scene. There’s still a lot of debate and myth around the crash, and we’re going to delve into it in more detail later this year on “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys.”

Heading into Le Mans, then, the entire motorsport world was in mourning. It’s highly likely that many race fans were hoping for a quiet 24-hour extravaganza, if only to rid themselves of the foul taste of death left in their mouths.

The race would, at the very least, promise some exceptional competition. 87 cars had registered for the event, but only 70 showed up for practice, and only 60 of those cars qualified for a starting slot. Manufacturers like Aston Martin, Jaguar, and Ferrari were set to duke it out with a deeply competitive Mercedes-Benz, which was turning its eye to sports car racing after absolutely dominating Formula 1. The Mercedes 300SLR is still considered one of the finest racing machines to this day thanks to its 300-brake horsepower 3-liter straight-8 engine and the introduction of a hand-operated air brake to ease the strain on the drum brakes. Perhaps most critically, team manager Alfred Neubauer had put together a deeply international team in order to ease any concerns that could have been raised against a German team for signing only German drivers. The three cars Mercedes brought were driven by Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss, Karl Kling and André Simon, and Pierre Levegh and John Fitch.

Allegedly, John Fitch and Pierre Levegh spoke in depth before the race, during which time Levegh told the American, “[The track] is too narrow for these fast cars. Each time I go by the pits it is with a feeling of unease, a feeling of being hemmed in.” Later, LEvegh added, “I do not like sitting on the left in a racing car. It is difficult enoughto see team signals with the pit straight as narrow as it is. A driver needs to feel comfortable. I do not feel comfortable in this car.”

The night before the 24 Hours of Le Mans, they dined together to discuss strategy. Levegh’s dour mood lightened throughout the night, perhaps as his confidence in his ability to win with Mercedes-Benz grew. As they left the restaurant, Levegh’s wife pulled John Fitch to the side to say, “Pierre is so happy, so happy at this chance.”

Jaguar brought three works D-type racers with a power output of 270 brake horsepower and a top speed of 170 miles per hour, while Ferrari arrived with its new 735 LM racer boasting 360 brake horsepower from its straight-six engine. As practice got underway, the Ferraris proved to be extremely fast over a single lap, but the Mercedes-Benz machines were expected to have the upper hand over long runs thanks to their impressive reliability. At the start, Ferrari launched into the lead courtesy of a quick start by Eugenio Castellotti at the front of the field, while Mike Hawthorn in the Jaguar trailed in second. Juan Manuel Fangio caught his pantsleg on the gearshifter while he climbed into his car for the Le Mans start, which resulted in an unusual delay for the Argentine. However, Castellotti erred under braking, which let HAwthorn and Fangio by. It was shaping up to be a fantastic race.

The immediate aftermath

At 6:26 p.m., as the leaders neared the end of the 35th lap of the race, racing’s greatest disaster struck.

Mike Hawthorn and Juan Manuel Fangio, at each other’s throats, knew that the coming moments of the race would be critical ones, as pit stops were about to begin. On lap 34, Hawthorn’s crew had signaled for him to pit the next time by — and the British ace responded by lapping some of the slower cars, desperate to put as many machines between himself and Fangio as possible. He lapped Levegh at Arnage. He began trying to lap Lance Macklin in an Austin Healy after Maison Blanche.

Things quickly disintegrated.

As Hawthorn approached the main straight after passing Macklin, he raised his hand to signal that he was about to dart to the right in order to reach the pit lane. To slow in time, Hawthorn braked hard.

When Hawthorn swerved, Macklin also swerved to take evasive action — perhaps because he didn’t see Hawthorn’s hand signal, or because he was caught out by the Jaguar’s ability to come to a sharp stop, or because his own car’s brakes had begun to fade unevenly. But as Lance Macklin drifted back onto the track, he also drifted into the path of Pierre Levegh.

There was no time to stop. Levegh’s Mercedes was speeding at over 120 miles per hour, and there was no time for him to react and nowhere for him to go. His right front wheel rode up the back of Macklin’s car and turned the Mercedes into an airborne missile aimed directly at a crowd of spectators.

Levegh was thrown from his car as it careened toward the spectators. When he landed, the impact crushed his skull and killed him instantly. His Mercedes had not yet stopped.

The car rolled end over end for over 250 feet before it crashed onto an earthen embankment that separated spectators from the track and finally came to rest by smashing against a concrete stairwell. The machinery disintegrated. The engine block, radiator, and front suspension shot back through over 300 feet of packed spectators, while the hood scythed through the crowd.

The horror wasn’t through. Levegh’s rear-mounted fuel tank had exploded upon impact with the embankment. The Mercedes had been designed with speed in mind, meaning that much of its bodywork was made of a magnesium alloy with a low ignition point. The skeleton of the car burst into ultra-hot flames, spitting embers into the crowd.

Jaguar driver Duncan Hamilton watched the horror unfold from the pit wall. Asked about the disaster later in his life, he said, “The scene on the other side of the road was indescribable. The dead and dying were everywhere; the cries of pain, anguish, and despair screamed catastrophe. I stood as if in a dream, too horrified to even think.”

In that moment, there was no way to know the full extent of the damage that had been done, but onlookers like Duncan Hamilton could tell that something truly unspeakable had just taken place, and that the racing world would have much to reckon with.

The 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans comes to an end

Lance Macklin’s Austin Healey came to a rest in the pit lane, narrowly missing the cars and crews that had already assembled for the first stops of the day. A policeman, a photographer, and two officials were struck by the machine and suffered serious — albeit non-fatal — injuries. The Austin Healey spun across the track and finally came to a rest after dragging down the fence on the left side of the track. Macklin was able to jump from the car without any major injuries.

Meanwhile, Mike Hawthorn had overshot his pit box. He climbed out of the car, dazed, only to find that his Jaguar team had ordered him to get back behind the wheel and take another lap of the Circuit de la Sarthe as the chaos died down. After making that revolution, some of the shock must have worn off, because Hawthorn returned to the pit box in despair, under the firm belief that his sudden jaunt into the pits had caused this accident. Unable to comfort him, his rookie teammate Ivor Bueb was forced to make his first laps at the 24 Hours of Le Mans as the calamity continued.

In the Mercedes pits, Levegh’s wife Denise Bouillin and his co-driver John Fitch were stood at the ready for an impending pit stop when the disaster took place — Fitch ready to take over driving duties, and Bouillin ready to welcome her husband back to safety. The two had a prime view of both the accident and of Levegh’s lifeless body being slowly consumed in flame until a police officer finally covered the corpse with a banner. Fitch remained with Bouillin for a half an hour before he headed to the media center to phone his family and inform them that he wasn’t involved in the wreck. When he arrived, he overheard a journalist reporting that 48 deaths had already been confirmed.

When he returned to the Mercedes pit box, Fitch immediately pulled team boss Alfred Neubauer to the side to suggest that the team withdraw entirely from the race. Whether a Mercedes won or lost, the German marque was sure to face a hefty backlash; the wounds of World War II were still fresh, and there would be no way to delicately state that a German team had caused dozens of French deaths on French soil once again. Neubauer didn’t have the authority to make the call; it was just before midnight when he finally received a call from the company’s directors, who had finally staged an emergency meeting and agreed to withdraw the team. Neubauer waited until 1:45 a.m., when many spectators had cleared out of the stands, to finally call in his final two cars — running first and third. By morning, Mercedes had packed up its entire outfit and had cleared out of the track — but not before asking Jaguar team manager Lofty England if he’d consider withdrawing his own cars as well, out of respect. Jaguar chose to remain in the race.

All the while, gendarmes, medics, and other spectators in the are attended to the injured and dead in a scene that must have looked quite similar to the aftermath of a battlefield.

According to a post-race report from The Guardian, two young boys had been decapitated. The father of one of the boys succumbed to his injuries soon after. A mother clutched her son’s mutilated body to her, shocked.

A man named Jacques Lelong, who had suffered injuries to his head, told the Guardian reporter that “there was a terrific explosion and two car wheels whistled over my head. I saw a little girl in a light-coloured dress who had been trampled on by panic stricken spectators, lying in a pool of blood. A piece of metal hit me square on the forehead and I saw a headless man beside me collapse like a rag doll.” Pleas for blood donations went unheard; the spectators around the track had no idea what had happened.

Pierre Levegh’s car still smoldered next to the track. The firemen available had never quelled a magnesium fire before and quickly learned that trying to douse the blaze in water would only make things worse. They left the chassis amid the rest of the carnage.

Controversially, many spectators at other parts of the Circuit de la Sarthe had no idea that anything had transpired. Race director Charles Faroux declined to red-flag the race. He cited several reasons for his decision.

First and foremost, ending the race would result in angry spectators leaving the track and clogging up the quiet country rounds around Le Mans. Those routes needed to stay open in order to facilitate the quick transfer of injured parties to the hospital.

Faroux’s other reasons were… a bit less sound. He stated that he didn’t have the authority to stop the race; that decision would have to come from Prefect Pierre Trouille, the onsite representative to the Ministry of the Interior. He stated that the teams could sue him for not completing the race. He also reasoned that “the rough law of sport dictates that the race shall go on.”

And so on it went. Many fans likely first discovered something truly horrifying had happened only when at-track announcers declared that Mercedes had withdrawn from the event.

As for the race itself, well — it was a show dominated by Jaguar. Mike Hawthorn and Ivor Bueb won the race, their celebrations muted by tragedy. One photo emerged of Hawthorn sipping from a bottle of champagne on the podium that the French press instantly latched onto. French motorsport magazine L’Auto-Journal published the photo with the caption, “à votre santé, Monsieur Hawthorn” — or, effectively, a very sarcastic “cheers, Mr. Hawthorn”

The week after the 1955 Le Mans disaster

News of the 1955 Le Mans disaster spread quickly in the week after the event. Papers in the United States and United Kingdom had already begun reporting on the death of countless spectators before June 11 had even come to a close, drowning out hopeful reports of a Mercedes-Jaguar duel, or features on local entrants hoping to make history. In the United States, reports of the rising death toll often came alongside mentions of Bill Vukovich’s tragic death. The death toll slowly began to rise before settling somewhere around 80 to 84 fatalities. An additional 120 at least had been injured. Reports around the world scrambled to find their most qualified historians and statisticians; they all agreed that they had seen nothing like this before.

On Monday, June 13, the French Cabinet met to hear reports on the tragedy with the intention of launching a legal investigation and to rework a 20-year-old decree governing track safety measures. It was announced that a mass funeral for the deceased spectators was planned in the Gothic cathedral crowning the village of Le Mans, scheduled for the following day.

The response to the tragedy varied from country to country. In England, journalists excoriated the race organizers for refusing to put a stop to the event, with the London Daily Telegraph stating that continuing to race in the specter of disaster “exposed the sporting spirit to the charge of callousness.” It argued that the race should have been red flagged immediately. In France, reporters wondered why Jaguar refused to withdraw from the race alongside Mercedes.

On June 14, 1955, France banned all automobile road racing. It was intended to be a temporary measure, at least until the country could better understand what had gone wrong and how to enact meaningful changes. Members of the French cabinet agreed that the contemporary racing regulations simply weren’t sufficient to protect both spectators and drivers.

The ultimate argument about the track was one that we’ve seen time and again in racing: the circuit facilities were simply outdated and could not cope with the ever-increasing speed of the race cars.

“Cars hitting the barriers at old speeds used to overturn. Now they fly into the air over the barriers,” Monsieur Paul Gaubert, a deputy Prefect of the area, said. However, the goal was not to completely ban motorsport for the remainder of time; Gaubert continued, “Le Mans will do anything to see that the 24-hour race continues, even if it means spending large amounts to improve the track.” Initial ideas involved eliminating different classes of cars, reducing the number of cars that could start, widening the track, and further separating spectators from potential crash sites.

That same day, Mercedes-Benz told the FIA that it would withdraw from the rest of the racing season. While it initially stated that its withdrawal would only last until greater safety standards were implemented, the iconic German marque wouldn’t reappear again on the international scene until 1989. This largely came down to the fact that Mercedes had already decided that 1955 would be its final year in motorsport; the Le Mans disaster simply meant its withdrawal came several months earlier than intended.

By the end of that first week, the Royal Automobile Club in Britain had committed itself to launching a deeper investigation into the safety of motorsport in its own country. Lance Macklin made headlines by claiming that high speeds caused the horrifying crash. Mike Hawthorn appeared on television to decry the narrow width of the track. Organizers of the Spanish Grand Prix canceled the race that was planned for October.

Within the first month of the disaster, the Italian Automobile Club issued a temporary ban on all racing activity in the country. The Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort carried on as planned, though many reporters claimed they felt uneasy examining the track conditions. On June 21, Mercedes cut a 100,000-pound check to the families of the victims of the crash as experts continued poring over footage of the crash.

By June 22, the Swiss, Spanish, and French Grands Prix were canceled. Switzerland would not lift its ban on motor racing for decades. The British Grand Prix was announced to proceed as scheduled. The iconic International Alpine Rally was canceled, followed by the 1000km Nürburgring in Germany and the Carrera Panamericana in Mexico. Heinz Nordhoff of Volkswagen stated that motorsport was no longer integral to the development of the automobile, and that the goals of motorsport were “more than questionable.” Road safety activists used the Le Mans tragedy to illustrate their claims that even public roads were dangerous.

On July 11, Margaret Pritchard was killed during an all-female exhibition race in California. It spurred plenty of reflection on what many were calling the bloodiest six months in motorsport history, where death took no vacation. Ninety-one people had been in racing accidents killed between January 1 and June 30, and the very fate of motorsport as a whole seemed threatened. Racing across the globe was canceled. Investigators still couldn’t find anything specific to blame for the Le Mans tragedy, which meant no one knew how to prevent a similar event in the future. Yes, motorsport had survived countless horrors in the past, but this one felt different. It felt intense, preventable, and horrifying all at the same time. And because it wasn’t the only notable accident in 1955, it felt especially grim. Could racing ever continue in an era of rapid technological evolution, rising speeds, and gruesome horrors? Only time could reveal that answer.

The year after the 1955 Le Mans disaster

At the end of 1955, the American Automobile Association announced that it would no longer sanction motorsport, and it disbanded its Contest Board. While the AAA wasn’t the only sanctioning body in the U.S. at the time, it was certainly one of the largest and most influential. As we’ve talked about in previous episodes of “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” the AAA was responsible for organizing the Indianapolis 500, and it also served as the primary liaison to the FIA and other international racing organizations. With news of its withdrawal, American motorsport scrambled to fill the void.

In Europe, though, many countries slowly lifted their bans on motorsport before the year was out. France was especially keen to revive its racing scene as a way to start moving forward from the tragedy.

On September 14, 1955, the French government released a new set of racing regulations that circuits and event organizers would need to follow in order to be granted permission to compete. Among the requirements were a minimum track width of 24 feet, with the pit lane set about 16 feet back from the track itself. Dangerous bends or kinks in the road would have to be eliminated, while thick protective walls needed to be erected in front of spectator areas. Those walls also needed to be reinforced by an earthen embankment. The whole goal was to push spectators further back from any danger, and to make sure that the growing cars would have space on the track.

The investigation into the Le Mans disaster continued. Drivers, team personnel, officials, designers, and more all had a chance to testify in front of the French government, sharing information about everything from car construction to the horrors they had witnessed as spectators at Le Mans. Engineers tested the wrecked vehicles and only returned the charred remains of Levegh’s Mercedes-Benz to the factory after about a year had passed.

As the discovery process continued and its details leaked to the press, the media lit up with speculation. Understandably, everyone wanted answers — and they also wanted someone to blame. Mike Hawthorn ultimately shouldered the bulk of the accusations; both Mercedes-Benz and Lance Macklin had testified that Hawthorn’s sharp swerve into the pit lane and his dramatic braking had essentially been to blame for the whole affair, and reporters really latched onto those accounts in light of there being really nothing else to go on. Mercedes maintained that it should not be considered at fault; after all, its car never would have scythed through a crowd or burst into flame if Hawthorn hadn’t forced it off the track.

But if you asked Jaguar, Hawthorn should have faced no blame. In fact, the British marque questioned why Macklin and Levegh had been allowed to drive high-speed race cars in the first place. Here, the sentiment was largely that Levegh was an old and poor driver, and that Macklin was running in a slow car that should have been nowhere close to the front runners.

Again, there were no instant replays or social media clips to analyze, so many fans who wanted someone to blame simply picked the stories they liked best. Making things worse was the fact that many of the initial accounts of the wreck were either completely false, based on hearsay, or exaggerated. Many of the reporters tasked to write about the crash hadn’t been at Le Mans and relied on the firsthand accounts of teams, drivers, and fans — many of whom likely had an agenda, or who were deeply traumatized by what they’d witnessed.

And some of the stories got extremely wild. Some media reports claimed that Mercedes had added illegal components to its fuel, which was why the fire had been impossible to extinguish. It took additional testing of the remaining fuel in the wrecked car’s fuel injection line in order to clear up that accusation. In an era where teams pushed the boundaries of car construction, it simply made more sense to bystanders that the fuel would be the problem; the combustibility of the car’s magnesium-alloy chassis was simply not a consideration.

Much to the disappointment of the people who desperately wanted someone to blame, the French government ultimately concluded that the 1955 Le Mans disaster was simply a horrifying racing accident that resulted from a combination of factors that were no singular person’s fault. Instead, investigators said that the track’s safety standards were simply not capable of protecting bystanders as cars continued to increase in speed. After all, drivers had been raising concerns about the track construction for several years, and many of the concerns centered around the fact that the pit straight was narrow and featured no clear demarcation between the racing surface and the pit boxes. Further changes were made, both to the Circuit de la Sarthe and to other tracks around the world, in light of the investigation’s findings.

But the drama wasn’t through. Understandably, both Mike Hawthorn and Lance Macklin were deeply affected by the crash, and they carried that with them for the rest of their lives. In 1958, though, Macklin picked up a copy of Hawthorn’s autobiography titled Challenge Me the Race only to find that Hawthorn’s recollections of the horrifying crash differed from his own, and it also didn’t feature any culpability.

See, in the book, Hawthorn doesn’t identify any cause of the crash, and he doesn’t really dwell on it for long. But Macklin believed that Hawthorn should shoulder some responsibility for his role in the crash; yes, it was a shocking tragedy, but it did technically stem from Hawthorn’s sudden swerve into the pit lane, and his sudden braking. By not admitting that, though, Macklin felt that Hawthorn was shifting the blame onto his shoulders, implying that the crash actually stemmed from Macklin’s evasive maneuver in response to Hawthorn.

Macklin was so incensed by what he felt was an unfair accusation against him that he began a libel lawsuit. The case was dropped in 1959 after Hawthorn was killed passing a roadgoing Mercedes-Benz in his personal Jaguar.

It’s not really clear what Macklin intended to achieve with the lawsuit, since it didn’t really hold much water and likely wouldn’t have resulted in any satisfying conclusion. David Greenhalgh, a professional lawyer, speculated that at most, the trial would have gone to a hearing, and Hawthorn would have been subjected to a painful cross-examination process. However, there was no real evidence that would have supported either driver’s assertion that he wasn’t at fault, or that the other party was definitively at fault.

It was a surprising twist from Macklin, because the drivers generally avoided attacking one another while they were being interviewed throughout the investigation. However, Macklin also later claimed that the investigation was a farce. Understandably, it was a wound that would have been immensely difficult to heal — and it’s an event that still encourages a massive amount of debate today.

The lingering aftermath of the 1955 Le Mans disaster

It’s almost remarkable that motorsport as a whole wasn’t killed in the aftermath of the 1955 Le Mans disaster, but racing did continue — albeit under a heavy cloud of controversy that took years to clear up. Just to really highlight the impact that this event had, I want to project into the future. Let’s take a glance at the world of motorsport as it was impacted by the Le Mans disaster.

While the 24 Hours of Le Mans continued on in the wake of the crash, the track was immediately modified. The entire pit area was renovated, so that there was a bigger barrier between the track and the grandstands, as well as a wider track overall, which resulted in a shortening of the track by about 100 feet. New signaling areas were installed at the Mulsanne Corner, where teams could hold out pit boards for their drivers at the slowest part of the track while also avoiding any distractions at the pit straight. However, many manufacturers and drivers understandably viewed the event with skepticism and caution; it took until the mid-1960s before public opinion changed — in large part thanks to the fierce battles between Ford, Ferrari, and Porsche.

As speeds rose in the 1960s, the track was altered to include the Ford chicane, followed by some seriously substantial changes. The Maison Blanche kink was bypassed entirely for 1972, and the Porsche curves were built instead. The Tertre Rouge corner was reprofiled in 1979, turning it into a complex double-apex corner that resulted in the demolition of the second Dunlop bridge at the track. The Mulsanne corner was slowed a bit in 1986, and in 1990, the Hunaudieres Straight saw the addition of two chicanes to meet the FIA’s recent rules that limited the maximum length of any one straight. That year also saw a new pit lane entry and new pit buildings to allow for more room for teams to work. Chicanes were added to the Mulsanne straight in 2002, and in 2006, the Dunlop Curve and chicane were reprofiled — all with the intention of adding more runoff area. Critically, these changes were made in anticipation of any serious accidents; the track organizers did not want another disaster on their hands. During that time, other dangerous and difficult races — like the Carrera Panamericana, the Targa Flora, and the Mille Miglia — were completely canceled thanks to their reliance on narrow public roads.

After its withdrawal from motorsport at the end of 1955, Mercedes-Benz was hesitant to re-involve itself in the racing world. The team used the tuning company AMG to compete in sports car events in the late 1960s and early 1970s, then returned as an engine supplier for Sauber in 1985. Mercedes supplied engines to McLaren in 1995, which reintroduced it to Formula 1, and it built a CLK GTR in 1997 to actively compete in sportscar racing again. The brand’s slow reintroduction to motorsport only came at a time when post-World War II tensions had eased and the specter of the Le Mans disaster had faded.

In the United States, after the AAA left racing, events like the Indianapolis 500 were sanctioned by the United States Auto Club, or USAC — a sanctioning body created by Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Tony Hulman to promote open-wheel racing in America. It was ultimately a terrible move for the race; decades of infighting followed, as some teams and drivers resented the control Hulman and USAC had over the greatest event in American racing. Soon after, American open-wheel racing fractured in two, and that rift is still in the process of being healed today.

In 2018, over 60 years after motorsport was banned, the first race took place in Switzerland. Three years earlier, the Swiss government had relaxed its ban on all motorsport to allow electric cars to race in the country. Formula E was the first series to bring active competition back to Switzerland with its Zurich ePrix, bringing an end to one of the longest lingering and immediate effects of the 1955 Le Mans disaster.

Today, if you pay a visit to the Circuit de la Sarthe hunting for any lingering scars of the 1955 Le Mans disaster, you won’t find many. There’s just one single memorial, difficult to spot if you don’t know what you’re looking for. A simple black plaque was erected at the crash site in 1956, on the north wall of the pit straight, reading only “In memoriam, 11 Juin 1955.

Sometimes, during competition, the plaque is covered. Allegedly, some particularly superstitious drivers prefer not to be reminded of motorsport’s greatest tragedy on every lap they make around the track.

“Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” is a project by motorsport historian and journalist Elizabeth Blackstock that is dedicated to uncovering the sport’s forgotten tragedies as well as opening up motorsport to aspiring future journalists. If you’ve enjoyed this Substack, please consider a paid subscription; all posts here will be free for anyone to view, but your donations directly support the kind of content you cannot find at any legacy media site.

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In what may be the least shocking news of all time, Martin Brundle has been snubbed on the grid by a celebrity, and the entire world of Formula 1 is aghast at the concept that someone dare not recognize him.

This weekend, it was Kim Kardashian. Widely circulated rumors have suggested that Kardashian and Lewis Hamilton have been dating for several months, but the Monaco Grand Prix was the first time she turned up at the track to show public support. Of course, she was on the grid ahead of the event, and that meant she was the latest victim of the awkward Martin Brundle grid walk interview. She declined it and her bodyguards ushered Brundle away, but the internet has been ablaze ever since as folks complain that Kardashian is a fake fan and that no one should be allowed on the grid if they will not prostrate before the microphone of Martin Brundle.

We've seen this story play out time and again with the likes of Cara Delevingne and Megan Thee Stallion, and I've written stories about both of those incidents. But there are still folks out there who seem confused, so I'll reiterate this once again: No one owes Martin Brundle (or Formula 1) anything. Not even the celebrities on the grid.

Brundle has been open about the fact that he does not enjoy speaking to celebrities on the grid. He has repeatedly displayed an active disdain for it, be that making snide comments on the approach to the celebrity in question (such as asking the cameras, “what could possibly go wrong?” as he approached the Kardashians, misidentifying celebrities (like Lewis Capaldi, James McAvoy, or the sheer number of US athletes he's incorrectly spotted at American Grands Prix), or asking them frankly asinine when they do agree to an interview (requesting Megan Thee Stallion “rap for us today”).

I understand that Brundle's producers at Sky Sports F1 may be in his ear telling him what to do. I also don't understand why we accept that Brundle routinely misidentifies the celebrities he approaches while getting up in arms about the fact that someone fails to recognize him.

Well, actually, that's not true. I think I do understand. It's a form of gatekeeping.

Have you noticed that the uproar tends to focus exclusively on snubs by female celebrities? That many of those female celebrities also happen to be American? That’s because longtime F1 fans, many of whom are British, want to make it clear that the new sect of viewers — many of them young American women — are not welcome here.

Far be it from me to defend Kim Kardashian, who tends to represent the antithesis of what I personally value in this world. But my goodness, y’all.

I think we forget the sheer amount of media on the ground for a Formula 1 Grand Prix. Sky Sports F1 is just one of countless on-site broadcasters that include the likes of F1TV, DAZN, Sky Italia, Sky Deutschland, ESPN Latam, BeIN, Viaplay, Canal+, and countless others. The Sky Sports F1 broadcast is utilized all around the globe, but it is not the only broadcast, and Martin Brundle is far from the only presenter engaging in a pre-race grid walk. He's one of hundreds of members of the media.

I also think we fail to comprehend the sheer amount of humans on the grid before a Grand Prix! Trust me: I've been there! It is so fundamentally overwhelming that I've walked right by my own friends without fully registering their presence because there are one million things happening. I've looked celebrities dead in the eyes — actors that I have watched on television every single week for months — and completely blanked on them. Even if a celebrity is briefed on the pundits who may want to speak to them before a race, there's a very good chance they're not going to recognize them when the time comes.

And it's worth addressing the refrain I've heard time and again: If Kim Kardashian doesn't recognize Martin Brundle, then she's clearly a fake fan.

To which I ask: So what?

Kim Kardashian wasn't at the Monaco Grand Prix because she's a fan. She was at the Monaco Grand Prix because she's in a relationship with Lewis Hamilton. Why should she be required to recognize every single person who inhabits the ecosystem her partner works in?

How many people who work in Formula 1 are 'real’ fans? How many people who buy a ticket to a Grand Prix are ‘real’ fans? How many journalists who cover the sport are ‘real’ fans? Why do we expect people to pass an examination and put themselves up for public scrutiny just to be somewhere near Formula 1?

And who's to say that Kim Kardashian isn't watching Formula 1 every Sunday? She lives in the United States. Maybe she's tuning into the F1TV broadcast via Apple. Maybe she's watching Jolyon Palmer's grid walk, not Martin Brundle's. Martin Brundle is not the only F1 pundit in the universe, nor is he even the default pundit for the United States. We can't determine a person's interest in Formula 1 solely based on whether or not they recognize or wish to speak to Martin Brundle or any other member of the media on the grid. Particularly when you consider the fact that almost every other interview that goes on in the F1 paddock is heavily vetted, planned, and prepped for.

It speaks to a much larger ecosystem of British bias and entitlement within Formula 1, which manifests in myriad ways. It's British journalists treating their North American colleagues with disdain, because no reporter from Mexico or the United States is worthy of space in the media pen. It's British fans expecting non-British fans to deem mid-tier British drivers as heroes instead of understanding a non-British fan may root for a driver from their home country. It's British fans and media refusing to acknowledge non-British motorsport traditions while simultaneously demanding the rest of the world appreciate theirs.

I haven't spent long embedded in F1 media, but it's been long enough to have seen a lot of this hypocrisy firsthand and to have grown weary of it. The journalists in F1 who laugh off the Indianapolis 500 as “just driving in circles for hours” are often the same ones making a moral conundrum out of folks who approach Formula 1 in ways they don't recognize. You don't have to show the Indy 500 respect, but you can't expect respect in return.

But, listen. I get it. I understand that Formula 1 has very quickly morphed into something that longtime fans struggle to completely recognize. Liberty Media has introduced a whole lot of commercialization, spectacle, and Americanization; that may feel uncomfortable and unfamiliar to the folks whose interest in the sport has been characterized almost entirely through the lens of British media and British ownership. For a lot of folks, Bernie Ecclestone was F1's owner for as long as they were fans. They've witnessed the slow migration of teams to the United Kingdom. If a British driver wasn't winning the drivers’ title, then at least the champion generally drove for a British team, and if the team didn't technically race under a British license, then it was at least probably based in England. I'm American, and there are a lot of things about this modern incarnation of F1 that I don't completely understand. But I also firmly believe that my lack of understanding does not mean other people are bad fans who shouldn’t be allowed near Formula 1.

The problem we tend to see in F1 — a problem exacerbated by these celebrity run-ins with Martin Brundle — is that there's a sect of people who feel they ‘own’ the sport and should therefore be the arbiters of access, when that is one of the most historically contentious topics in Formula 1! The incoming surge of small British teams from the late 1950s through the 1970s forced F1 to reckon with its continental European bias in ways that resulted directly in boycotts, fights, threats, deaths, and sour feelings. Did British teams deserve the right to earn the same money as continental teams? Yes! Did British teams deserve the same respect as continental teams? Absolutely! Does that now mean British teams, fans, and media are now the only example to which everyone must aspire? No.

This outrage feels manufactured, if I'm honest. From Brundle approaching the Kardashians with the expectation of a snub to all the folks online who can apparently read their minds to determine the ~True Level~ of their fandom, it just feels like people were looking for an excuse to be mad. An excuse to generate headlines and social media discourse. An excuse to keep the players involved relevant. An excuse to restate exactly who they believe to have value. If Kim Kardashian had spoken to Brundle, her answers to his questions would be treated with this exact same scrutiny in order to come to a conclusion folks decided on the moment tabloids first started circling photos of her with Hamilton: Kim Kardashian doesn't deserve to have any ties to Formula 1. Not even romantic ones.

It's silly, to be honest. But I'm sure I'll be back again in a year or two to give you all this same lecture, because this the Brundle grid walk humiliation ritual doesn't seem to be going away any time soon.

“Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” is a project by motorsport historian and journalist Elizabeth Blackstock that is dedicated to uncovering the sport’s forgotten tragedies as well as opening up motorsport to aspiring future journalists. If you’ve enjoyed this Substack, please consider a paid subscription; all posts here will be free for anyone to view, but your donations directly support the kind of content you cannot find at any legacy media site.

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If you know IndyCar, then you know Sam Schmidt, the former team owner of his eponymous team that recently became the sole reprieve of McLaren Racing. You probably know a few things about Sam, too — namely, the fact that he's been masterminding a business empire from a wheelchair after a racing accident in 2000 left him paralyzed from the neck down.

But how exactly did Schmidt manage to overcome what could have been the defining tragedy of his life in order to use the experience for good? Well, that's exactly the topic of his recently released autobiography written with Don Yaeger, No Finish Line: A Racer's Journey of Passion, Perseverance, and Purpose.

Full disclosure: The fine folks in charge of promoting Schmidt's autobiography reached out to see if I was interested in receiving a copy. The answer was: of course!

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What I loved most about this book was the ability to get to know Sam better; the writing is conversational and down-to-earth, so it really does feel like a conversation in which he's telling you the story of his life.

I've been following IndyCar for just over a decade, and I almost immediately gravitated toward Schmidt's team because it had a tendency to field drivers I loved: James Hinchcliffe, Simon Pagenaud, Conor Daly, Mikhail Aleshin, Robert Wickens, Marcus Ericsson, Pato O’Ward, Oliver Askew, Juan Pablo Montoya, Kevin Magnussen, Felix Rosenqvist… the list is truly endless! I loved the fact that the team seemed genuinely passionate, that it was a little scrappy, that it was all about defying the odds. (I also loved the team's archive of incredible YouTube videos that included classics like Drivers of the Corn, French sumo wrestling, Pagenaud making crepes, “wookie stripe,” plus Simon and Mikhail kicking a soccer ball around the shop and playing guitar. True classics from the IndyCar film genre.)

I also knew, vaguely, about team founder Sam Schmidt. I knew he'd been a rising star in the Indy Racing League until a practice crash at the Walt Disney World Speedway left him a quadriplegic, that he'd founded his own successful race team, and that his involvement with Arrow Electronics resulted in major strides in semi-autonomous technology designed to help folks with spinal injuries regain the freedom of driving their own cars. They're all accomplishments and experiences I've had ample respect for.

But No Finish Line helps situate those accomplishments within the scope of Schmidt's life. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska to parents who loved racing so much they spent their honeymoon at the drag strip, Schmidt's destiny behind the wheel was put on hold after his father suffered a severe accident in the off-road Ensenada 300. Marv Schmidt was able to walk away from the crash, but two hours later, the right side of his body became paralyzed as a result of a subdermal hematoma that doctors hesitated to operate on. He was unable to speak, barely able to move, and required years of intense rehabilitative work to regain abilities he'd once taken for granted.

Sam Schmidt was 10 years old when his father suffered that crash — old enough to have displayed an interest in racing but also just old enough to start to understand just how devastating his father's accident and subsequent injuries were. He stopped competing afterward; without his father at the track, Schmidt writes that “[motor]sport left our lives.” His concern was less about the danger and more about the fact that his primary association with racing — his father — could no longer remain involved.

I'm not going to overwhelm you with too many more details about Schmidt's upbringing and early racing career, because you'll just have to buy the book for that.

Rather, I want to move next to the thing that most impressed me about Schmidt's story: His absolute persistence to recover from his injuries and put some good back into the world.

Schmidt suffered a C3 and C4 spinal cord injury that left shards of bone embedded in his spinal column. As a result, he was entirely unable to move from the neck down. Doctors did not believe he could breathe on his own again, but Schmidt was willing to try anything to recover — and in the book, he describes recovery less as returning to his pre-injury state and more as regaining the ability to live a meaningful life (as well as the ability to find new meanings!). The tragic injuries of actor Christopher Reeve had resulted in a slew of new interest in spinal cord injury and recovery, and Schmidt was able to transfer to a hospital filled with specialists who would spend hours every day pushing him to breathe on his own, to think, to move.

In his book, Schmidt is candid about the struggles. He admits to suffering from early desires to end his life and recounts an instance in which he refused to see a therapist again after one session because he didn't feel he could dwell on the negatives of his accident without it overwhelming him. He mourns the loss of the “normal” relationship he wanted to forge with his young family — his daughter was a toddler and his son just six months old at the time of his accident — and the fact that his recovery completely overshadowed the first years of his son's young life. (In one poignant moment, Schmidt recalls his son asking to see baby photos of himself; Schmidt had to tell him that the family was so wrapped up in his immediate accident recovery that those photos simply didn't exist.)

He also takes several opportunities to point out the disparities in the healthcare industry. As a young business student, Schmidt had opportunities to work in healthcare and learned even then that the current hospital system in the United States is more about making money than it is about saving lives, and that was brought home to him again after his injury. Because Schmidt had professional athlete insurance, was able to receive six months of inpatient rehabilitation, which he acknowledges as critical not only to his recovery but to to his family's ability to learn how to live now. He repeats that six months felt like it was nowhere near enough time, and yet it's exponentially more than most Americans will receive. In that time, he was able to conquer the initial overwhelm and begin establishing the care routines that would dictate his life. His wife learned how to move him, brush his teeth, and bear the emotional challenges associated with such a significant rewriting of her status quo.

His ability to focus so wholly on recovering gave Schmidt the motivation he needed to acknowledge that, even if his life was about to look very different, he could still find ways to imbue it with meaning and purpose. Comparing his experiences to those of the other patients around him who were discharged mere weeks after enduring an earth-shattering injury gave him direction.

Several friends established the Sam Schmidt Foundation after his accident to help the family cover any costs that were not taken care of by insurance, and Schmidt soon renamed the foundation Conquer Paralysis Now in order to reflect its outward direction. CPN has raised money to support ongoing research regarding spinal injury treatments and to provide grants to organizations who assist the disabled. It also created the DRIVEN NeuroRecovery Centers in Las Vegas and Carmel, Indiana; these centers provide all-around assistance to folks suffering from spinal cord injuries. There's an open gym, a pool with a treadmill beneath it, mental health services, community services, counselors available to help the families of the injured, and so much more — and it's open to anyone, no insurance required.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how humans make meaning, particularly in the midst of tragedy. How do we make sense of the worst things that have happened to us? How are we to understand the worst things that have happened to others? How is it that some folks are able to find purpose and pull through, while others shrink away from reality and lose themselves?

No Finish Line doesn't give a complete answer; as an autobiography, its scope is naturally limited to the experiences of the person crafting the story. But Sam Schmidt's candid descriptions of his recovery period are some of the most articulate expressions of meaning-making that I've had the pleasure to read, particularly in the motorsport world. As humans, we need to feel like we have some amount of purpose in this world, and it can be devastating to have our expected path to that meaning torn away from us. Schmidt spent much of his life believing he was destined to become a successful racing driver and an active father. His accident took those end goals from him, but it didn't take his drive — the motivating force that put Schmidt on the path to success in the first place. With the care and support of his family and friends and loved ones and so many medical professionals who adamantly believed in him, he was able to redirect that drive into new paths. He's simultaneously grateful for the opportunities he had, shocked that others did not have the same ones, and determined to ensure he does what he can to rectify those disparities.

As he recovered in the Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Schmidt recalled a conversation between himself and his wife Sheila where he admitted that, while he was doing okay, he was also struggling to grapple with why this had happened to him and how to be realistic about his future. Sheila told him, “I hate to tell you this, Sam. But if it had been somebody else, they wouldn't make the impact that I think you're going to make — the difference you're going to make because of this.”

And that mindset seems to have made all the difference.

“Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” is a project by motorsport historian and journalist Elizabeth Blackstock that is dedicated to uncovering the sport’s forgotten tragedies as well as opening up motorsport to aspiring future journalists. If you’ve enjoyed this Substack, please consider a paid subscription; all posts here will be free for anyone to view, but your donations directly support the kind of content you cannot find at any legacy media site.

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The FIA is pretty strict when it comes to enforcing its own regulations. But did you know that Formula 1’s most iconic race, the Monaco Grand Prix, actually completely defies the usual FIA requirements dictating the construction of an F1-appropriate race track?

Hello everyone, my name is Elizabeth Blackstock, and I’m an award-winning motorsport historian and journalist. I’m posting new videos here on YouTube every week digging into motorsport history, and in honor of the 2026 Formula 1 season, I want to take a look at why each race on the calendar came to be, or at specific and important moments in that event’s past. My hope is that by the end of the year, we all have a much better understanding of just what it takes to host a Grand Prix, taking into consideration everything from historical precedent to contemporary sporting culture.

And today, I want to talk about the unique place that the Monaco Grand Prix holds on the F1 calendar. Namely, the fact that the track itself actually technically shouldn’t be allowed to host a Grand Prix.

But what does it take to actually host an F1 race? Well, a track must satisfy the criteria to be considered a “Grade 1” track. As that suggests, the FIA has a system of grading race circuits around the world to determine which FIA-sanctioned racing series can race there, and F1 needs to hit the highest level, Grade 1.

But what specs do you have to satisfy to be considered Grade 1? There are a handful. For example, tracks must be 3.5km long — and I’m going to include the American translations here for my fellow folks who cannot conceive of what a kilometer is. Permanent tracks have to be 12 meters wide at all points, though temporary street circuits can be as narrow as 7.6 meters. The starting grid has to be at least 15 meters wide, the first corner has to have a change of direction of at least 45 degrees, with a radius under 300 degrees, grid spots have to be spaced six meters apart, the pit lane has to be 12 meters wide, and on and on and on. There are also rules about the gradient of the track, banking, barriers, drainage, and, critically, what’s required of a permanent medical center.

Now, the FIA does include provisions in its ruleset to allow for deviations, but length is not one of them. Aside from Monaco, because Monaco is not long enough to technically qualify for Grade 1 FIA status. It’s only 3.337km, which, as you can tell, is not the required 3.5.

So, how does Monaco justify its FIA Grade 1 status, if it just straight-up does not satisfy one of the main requirements? The answer is pretty simple: it’s grandfathered in.

Could we increase the length of the Monte Carlo circuit? I mean, I guess… but also, not really.

There are a ton of tracks on the F1 calendar that have faced significant revisions in length and layout since they were first introduced to the motorsport world, and Monaco is one of them, but I’d argue that it hasn’t faced the same kind of alterations as something like, say, Spa. Formula 1 first visited Spa in 1950, and back then, the track was 8.825 miles in length. Since then, the distance has been almost halved, with the length coming in at 4.352 miles. Monaco, by contrast, has always stayed in roughly the same region. The original track back in 1929 was 1.976 miles long. Since then, a few features have been moved, reprofiled, or added. Now, we’re talking about the track sitting at a total of 2.074 miles — that’s only fractionally different than it was back in the old days.

A street circuit is always going to require a very different design approach than a permanent track, but Monaco is even distinct on that front.

When it comes to temporary street circuits, any new track needs to satisfy the FIA Grade 1 criteria. That means Jeddah, Baku, Miami, Las Vegas, and even Madrid must do so. But because those races are still fairly new, it’s far easier to construct the track to meet those requirements. If a city can’t accommodate an FIA Grade 1 track, then it’s just not going to be included on the calendar.

But there’s not really any way that you can edit Monaco to make it satisfy FIA standards. The streets of Monte Carlo are narrow and twisty, and the principality just isn’t really all that big. Plus, the route is absolutely iconic. Adding some arbitrary length would just be a pain in the ass, to be completely real with you.

Now, naysayers will say that Monaco’s inability to satisfy the FIA requirements should mean the race deserves to be nixed, considering it’s not even all that interesting nowadays anyway. But it is very hard to imagine an F1 calendar that doesn’t pay a visit to the principality.

I really like the idea that motorsport journalist Phil Horton pitched a few years back, that F1 should consider transforming the Monaco Grand Prix into a non-championship event. It could serve as an opportunity to let teams run old cars, or to put new drivers behind the wheel for a weekend, or any number of things that could add a little spice to the fairly processional race.

There are also going to be people who argue that we simply cannot change anything about the race, that Monaco must be a proper, points-paying Grand Prix. It is, after all, one of the three legs of the Triple Crown of Motorsport that includes other victories at the 24 Hours of Le Mans as well as the Indianapolis 500; doing anything to make Monaco not an F1 race would be kind of sacrilege.

Now, that’s because Monaco has always been pretty important to F1, though to understand this weird place it holds, we do need to look a little further back as well, to the founding of the track.

The idea for a major racing event in Monaco came from a gentleman named Antony Noghes back in the late 1920s. Noghes was then the president of the Automobile Club de Monaco, but the Automobile Club de Monaco was not recognized as a national club by the AIACR, which was a progenitor of the FIA. Basically, the AIACR was composed of national racing organizations all around Europe, but in order to qualify as a national racing organization, your local club needed to host a major racing event entirely within your country’s borders. The Rallye Monte Carlo didn’t start in Monte Carlo, nor did most of the event take place in Monte Carlo. It only ended in Monte Carlo.

Noghes wanted the Automobile Club de Monaco to be recognized as its own national organization as opposed to simply a suborganization of the Automobile Club de France, so he proposed hosting a Grand Prix around the city streets. He ran the idea by Prince Louis II and racing driver Louis Chiron, both of whom thought the idea was pretty genius. They laid out a track around the principality and invited a handful of Europe’s best racers to compete in the first scheduled event. That race took place on April 14, 1929, and it was won by a driver named William Grover-Williams, who was driving a Bugatti type 35B. Drivers loved the race, and it quickly established a permanent presence on the international racing calendar.

But Noghes put his race together just in the nick of time. Basically, at this point, pretty much any race could call itself a Grand Prix. If you look at the 1932 season, you have the Grand Prix de l’ACF, which was the official French Grand Prix, but there were also tons of other Grands Prix in France, like the Grand Prix d’Oranie, the Grand Prix de Picardie, the Grand Prix de Lorraine, the Grand Prix de Dieppe, and so many more. So, in order to distinguish between a major international event and a mere local Grand Prix, the AIACR recognized the biggest and most important race from each of its national member clubs as being a Grand Epreuve. Even though it was only a few years into its existence, the Monaco Grand Prix earned Grand Epreuve status alongside the Spanish Grand Prix, the Italian Grand Prix, the Belgian Grand Prix, and plenty of others. It was also subsumed into the European Championship that was created in 1936.

And when Formula 1 was first announced as the regulatory set dictating the World Championship back in 1950, Monaco was featured on the calendar.

Yet its place there didn’t last long! We see Monaco as a staple of Formula 1 today, but between 1951 and 1954, the event was either outright not held, or it was held as a non-championship race because there simply wasn’t enough money to host it and because F1 was struggling to finalize its regulations. This was a period of time, remember, where F1 was still kinda figuring itself out, to the extent that we actually ran Grands Prix using Formula Two regulations for a few years. The race returned in 1955, and it’s been held ever since… with the exception of 2020, of course.

What makes Monaco a crown jewel? In the past, it was partially the luxury of the environment, but more than that, it was the unique challenge posed by Monaco. The track is narrow and twisty and terrifying, and being able to swallow your fear in order to race flat-out there, to qualify on pole, to overtake another driver, is a monumental feat of bravery. Add in rain, and you’ve got this additional challenge of simply keeping the car out of the wall when everything seems like it’s conspiring against you to wreak havoc. In terms of the Triple Crown, Monaco represented the ability to navigate fiddly street courses with precision, which was a skill distinct from the patience and endurance required by Le Mans or the flat-out passion required by the Indy 500.

Today, it’s hard to imagine a Formula 1 where Monaco actually isn’t included, but a large part of me feels like that’s less due to the nature of the racing and more just down to its legacy. The 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Indy 500 have gone through plenty of changes throughout their respective histories, but neither race has faced the same criticisms as Monaco. The cars that compete at those events still fit on the track, and the conditions of the race are difficult enough and competitive enough that winning still really means something.

I know it’s still really important to F1 drivers to win the Monaco Grand Prix, but doing so unfortunately feels a little less due to the winner’s race craft and ability to dice for the lead, and a little more due to the lack of passing and competitive racing. The race feels is still a big deal, but more because it’s a meeting point for the celebrities and drivers who live in Monaco than anything else. The cars are just too big for this specific track to be as interesting as it was in the past. That’s why F1 keeps making tweaks like banning active aero. They’re trying to find some way to add some interest back to the streets of Monte Carlo.

Here in the United States, we’ve always done motorsport a little differently. Some of our most iconic racing venues have been derived from horse tracks or defunct airports — but there are some road courses that were designed with the European motorsport legacy in mind. Tracks like Watkins Glen and Road America ripple through undulating, tree-lined hillsides in an attempt to echo continental classics like the Nürburgring or Spa-Francorchamps.

But there are some significant differences between our road courses and those of classic European fame. Ours are much shorter, and while they share names with their street-circuit ancestors, the actual modern tracks were rebuilt far away from the tracks that initially carried the name.

But why? Why, suddenly, did these sprawling, town-center tracks all pick up stakes and move to purpose-build courses somewhere else? Why did the course of American motorsport history abruptly change?

The answer lies with a young seven-year-old boy named Franky Fazzary, and a tragedy at Watkins Glen.

Racing progress in the United States

After World War II, Watkins Glen quickly transformed into the premiere location for anyone serious about motorsport — but how did this sleepy hamlet in upstate New York become so addicted to speed? To tell that story, we need to understand the evolving roles that motorsport has played in America, and just how distinct that has been from the rest of the world.

Oval-track racing had existed in America prior to World War II; after all, it was pretty easy to transform any horse track into an automobile racing surface, and plenty of cities and towns across the country had local fairgrounds with a track already built in. While America saw a boom in prosperity after the war, it took a while for innovations in production and technology to make it to the automobile, since so many former car factories had been transformed to produce war goods instead. Plus, big purpose-built tracks like the Indianapolis Motor Speedway had fallen into disrepair after racing came to a halt. So, for the first few years after the war, racing was primarily done on oval tracks with prewar cars.

Despite the fact that everyone likes to credit Henry Ford with saying that auto racing first started five minutes after the second car was built, he wasn’t really huge on the whole “organized motorsport” thing — at least, certainly not the same way his European compatriots were. Ford defined the American automotive market with practicality, not innovation, in mind. He wanted to efficiently build reliable cars that could reasonably transport Americans from one place to another.

Over in Europe, though, the minds behind automotive brands like Peugeot, Renault, Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Maserati, and Aston Martin were dedicated to performance. There, cars weren’t just for practical puttering around between high society homes; instead, cars were beautifully crafted objects of passion. There were plenty of models available to the general public, but the big focus was on crafting machines that were more powerful, more beautiful, and more enduring — and to test those qualities, automakers used public roads as proving grounds.

Europe’s public roads also enabled that kind of testing. While not every rural road was well-maintained, many high-trafficked paths between cities and towns had been in use for centuries. Those roads might have only been large enough for an ox cart, and they were likely pretty rough — but they did exist and had done so for ages. By contrast, the early Americans who attempted to drive across the country were met with wide-open plains, mud fields, and a whole lot of nothing. Conditions had improved by the start of World War II, but by that time, America already had a defined racing tradition, and it involved a lot of oval courses.

But members of the American military who had been shipped abroad during World War II had come into direct contact with a whole new automotive world that had previously only been available on the pages of specialist motorsport publications. They saw firsthand the nimble sports cars that were being produced on the other side of the Atlantic, and they saw many of the sprawling roads that had created long-standing events like the Mille Miglia, as well as the roughly enclosed tracks that had created classic races at Le Mans. It was an entirely different way of thinking about motorsport, and it had an impact on the folks who returned to the United States with a new way of experiencing adrenaline and a hunger for a different kind of vehicle. Plus, without any new American cars being built, many Americans of means simply started importing the new-to-them European models they’d fallen in love with.

There would have been no point buying these machines, though, if you didn’t have an opportunity to race them. So, organizations like the Sports Car Club of America, or the SCCA, stepped in to help sanction meets and races and develop a new road-racing scene here in the United States.

The SCCA turned to the British club racing scene for inspiration when it set out its rules, which basically meant that it wanted to remain an “amateur” organization. Any driver who joined the SCCA essentially agreed that he would not accept any kind of compensation for competing in any event — be that prize money, wages, or even snacks from local companies in exchange for painting a logo on the side of their race car. If you’re wondering why that mindset smacks of elitism, that’s because elitism was the whole point. The SCCA was primarily composed of rich wasp-y types that could afford to invest in a gorgeous imported Bugatti but who otherwise had no motorsport skill. They didn’t want their organization being overrun by the working class dirt- and oval-track racers who actually had a lot of established talent but who competed in motorsport as a way to make a living. The SCCA’s mindset also differed from that of continental Europe, which didn’t hesitate to offer prizes or entry fees to the drivers who took part in their events.

But the SCCA couldn’t do everything all on its own. Every burgeoning organization needs a few enterprising members to push the boundaries and grow the membership — and one of the first men to do that in postwar America was Cameron Argetsinger.

Cameron Argetsinger, father of Watkins Glen racing

Cameron Argetsinger wasn’t born in upstate New York, but his ties to Schuyler County ran deep. Born in Youngstown, Ohio on March 1, 1921, Argetsinger spent his summers at a family lakehouse in Watkins Glen, a quiet town tucked into the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.

Argetsinger’s father was a corporate lawyer for Youngstown Steel & Tubing company, so the family never lacked in the fineries of life — and for a young Cameron, that involved automobiles. The Argetsinger family was always equipped with the latest Packards, and as a teenager, Cameron devoured the sporting magazines that reported on the massive successes of German marques like Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union at New York’s Vanderbilt Cup. When he received his very own Packard 180 Darrin Victoria for his 18th birthday, it was only natural that he took the convertible to Watkins Glen to set personal speed records through the streets he’d grown up on. In 1941, he got married, spent a few years in the war, and returned home to earn a law degree from Cornell University.

Argetsinger first got involved with the SCCA while trying to buy a Duesenberg from one of its members; since it didn’t count as a proper “sports car,” Argetsinger was confined to being a subscribing member only rather than a participating one — but that didn’t stop him from dreaming big.

See, young Cameron had fallen in love with the idea of organizing and hosting a European-style race right in the middle of his favorite town, Watkins Glen.

“I was truly thinking of eventually bringing all the great European teams and champions, and to see Watkins Glen become the first American site to stage major European-style international road races annually,” Argetsinger told writer Philippe Defecheraux, as reported in Watkins Glen: The Street Years.

As Argetsinger saw it, the challenging roads that carved through the small, hilly village were the perfect place to stage America’s version of the German Grand Prix held at the Nürburgring. He wanted to do it properly, too — to start and end the race right in the middle of town.

By Christmas of 1947, Argetsinger had driven the streets of Watkins Glen so many times that he almost certainly have visualized their every detail when he closed his eyes — and that’s likely what made it so easy for him to design his ideal track on the floor of his family’s home. Using magazines to represent road sections, he recreated some of his favorite driving routes from memory and employed toy cars on each one to “test” the racing line. After he’d fiddled with different track iterations that would amount to somewhere between four and eight miles, Argetsinger found his answer. Now he just needed to find a way to bring the magazine track to life.

It was no easy feat; at first, that magazine model track was all Argetsinger had, but that didn’t stop him from inviting around friends and townspeople to offer him feedback on what he’d put together — and, shockingly, it was enough to convince all the right people that this young man had dreamed up a frankly impressive method of generating tourism.

Argetsinger’s proposed 6.6-mile track had its start on Franklin Street, the main drag of downtown Watkins Glen. The start line was marked out across from the Court House, and the track wound east through the hills and dales of the region. It featured multiple road surfaces — cement, oiled gravel, dirt, and macadam — plenty of tricky bends, a narrow stone bridge, and an impressively steep downhill curve that led the field back into town. To really give you a sense of the track, I want to extensively quote Bill Milliken, an aerospace engineer who doubled as a racer and who helped found the Watkins Glen Grand Prix:

“Down the long stretch from White House corner, the driver has his hands full as the car takes punishment from the surface roughness and he wrestles with the dips and camber changes of the road. He slows slightly, negotiations the bends, then finally brakes and shifts for Schoolhouse Turn, and literally dives toward Stone Bridge. Another shift, more heaviy braking, and he is past the bridge, and accelerating through the valley. A series of tricky bends finds him approaching Archie Smith corner, which must be taken in low gear and at moderate pace, and then a fast bit of gravel leading to the railway crossing. At this point the harder sprung machines aviated for some distance as they took the tracks at unabated speed. Seconds later, with Friar’s Bend behind, they may be seen at really high speed on that long sweeping downhill stretch known as Big Bend. Skill and judgment are at a premium, as speed must be reduced for the famous ‘S’ back onto Franklin Street, and then a smooth and glorious run up the home stretch.”

Argetsinger decided an early October race date would showcase the beauty of changing leaves, and with some rudimentary safety measures in place, the SCCA gave the Watkins Glen circuit its seal of approval. Because the proposed circuit ran across a set of railroad tracks, officials even managed to negotiate with the New York Central Railroad Company to rearrange the train schedules on race day so no trains would pass by until the event was over.

By mid-September of 1948, over 35 drivers had submitted entries — most of them driving heavy pre-war vehicles or modified machines. As the air began to chill and autumn descended, Argetsinger knew his race had potential. In fact, he thought he’d struck gold.

Establishing motorsport at Watkins Glen

October 2, 1948. Race day for the inaugural Watkins Glen Grand Prix. All throughout the week prior, dedicated motorsport fans began to descend on the small town of Watkins Glen; officials estimated that 10,000 people had arrived, effectively quadrupling the town’s small population in a matter of days. Local police and firefighters woke early to keep order during the pre-race Concours car show, and soon after, chapters of the Boy Scouts and American Legion arrived to help.

In order to prevent any undue stress on the town, Watkins Glen requested that all racing activities be confined to a single day. First came the Concours, which was followed by a brief four-lap Junior Prix for small-displacement engined cars. Shortly after would be the Grand Prix itself, an eight-lap sprint that had to be delayed due to some expected inefficiencies in the timetable. There was no practice or qualifying, and the starting order was determined by a draw.

Thanks to the amateur nature of the race, there were plenty of folks competing that we likely don’t remember today; many of them were local to upstate New York and had even contributed to the creation of the event itself. Perhaps the star of the show was Briggs Cunningham, an entrepreneur who would go on to pilot the yacht Colombia to a win at the 1958 Americas Cup race while also building unique cars to compete in races around the world. In 1948, though, he was still hard at work building his profile.

As far as the cars went — it was quite a mix. The race was divided into several different classes, but you were still able to watch brand-new MG TCs face off against cars from previous decades. Briggs Cunningham even brought a “special,” which was the name for a vehicle that had been heavily modified by the owner. In this case, Cunningham’s machine was called the BuMerc, which included a Buick engine and chassis overlaid with the body of a Mercedes.

When the flag dropped to signal the start of the first-ever Watkins Glen Grand Prix, a field of 15 cars thundered to life and rocketed down Franklin Street. Frank Griswold in an Alfa Romeo was first to reappear at the start line, 30 seconds ahead of the field. However, reliability wasn’t exactly at its best in that era, and as the laps ticked away, several drivers were forced to retire. Cunningham was freed up just enough to attempt mounting a challenge against the leader, going so far as to head the field himself before he was overtaken.

After a thrilling eight laps, the 1948 Watkins Glen Grand Prix was won by Frank Griswold Jr. behind the wheel of his 1938 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B. He also set the lap record with a time of 5 minutes and 46.1 seconds, which meant he averaged 68.5 miles per hour. The total time elapsed for the 52.8-mile Grand Prix was 49 minutes and 41 seconds, for an average speed of 63.7 miles per hour.

Despite the delays and the relatively small crowd, the inaugural Watkins Glen Grand Prix was a massive success. The drivers gushed about how it was the finest event they’d ever contested, and fans had been delighted by the novelty. The Watkins Glen Grand Prix Organization decided almost immediately to stage another race the following year. It may not have been a spectacle that could compete with the hours-long endurance events of Europe, but it was an extremely promising start for what was a seemingly unheard of racing discipline in America.

And it also had a ripple effect. Briggs Cunningham was inspired enough to decide to start building his own cars to enter in European races. The SCCA had established its first marquee event in North America and was so bolstered by the success that it began exploring its options for future events throughout the United States.

That, though, was still to come in the future, and we’ll get to that in a moment. For now, we’re going to focus on the evolution of the Watkins Glen Grand Prix over the next few years, because the expansion was absolutely mindblowing. In fact, race organizers almost immediately began the process of planning for the 1949 running as soon as the checkered flag flew in 1948; everyone knew the event had been successful, and with more time at their disposal, they knew they could craft something exceptional.

That meant there were a few changes, the largest of which was a move of the race date. While the weather had been pretty much perfect in 1948, organizers didn’t want to risk the unpredictability of New York’s autumn. So, the race date was shifted two weeks earlier, to mid September. Next, the junior event was renamed the Seneca Cup, and the Grand Prix itself was lengthened from 8 to 15 laps in an attempt to get a little closer to approximating the distance of a European race. That length meant drivers would have to pit once during the event, where they’d be topped up with a gallon of fuel. Finally, the Grand Prix classes were tweaked so that their engine displacement ranges more actively mimicked those of the international racing scene.

As a result of the previous year’s success, the grid for the 1949 running of the Grand Prix practically doubled, and the field grew to accommodate a wider range of European vehicles. Crowds increased dramatically, with some sources claiming that 5,000 more spectators had descended on the small town of Watkins Glen than the year prior, for a total of 15,000 viewers scattered around the track. A diverse field of more powerful vehicles meant that the lap record dropped from 5 minutes and 46.1 seconds to 5 minutes and 12.2 seconds, making for an average speed of 75.38 miles per hour.

The second Watkins Glen Grand Prix had been pretty much perfect. More cars in the field meant that American “specials” were doing battle with sophisticated machinery, just as Cameron Argetsinger had hoped. More and more SCCA-sanctioned races were popping up across America, and several SCCA members had decided to head over to Europe in 1950 to see what they could accomplish overseas.

And 1950 was a massive year for motorsport. It was the first-ever season of “Formula 1,” a series of regulations dictating a handful of Grand Prix races that would ultimately crown a World Champion at the end of the season. Germany, which had largely stepped back from motorsport after World War II, looked as if it was preparing to return to the international stage. In America, the racing fever grew, with the West Coast quickly establishing its presence in the racing scene. Briggs Cunningham took a Cadillac to the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Meanwhile, Watkins Glen Grand Prix organizers continued to refine its event. For 1950, an additional race would be added between the 15-lap Seneca Cup and the 15-lap Grand Prix. This would be the 8-lap Glen Trophy, which was later renamed the Queen Catherine Cup. 114 entries expressed interest in the event, and still more fans packed onto the streets to watch the race. The following year, the program remained the same, but organizers also added a driver’s meeting and a practice session to the docket, and safety had dramatically improved. That year, a track-wide public address system had been installed, both so that fans spread out around the course could keep up with the action and so that public safety officials would immediately know of any danger. Crowd control had increased, which was a huge necessity considering that officials estimated that 100,000 spectators had turned up for the race. A new average speed record of 77.65 mph was set by Grand Prix winner Phil Walters, who was driving a Briggs Cunningham special, the C-2.

The Watkins Glen Grand Prix was quickly becoming a staple in the American racing calendar, and hopes were high for the 1952 running.

How Watkins Glen impacted motorsport in America

Between Watkins Glen’s first Grand Prix in 1948 and its fourth in 1951, road racing fever had firmly captured the American psyche — and other folks began to realize that if a racing event could work in upstate New York, why couldn’t it work in their little corner of the world?

First came Bridgehampton in 1949. One of the towns that composes the Hamptons, Bridgehampton is about 100 miles east of New York City, and it had become a refuge for wealthy cityfolk who were ready for a more peaceful change of scenery. It was also a fantastic haven for aspiring racers and SCCA members who needed a little extra garage space to store their vehicles. Bruce Stevenson, a former B-52 pilot, and Alec Ulmann, a stunning race promoter, carved out a four-mile course on Bridgehampton’s flat roads and set a race date for June 11.

As you can imagine, many of the usual suspects turned up at the Bridgehampton event; it was great practice for the upcoming Watkins Glen event in a few months, and it gave many drivers a chance to race more than once a year.

Then, in 1950, we saw a huge explosion of racing all across America. Florida’s Palm Beach Shores hosted the first race of the new year, and the California Car Club of America — a very different entity from the SCCA — established races in Palm Springs, Pebble Beach, and Santa Ana. The SCCA featured major events at Westhampton, Bridgehampton, a Studebaker test track in South Bend, Indiana, Linden New Jersey, and Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. Halfway through the year, the Carrera Panamericana, a rally race through Mexico, gave Americans a perfect opportunity to compete against some of the greats from across the pond, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans had become an important target for Briggs Cunningham. At the end of the season came the first-ever race at Sebring, organized by Alec Ulmann on a disused air field.

Take a moment to really think about that. In 1948, Watkins Glen hosted the first road race in America after World War II. By 1951, racers across the country had more than a dozen marquee events to choose from when planning their competitive schedules for the year. A new motorsport tradition was well on its way to being established.

How racing at Watkins Glen started to go wrong

Despite the heady successes of the Watkins Glen Grand Prix weekends and the reverberations they had throughout America, not everything had been perfect. In fact, as the event approached its fifth year, organizers had their hands full.

First and foremost, the unprecedented success of the event meant that, no matter how well the town prepared for the race, it was still caught off guard when fans rolled in each year. As the years passed, Watkins Glen hired more police and erected more rope barriers, but event delays due to an uncontained crowd had become fairly common.

Then, in 1950, tragedy struck. Sam Collier had become one of the most important personnel in the American racing world. He and his brother Miles had joined Briggs Cunningham at Le Mans, and he had helped found the Automobile Racing Club of America, which would ultimately join forces with the SCCA. He hadn’t quite found luck at Watkins Glen, and as he was leading the Grand Prix in 1950, the tires of his Ferrari 166 SC lost their grip on the long straight by the railroad bridge. Unable to make the turn at the end of the straight, Collier veered into the gravel and tried to save his machine — but it wasn’t to be. The Ferrari sharply skittered across the road and launched into a grassy meadow.

Bill Milliken, who was closely following Collier at the time, reported what he saw: “This was only the second lap and I was trying to regain the lead. We all loved racing for the camaraderie, but, being a competitive bunch, we were also driving to win. Knowing there was gravel over the apex of that wide corner, I stayed more on the outside than Sam. The next thing I experienced was the sharp ding of a small boulder landing in my cockpit. Then I saw the Ferrari get into a slide and catapult end over end in the green meadow. Now focusing on the next turn and approaching Stone Bridge section, I suddenly and joyfully realized I was in the lead. After my harmless rollover on the hard asphalt of Fourth Street two years before, I was not overly worried about Sam. The open meadow seemed such a cushy landing spot.”

Seatbelts and helmets were mandatory for all racers at the Glen, and Collier should have been able to walk away from that accident unscathed. Instead, his seatbelt anchor had broken almost as soon as he left the road. Collier was thrown from his car, still alive but completely motionless. He died almost as soon as he entered the hospital.

The Watkins Glen Grand Prix continued on, seeing another spectacular flip, albeit without fatal consequences — but in that morning’s Seneca Cup, a wayward car had thrown a fireman to the ground. The fireman survived, but it served as the first dark mark on the young race’s history.

And that wasn’t all. By 1951, race founder Cameron Argetsinger had been effectively removed from the event’s organization thanks to a very significant deviation in his ideals.

See, Argetsinger’s dream for Watkins Glen had always been international. He desperately wanted the course to play host to the professional racers from Europe that he’d admired from the pages of his sporting magazines.

However, there was absolutely no incentive for those European greats to bother with the race. The SCCA sanctioning barred professional racers from competing, and even if a man like Stirling Moss had been allowed to start the race, he’d have been very disappointed by the fact that his trip across the pond would not be a prosperous one. No one was even allowed to offer free lodging or paid expenses for travelers — so those travelers simply wouldn’t show up.

Still, in 1949, Argetsinger registered his event with the FIA, the sanctioning body that governed European motorsport. To do that, though, he had to bypass the SCCA and instead work with a different American sanctioning body: the AAA. Yes, you heard that right — the American insurance company actually used to sanction major races in the United States, such as the Indy 500. It was also the sanctioning body that could negotiate internationally with the FIA.

But the SCCA was not pleased to discover that Argetsinger had been consulting with a different sanctioning body, even though Argetsinger had intentionally designed the running of the Grand Prix to conform to international standards. A very nasty public battle raged between the isolationists and the internationalists via letters published in different motorsport newspapers, and the ultimate result saw Argetsinger completely removed from the Watkins Glen Grand Prix organization.

Still, drivers like John Fitch and Phil Walters began to warn organizers about the possible dangers that the event could pose. In 1951, still more speed records were broken thanks to the rapid development of racing technology, but it had become very clear that all was not well. Fitch and Walters had international racing experience and were as close to professional as you could get while still being members of the SCCA — and they knew that the SCCA was simply not equipped to deal with the rapid technological development. They also knew that crowd control left a lot to be desired. They warned the SCCA that it was underestimating both the spectator situation and the power situation, and if those two problems were to collide, it would have disastrous consequences.

But the amateur-only format had been working for the SCCA. Why change something that had continued to be so promising?

The fatal 1952 Watkins Glen Grand Prix

The 1952 racing season was a massive one in many respects. Porsche and Mercedes-Benz represented an official racing comeback by German automakers, and the 12 Hours of Sebring was coming to represent a significant challenge to the amateur-only SCCA, which decided to host its own rival event in Florida just before Alec Ulmann’s race. The American racing schedule overall was jam-packed with events, but the 1952 Watkins Glen Grand Prix was set to be the biggest of them all.

With Cameron Argetsinger entirely out of the picture, the race was run by George Shannon and a slate of SCCA members including Fred Wacker and George Felton. While the racing schedule had remained largely the same, a few changes had been made in the name of pomp and circumstance, like the addition of a post-race prizegiving at the local high school auditorium. Snow fencing lined the spectator areas of the track, haybale chicanes were erected to slow the cars on key parts of the track, the trackside communication system had been greatly improved, and a few areas on the track had been deemed “no passing zones” to further reduce the chances of danger. Race day dawned beautiful and sunny, but because the pre-race festivities had been going on for several days at that point, the atmosphere was thick with anticipation.

Then, things began to spiral. Organizers decided at the last minute to remove the haybale chicane, resulting in a delay that continued to snowball. The changes to the timetable meant organizers had to wait for New York Central trains to pass through town, and fans needed to be herded back into place. After the first race of the day, the Seneca Cup, even more time passed as organizers had to remove abandoned cars from the side of the road. The Queen Catherine Cup was only just ending at 3:30 p.m., when the Grand Prix had been scheduled to start. As the cars lined up for the final race of the day, a reporter from Sports Car magazine reported that “spectator tension was almost uncontrollable.”

When the green flag finally flew, Fred Wacker’s red Allard leapt into action up Old Corning Hill, but two Cunningham roadsters — one driven by Cunningham himself and John Fitch — gave chase close behind. By the end of the first lap, Cunningham had snatched the lead, and Fitch was just behind him. On Franklin Street, Cunningham occupied the left lane with Fitch in the right; Wacker tailed them from the left lane.

Just past the Courthouse, Fitch moved into the lefthand lane just as Wacker attempted to overtake him on the outside; because they were entering a no-passing zone, Fitch was shocked to discover the red car in his peripheral vision, and he veered to the right to give Wacker space. Wacker, however, was shocked; he thought Fitch was aware of what he was up to. Wacker veered to the left, his two outside tires dipping off the tarmac.

Just ahead of them was a cramped spectator area. Fans had gathered ten people deep in front of the souvenir shop, with nothing but a rope separating them from the action. Women in camping chairs and children pressed against the rope, pushing it ever so slightly into the road.

Wacker, speeding along at over 80 miles per hour, knew he couldn’t make any sharp maneuvers to pull his Allard back onto the racing line. As he eased his car back into position, he felt a slight thump on his rear fender. It was only as he passed John Fitch, who had slowed his car to peer behind him, that Wacker understood what had happened. As he glanced behind him, he spotted a thin trail of smoke rising from the utility pole in front of the souvenir shop. The crowd was in shambles; bodies lay on the ground surrounded by blood, crushed sandwiches, and broken glass. Something terrible had happened.

To describe what happened next, I want to directly quote two paragraphs from Philippe Defechereaux’s book, Watkins Glen: The Street Years, because I don’t know that I’ll do it the same amount of justice as he had done. Defecheraux writes:

The Allard’s rear fenders were not cycle fenders as those in the front. Rather, they were a rounded affair aching over the wheel and down, ending about a foot above ground as they became an integrated part of the car’s short, curvaceous tail. They had a rounded edge where the fender’s lowest curve turned sharply inside to form the rear hemline of the racer. The one-foot height of that edge corresponds to slightly above mid-calf for an average adult leg, and about face level for a squatting young child. That is exactly the part that scythed through the front row of spectators for about thirty feet in front of the souvenir shop.

In the split-second it took the Allard to pass by, it seriously injured 12 people and killed Frank Fazzari. The seven-year-old had his skull crushed by the wheel’s winged knock-off hubcap. His father, half conscious, and his brother, stunned and in pain, lay on the sidewalk, both with broken legs.

The Fazzary family were not the only ones injured that day. Several other spectators had suffered broken legs, while countless others could do nothing but look on in a state of shock.

Increased safety measures hadn’t been able to prevent the accident, but within two seconds of its happening, the steward closest to the action lifted a red flag, and seconds later, the race had ended. Moments after the car had skimmed the crowd, policemen and Army guards rushed to the scene to help. Ambulances flooded in. The loudspeakers fell silent, and fans scattered around the track were left to wonder what had happened.

The world of American motorsport was about to change forever, but for the Fazzary family, their world seemingly ended at the 1952 Watkins Glen Grand Prix.

The fallout

By the time the accident was cleared up, the sky had begun to darken. There was no choice left but to cancel the remainder of the 1952 Watkins Glen Grand Prix. Fred Wacker was arrested by the State Police and required to make a statement. The media then descended, calling motorsport events “nothing but Roman Holiday,” where key participants were forced to shed blood for the gaze of a ferocious audience. Life magazine ran large photos of the accident, which included Franky Fazzary’s dead body in a pool of blood. Even Motor Trend had choice words for the event; it was harsh in its criticisms of the amateur focus of the field, noting that a track as challenging as Watkins Glen should not be the remit of racers who only compete a few times a year.

We don’t know much about Frankie Fazzary. There’s even a question about how to spell his surname — some publications list it as Fazzari, which is the surname many of his family members share, though Frankie’s gravestone is etched with the first spelling.

We know he was local to Watkins Glen, likely growing up at 184 12th Street in Watkins Glen, just a few steps away from the local high school. We don’t know much about his family, with the exception of his parents and his brother James. An obituary in the Elmira Star-Gazette also lists a sister, Frances Fazzary, and a grandmother, Mary. We know Frankie was buried at St. Mary’s Cemetery, which lines the village’s iconic gorge. His headstone features a photo of the young boy dressed in a suit and tie.

Newspapers from the era don’t shed much more light. Michael Fazzary, Frankie’s father, was listed as being a milk driver. We learn that the Schuyler County Coroner listed the cause of Frankie’s death as being accidental, and that there would be no inquest. Other papers note that Frankie’s head was crushed, possibly due to a flying hubcap.

Police Sergeant J. Edward Maloney stated after the race that the fans had been well within the confines of the safety ropes strung to prevent spectators from entering the road. He also said that the group of spectators at the scene was small in comparison to other viewing areas around the track; the tragedy could have been much, much worse.

In the December 21 edition of that year’s Star-Gazette, Michael Fazzary was listed as one of several people who filed claims against the Village of Watkins Glen. Fazzary asked for $150,000 for the death of his son, $250,000 for his own injuries, and $100,000 for the injuries suffered by James, his other son. In today’s money, that would be the equivalent of over $1 million.

On February 28, 1953, the Elmira Advertiser featured an update about the Fazzary case as part of an article about lawsuits that had finally been settled as a result of injuries suffered during the 1950 event. There wasn’t news about how the case was proceeding in court, but the author noted that the Grand Prix Race Board’s plans for a ‘53 race were stymied by the fact that the event would not be insured unless safety changes were made.

In 1954, the suits were settled out of court. Part of the settlement was that the terms of the deal would never be announced. In those later articles, though, we learn that Michael Fazzary had asked for less money, a total of around $230,000 instead of the $500,000, though many papers report different figures.

In the aftermath of the tragic Watkins Glen Grand Prix, politicians passed a law that said no additional permits would be issued for races taking place on public roads. The repercussions of that decision rippled throughout all of the United States. Politicians in the rest of the country soon either banned road racing or found loopholes to do so in effect — such as what New York had done by refusing to renew permits for organizations to close public roads for racing events. Insurance companies refused to cover events or drivers. Even if the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Organization had wanted to stage another race, it would have been prevented from doing so right from the start.

Unfortunately, that also meant that other tracks, like Elkhart Lake and Bridgehampton, were also forced to call it quits. Road racing on actual public roads in America was dead.

But in the aftermath, motorsport fans rallied. They weren’t quite ready to relinquish this sport they’d grown to love. In those towns where road races had taken place, the Grand Prix organizations changed their goals: they’d raise money to build a permanent track — one that could be designed with ample safety measures in mind. Spectators would be kept well away from the action, and organizers could actually charge entry fees to attendees, since they would no longer be able to simply gather on the side of a public road.

But there was another type of venue that saw its profile raised in the wake of the road race bans. General Curtis Le May, leader of the Strategic Air Command and overseer of many Air Force bases around the United States, was a massive motorsport fan, and he was generous enough to negotiate with sanctioning bodies like the SCCA to transform disused airfields into race tracks. It wouldn’t cost the government anything, and Le May could simply organize races around the Air Force training schedules. Then, by charging entry fees to the event, Le May could repurpose the profits by channeling them into improvements to the living conditions of the servicefolks who resided at the base.

Fascinatingly, Fred Wacker was a critical part of this racing revival. In September of 1952, Wacker first met General Le May at Elkhart Lake; he quickly realized that Le May was easily the most important man in the United States, second only to the President, and that he had access to ample amounts of unused racing tarmac. The two began negotiations, and the first post-Glen event was held at Turner Air Force Base in Albany Georgia on October 26, 1952. The SCCA had found a much-needed lifeline, and the organization latched onto it immediately.

But long, flat stretches of concrete did not make for particularly compelling racing — at least, not of the kind that Cameron Argetsinger had wanted to emulate based on the European example. American racing fans had fallen in love, too. Thankfully, when Le May was forced to “stop lending taxpayer-financed public land to a private club” in 1954, replacement circuits had been built.

First was the stopgap course at Watkins Glen. Organizers selected a hilly section of the town of Dix and quickly set about paving its rough dirt roads to create a permanent course. Financing began on July 15, 1953, with the track’s debut race ambitiously scheduled for mid-September. The SCCA, though, was unconvinced that an appropriate track could be built in time, refused to sanction the event. As journalist Henry Valent put it: “Thus with fixed determination, when confronted with n outlawed circuit, and being vehemently denounced by the opponents of road racing, and having lost the goodwill and guidance of theState Department of Public Works and the state Police, and being told by the SCCA that they wouldn’t sanction the race on another circuit, and there being only 40 working days to construct a new 4.6-mile circuit, and with no money, the community proceeded to plan for the 1953 Grand Prix.”

And on September 17, the day before the track opened, they had done it. Over 100 entries had signed up for the race, and fans flooded into the freshly erected grandstands. Snow fences lined the track to prevent spectators from getting too close, and a control tower served as race headquarters. All things considered, the event was a success — and the SCCA decided to sanction the race the subsequent year.

The primary problem was that drivers absolutely hated the revised Watkins Glen track. Organizers hadn’t built in enough escape routes, and there were plenty of concerning blind corners. After the 1954 event, it was clear that the track would either need to be significantly altered, or a new one would need to be built altogether.

Then, things got more challenging. The SCCA began to demand hefty sanctioning fees, so the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Corporation decided to forego sanctioning and do the heavy lifting themselves. They bought 550 acres of land to build a brand-new track, scheduled the first race for mid-September in 1956, and set to work — only for an unusually rainy year to delay work. The track had only been paved the day before practice; without the required time to cure, the track began to break up, and the SCCA warned drivers not to race. Nevertheless, the event went ahead — and to everyone’s surprise, it was nearly perfect.

By 1958, Watkins Glen Grand Prix founder Cameron Argetsinger was so bolstered by his event’s success and the proud state of the new track that he began to solicit international attention. Formula 1 tried hosting ill-fated Grands Prix at both Sebring and Riverside before it decided to give Watkins Glen a try in 1961. The upstate New York race track served as host of the United States Grand Prix until 1980.

Why it matters today

Today, Watkins Glen is a town that embraces its rich racing past. Stroll down Franklin Street, and you can’t help but notice the names of legendary racers carved into the sidewalk, a commemoration of all the fantastic competitors who took victory on various iterations of the track — men like Roger Penske, AJ Foyt, and Joakim Bonnier. The town hosts the International Motor Racing Research Center, which houses a massive collection of books, magazines, films, cars, and more that chart the birth and evolution of motorsport. Head into one of the several antique shops in town, and you’re sure to find treasures like old race programs or ticket stubs. In almost every store, you can find a free pamphlet that tells you how to drive the old course. There are memorials for the race’s founder, Cameron Argetsinger, and one that commemorates the fact that Watkins Glen hosted the first road race after World War II. The starting line is still painted on the sidewalk.

And yet for a town that prides itself on its respect for the past, there is very little recognition for young Franky Fazzary — no plaques or monuments or quiet moments set aside to remember the seven-year-old’s tragic death. It was an accident, yes — but it was one that irrevocably changed the course of motorsport history in the United States.

Instead, Fazzary is something of a footnote. I have a library chock full of motorsport literature, but I’ve noticed that it’s rare for me to encounter an honest mention of the death that changed American racing. In other books I’ve read about Watkins Glen, I’ve seen Fazzary’s death recorded in a number of ways. I’ve seen his death listed as a spectator death, which gave little credence to the fact that a child was involved. I’ve seen his death entirely passed over, as some historical records simply claim that Watkins Glen needed to find a closed-course home due to general danger and an inability to charge for tickets. Sometimes, there isn’t even a mention of why the public-road track needed to become a permanent facility; it’s like it just happened, spontaneously, out of nowhere.

That has a snowball effect. If we’ve forgotten why Watkins Glen changed, then we also don’t remember why Elkhart Lake became Road America. We don’t remember what made events on private land or decommissioned airbases so popular — namely, the fact that it was a lot easier to control crowds and implement rudimentary safety measures when you could build your track out of a wide, flat swath of land. We don’t remember that there was a period of time where road racing almost died in America.

As a result, we can also forget that, rather than dying, American motorsport transformed. Before Watkins Glen, only two road courses existed in America. After Watkins Glen, America introduced over 60 tracks — 10 of which came within 10 years of Watkins Glen building its first semi-permanent circuit. We forget so much of what makes racing in the United States such an outlier on the world stage. We forget what makes us special.

But more than anything, we’ve forgotten the seven-year-old boy who squatted between his father’s legs to watch a race. We’ve forgotten that a young life was cut short. We’ve forgotten Frankie Fazzary.

The next time you tune in to a race on a permanent American road course, I hope you’ll take a moment to remember Frankie Fazzary, to honor the memory of someone so critical to the sport that we know and love, and who was ripped from the arms of his loving family far too soon.

“Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” is a project by motorsport historian and journalist Elizabeth Blackstock that is dedicated to uncovering the sport’s forgotten tragedies as well as opening up motorsport to aspiring future journalists. If you’ve enjoyed this Substack, please consider a paid subscription; all posts here will be free for anyone to view, but your donations directly support the kind of content you cannot find at any legacy media site.

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I want to introduce y’all to something I call the “passion industry Venn diagram” — something that I swear I have seen elsewhere but that I am entirely unable to find through increasingly specific searches. But I like the visual here because it helps explain what I'm trying to get at.

Obviously, everybody wants that IDEAL ROLE in the center of the diagram: the one that will pay you money, that will provide you with valuable experience, and that will introduce you to the people who will help you further your career. But before I get too deep into the overlaps, let me clarify some examples of what falls under each circle.

Money

• You are paid for your work, time, and resources.

• You can discuss pay rates in order to increase them as factors change (i.e. you gain more experience, your assignment requires a greater investment of time, the reporting will be challenging).

• You are paid in a timely manner, whether you're making $15 per story or $1500.

Experience

• You can create a demonstrable body of work available for easy reference.

• When a job listing lists specific requirements, you are able to point to published work from this opportunity that fulfills those expectations.

• You can have basic conversations about metrics regarding your own growth and trends you've noticed with your work.

• You will have opportunities to attend and cover events that you would not otherwise be able to do on your own.

Connections

• You are introduced to and create relationships with people who will further your career: drivers, teams, press representatives, sponsors, other journalists, competing editors, etc.

• You will work with people who will speak highly about you and recommend you for future opportunities — OR, you will be able to rely on those people for positive recommendations as you apply for future jobs.

• You will work with people whose experience and expertise you value.

• You gain a deeper understanding of the inner workings of the industry — the dos and don'ts, the etiquette, etc.

And these are only a few examples!

As I've progressed through my career, I've relied on one main guiding ethos: Any project I accept must fall into an overlap between at least two of the circles in that Venn diagram. That means that, sometimes, I've accepted work that did not pay anything at all but that introduced me to key connections, enabled me to tell a story I'd been dying to tell, or gave me an experience that I would not have otherwise been able to accomplish on my own. They enriched me — my attitude, my voice, my experience, my perspective — in a way that transcends monetary value.

I'm working on a project at the moment that will not be able to pay me until I've invested a significant amount of time and resources into it. But it will also allow me to carve out a career path that I never knew was possible and that taps into my expertise and interests as a motorsport fan, a historian, and a creative. If it falls apart, well — I'll have still gained connections, knowledge, expertise, and a better sense of direction moving forward. If it works, I'll have created something entirely unique but something with an incredible amount of value, something that will likely pay well but also provide me with a rich and meaningful life. For me, it's worth it to invest in this opportunity… which brings me to my next point.

The critical element that the Venn diagram misses

My hastily assembled passion industry Venn diagram misses one key element that will help direct every choice you make in this industry: meaning.

Meaning is tricky. It isn't neat or straightforward. It's the reason why I have such a tough time banging the drum that any unpaid opportunity represents an attempt by a company, editor, etc. to take advantage of you. Obviously, in plenty of cases, that's true. But it's not always so cut-and-dry, because there's a good chance you're going to be battling with the roles that meaning and purpose and your future play in everything you do.

When pay is involved, I'll be honest: I'll do pretty much whatever you ask. For a good 18 months, I wrote the most bloodless, awful, cut-and-dry, direct-to-consumer automotive content for a large corporation because it paid extremely well. It was content that I could churn out pretty easily after a work day, stuff I had no vested interest in. I'll never judge you for getting that bag.

But the moment you realize you will not be paid for your work, you need to have a very honest conversation with yourself about the value this opportunity will provide — because it must provide you with value beyond simply “having your name out there.”

Some questions to ask yourself during this process:

• Does this opportunity allow me to tell a story that I have always wanted to tell?

• Will I be able to specifically advance my credentials as a result of this opportunity?

• Does this opportunity strategically place my voice in front of a larger audience at a moment when I am prepared to capitalize on it?

• Does this opportunity bring me closer to carving out a unique space for myself in this industry?

• Is this something I'm genuinely excited about, or am I just happy to get within a sniff's distance of my chosen industry?

• Will I feel stimulated by this opportunity, or will it crush me?

• Will this opportunity allow me to experience a major event in a way that would be impossible if I were to do it alone?

• Does this opportunity require me to invest a significant amount of my time and resources? Is there flexibility here, i.e. will I be free to take days off or stop when I feel it is no longer serving me? Is it a full-time role masquerading as a volunteer opportunity? Will it allow me to write for other publications, or do they deem it a conflict of interest?

Understanding the meaning of an opportunity means really thinking about it. I mean this in the kindest way possible, but your whole reason for taking on unpaid work cannot be “well this sounds neat!” because you're going to burn yourself out in approximately 3.2 seconds. You need to get something out of the opportunity. You must benefit. And the things you gain must be commensurate with or exceed the resources you put into the opportunity.

I have turned down seemingly incredible opportunities because I knew I'd be putting in more effort than it was worth, because I knew the folks involved would not build a foundation for me to be successful, because I couldn't deliver on their expectations, because the benefit of trying would never outweigh the consequences of failure, because I felt that everything could go right and it wouldn't tangibly benefit me or my career. I wanted to say ‘yes’ to everything pitched to me. I also knew it would not be worthwhile because I could situate that opportunity within what I hope will be the trajectory of my career.

I have also accepted somewhat mediocre opportunities because I knew I could transform it into something special. Many of those opportunities came without pay, or with the promise of payment if only I could build something. I accepted because I knew it would help me better define exactly what it was that I wanted to do in the future.

The best way to utilize unpaid work? Write for yourself.

The key point I want to drive home here is that you should not feel pressured to take unpaid opportunities just because they exist and because you believe you can get your foot in the door. In fact, I think in most cases — particularly as a fresher, aspiring writer in a passion industry like motorsport — you'll be better served writing for yourself while you amass a corpus of work.

If you aren't going to be paid for the work of building a brand, then at least let that brand be your own.

Start a newsletter. Post on social media. Interact with your favorite journalist and writers and content creators. Build a niche. Curate your specialties. Figure out how to say something that only you know how to say. And if you're so inclined: try your hand at liveblogs, hot takes, breaking news, interviews, throwbacks, and so much more. I think there's something to be said for the ability to work with respected editors in your given industry, but 1) the chances to do so are slim, and 2) those editors will pay you for your work. If you can't find that, see how far you can go on your own.

It's entirely possible to build connections and experience independent of a publication. It's possible to build your own income stream. But even if you're just writing to your own audience for free, the experience will help you better understand what you need to grow, and you can target your future opportunities with that in mind.

If you want to reach a wider audience to tell a story that truly means something to you, tor example, then you might consider writing that story for a known publication for little or no pay. If you were going to publish it on your own anyway, then you've automatically increased the value to your own career if you publish it somewhere with a strong audience.

If you were going to liveblog the Indy 500 on your own website but get an opportunity to attend the race in person in order to conduct on-the-ground interviews, but they're only paying for lodging and travel and nothing else, well — you'll gain some incredible experience while also being able to flex on your resumé that you've been an Indy 500 accredited journalist.

The more you work for yourself, the more you'll be able to leverage that writing to gain a foothold in the industry.

The biggest problem with unpaid work…

…is how easy it is for a corporation or publishing company to take advantage of an aspiring journalist desperate for experience. And that has repercussions on your peers.

This is generally where I'll get more hard-nosed about money; while there are plenty of ways to benefit from publishing your work that do not involve money, you always need to be conscious of the fact that the folks in charge of the pocketbook are looking for ways to screw you — and your peers — over.

If you are writing for a publication that is financially benefitting from your work, you deserve some element of compensation. And if that publication is a large one, with ad revenue and shareholders and all the trappings of a corporation, then they have no excuse not to pay you something. If you accept ample free work, it allows that publication to grow without compensating the people doing the heaviest lifting. It allows them to set a precedent: there are people out there who will do tons of free work, so we should never have to pay anyone anything at all. It therefore tends to push out the people who are actively trying to turn this into a career with a livable wage in favor of folks who are probably independently wealthy and who likely don't have as much skin in the “turning this into a career” game.

I won't dissuade anyone from accepting work that does not come with a paycheck, so long as they've done the work to ensure they're actually gaining something from the experience.

“Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” is a project by motorsport historian and journalist Elizabeth Blackstock that is dedicated to uncovering the sport’s forgotten tragedies as well as opening up motorsport to aspiring future journalists. If you’ve enjoyed this Substack, please consider a paid subscription; all posts here will be free for anyone to view, but your donations directly support the kind of content you cannot find at any legacy media site.

Subscribe now

Have you ever looked at F1 stats only to discover that there were apparently way more Americans competing in F1 back in the day than you thought? As it turns out, the Indy 500 was included on the F1 calendar for over a decade, and there’s a really interesting reason why that was the case!

My name is Elizabeth Blackstock, and I am an award-winning motorsport journalist and historian who also happens to be a big fan of F1. This year, I’ll be taking you behind the scenes in the racing world to better understand how exactly this sport evolved — and because of F1’s newfound success in the US, I’m kicking off a whole series dedicated to each American track that hosted a Formula 1 Grand Prix. Hopefully, by the end of 2026, we’ll all have a much better understanding of why F1 struggled to find its footing here in the past, and why it’s working so frickin’ well today.

And today, we have to address one of the biggest elephants in the room when it comes to Formula 1 history. The Indianapolis 500.

If you look at a Formula 1 calendar between 1950 and 1960, you’re going to notice something… interesting. Well, probably a few things. First and foremost, you’re probably going to be impressed by just how few races there were back in the day. You’re going to notice they’re really spaced out on the calendar, too, with tons of time in between races. You’re also going to notice that pretty much every single race takes place in Europe, except for one: the Indianapolis 500.

The Indy 500 existed for decades before anyone invented F1. The first F1 championship was held in 1950, and the first Indy 500 took place back in 1911. And if you know anything about that race, you know that it is not anything like a Formula 1 Grand Prix.

First and foremost, the Indy 500 is an oval race. F1 does not race on ovals. F1 has never raced on ovals, with one brief exception for the unloved banked section of Monza’s race track.

You probably also know that the cars that race at Indy are totally different from Grand Prix cars. They may both be open-wheel machines, but it’s kind of like comparing apples to oranges. They’re both fruits, but if you try to replace the apples in your apple pie with oranges, you’re going to have a little bit of a disaster.

So why was Indy included?

The answer is honestly kind of simple. F1 needed some way to call itself a “World” Championship.

Let’s flash back to 1950. That first calendar was composed of seven races, six of which were major Grands Prix in Europe. You had events in England, Monaco, Switzerland, Belgium, France, and Italy. Those are all incredible, iconic races. They’re also all based in the same general region. If Beyoncé claims she’s going on a World Tour and only goes to Europe, people are going to be pissed. F1 realized the same thing with trying to call a Europe-only calendar a “World” Championship. It needed an international race.

The problem was, there wasn’t really anywhere that F1 could go. There were great tracks in the Americas at the time, plus a few circuits in Africa. But when you look at those early calendars, you’re also going to notice that most of the Grands Prix included on them were really storied, historic events. It meant something to win those races, even before you had a championship to race for. There were no races in Africa or the Americas that had that same level of clout and prestige, with one exception: Indianapolis.

Indy had been running for a longer duration than most European Grands Prix at the time. The cars running at Indy were kind of sort of roughly similar to what you saw in Europe. But the main thing was that it was a non-European race that had enough prestige to be considered part of a “World” Championship, even if it was in name only.

During the 11-year period where Indy was included on the F1 calendar, only two F1-only drivers actually made the trek overseas to try it out, and we’re going to talk about them in just a minute. But I do want to address the factors that made it so that Grand Prix drivers didn’t turn up at Indy — and vice versa, why Indy drivers didn’t really make the trek overseas to race in F1.

First and foremost was the fact that the cars were dramatically different, which they still are to this day. They’re both open-wheel racing series, but the regulations dictating F1 and the Indy 500 have never overlapped. Today, Indy cars are basically stock machines powered by two different engine manufacturers, while in F1, in order to compete, you do have to build specific elements in-house.

The scoring and sporting regulations have also been completely different. During the period when the 500 was included on the F1 schedule, only the top six finishers in a Grand Prix were awarded points; over at Indy, things were more complex. Points were awarded to the first 12 drivers, and winners received two points per mile. So, if you won the Indy 500 in 1950, you scored 1000 points. F1’s 1950 champion, Nino Farina, scored 30 points. America’s open-wheel champion that same year, Henry Banks, scored 1,390 points. And that’s just the points situation; there were also big differences between sanctioning, pit procedures, and so much more.

Plus, there were practical problems. Indy was very far away. You were probably going to have to ship your car from Europe to America via sea, which would take several days — and that’s not including the time it’d take to get the car from a port in, say, New York over to Indianapolis.

And you also needed to be in Indianapolis for, like, the entire month of May. Practice opened on May 1, and qualifying took place over six days, and then the week after that would be the race. It required a major time commitment, and the F1 schedule did not take that into consideration. In 1950, for example, the season opened on May 13 with the British Grand Prix. May 13 was the first day of qualifying for the Indianapolis 500. Of course, you probably could have shipped an Indy-specific car to Indianapolis and still got your driver from England to Indy to race, but teams were small and cash-strapped. That’s a huge expense of time and money for, like, six guys.

In 1951, the scheduling was even worse. The Swiss Grand Prix took place on May 27. The Indy 500, which was still on the calendar, was scheduled for May 30. Again: a dedicated driver probably could have made it work, but I can’t imagine you’d feel all too prepared for either event in that case.

Now, let’s get back to the two F1 drivers who made an attempt at the Indy 500. The first was Alberto Ascari in 1952. Scuderia Ferrari was absolutely desperate to win all of the biggest races in the world, and obviously Indy was on that list. So, the team built a car and shipped a handful of mechanics off to America, with top driver Ascari slated to compete. The Americans were positively cheesed that Ascari had turned up, and Ascari was respectful of the American tradition. But Ferrari were absolutely convinced they could turn up on day 1 and demolish the Americans, and that most certainly did not happen. Mostly because Ferrari didn’t know how to build a car for oval racing. Ascari qualified 19th of 33 cars but retired after 40 laps when his wheel collapsed.

Then, in 1958, Juan Manuel Fangio flew to America to try his hand at Indy in the closing stages of his career. Fangio, again, respected the tradition of the event, but he was willing to admit that he did not have the car or the gumption to try to qualify. That’s not a knock on Fangio; he had mostly just turned up in America to fulfill a bet, so it wasn’t really worthwhile to go crazy. If you want to know more about that, head over to my “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” Substack; I’m going to dig into the full story.

But that almost complete lack of participation from Grand Prix drivers was… expected. That assumption was built into the calendar. And the event remained on the calendar to continue bolstering F1’s international credentials, even as new tracks in Argentina, Morocco, and the United States were added. It was finally removed after 1960. By this point, F1 was growing more professionalized. International travel was being factored into the calendar. Drivers didn’t have to compete in every race, but it was growing more and more important that they do so if they wanted to pursue a title. It just made sense to nix Indy and try to establish some F1-specific roots in America, and that’s when we started to see promoters scheduling Grands Prix at Sebring, Riverside, and Watkins Glen. And if you want to know more about those events, I’ve got videos on every single one of ‘em on my channel.

So, no F1 drivers really ever tried Indy, but we would have two opportunities where F1 drivers and Indy drivers were pitted against one another: the Race of Two Worlds, or the Monza 500, or Monzanapolis, depending on what you wanted to call it. Monza had resurrected its oval circuit but Grand Prix drivers hated it. So the folks in charge of the track invited Indy drivers overseas with the intention of pitting them against the Grand Prix drivers to see who was quickest. It was kind of a disaster, but I’m not gonna get too deep into it, because I covered the Race of Two Worlds in depth in an episode of my “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” podcast, which I’ll link down in the description.

For me, though, the craziest part of the whole Indy/F1 crossover is the fact that it was actually really close to paying off! In 1963, Colin Chapman of Team Lotus fielded cars at the Indy 500 for the first time, and it’d eventually pay off with victory. Lola and Brabham would join in soon after, and together, these British marques would transform America’s greatest race in both design and professionalism.

Now, we mostly just look back on that period of F1’s Indy 500 calendar inclusion as being… a pain in the ass, if I’m honest. All those American drivers technically counted as having competed in F1, so we’ve ended up with a lot of insane statistics about the success of American drivers and Offenhauser engines in Formula 1. A lot of folks mostly just discount that whole era, but I still think it’s worth a look.

“Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” is a project by motorsport historian and journalist Elizabeth Blackstock that is dedicated to uncovering the sport’s forgotten tragedies as well as opening up motorsport to aspiring future journalists. If you’ve enjoyed this Substack, please consider a paid subscription; all posts here will be free for anyone to view, but your donations directly support the kind of content you cannot find at any legacy media site.

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When you think of Memorial Day open-wheel racing events in America, you think of the Indianapolis 500, the iconic 500-mile event that has been regularly run on a 2.5-mile oval track for over 100 years. In 1996, though, two different factions in American open-wheel racing had formed, and only one of them could claim the Greatest Spectacle In Racing as its own event. The other group had nothing.

So, they formed their own Memorial Day race — one that took place just up the road in Michigan. It was held on the same day, at the same time, and with the same goal in mind: Complete 500 miles of hard-and-fast racing before anyone else.

Today on Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys, we’re talking about the IndyCar Split, and the 1996 battle between the Indy 500 and its short-lived rival, the U.S. 500.

A Brief History of the Indy 500

When it comes to racing events, the Indianapolis 500 stands on its own. The 500-mile race around the 2.5-mile race track erected in Speedway, Indiana has been run for over 100 years. It has survived two World Wars, widespread outbreaks of illness, multiple repavings, deaths, and so much more to create an annual American tradition loaded to the brim with pomp and circumstance. And it all began with one man’s vision.

Carl G. Fisher started off as a bicycle racing enthusiast who broke into the burgeoning automobile industry by buying an interest in the U.S. patent to manufacture acetylene headlights for cars. Before long, almost every vehicle built in America utilized a headlight manufactured by Fisher, and when he and his business partner James A. Allison sold their headlight-making company to Union Carbide after nine years of constant production, the two men became rich beyond their wildest imagination. The company that started with pennies in 1904 sold for $9 million in 1913 — or, almost $270 million today.

Fisher’s role in bicycle racing had put him in contact with automobile racers, and after helping a friend prepare for a French motorsport excursion in 1905, he started to pay closer attention to the racing world.

Americans were torn on motorsport. Organized professional sport as a whole was still a fairly new concept in the country, and debate raged about whether or not racing should count as a sport, since the car was doing all the work. Those cars nevertheless began competing, which encouraged debate about the dangers of competition.

It was the danger that caused Carl Fisher to dream up the idea of a speedway. He’d heard about the refined European way of doing things, and it was drastically different from the roughshod tracks that defined American motorsport. European automotive technology, as a result, had begun to thrive, and Fisher reckoned it was because there was no legitimate way for American machinery to catch up if it were confined to competition on, say, horse tracks at local fairgrounds.

In a 1906 letter to Motor Age Magazine, Fisher wrote, “The average horse track is narrow, has fences that are dangerous, and is always dusty or muddy. With high speed cars, where wide skids are necessary, the fastest car, from a slow start or other temporary delay, gets stuck in the rear without changes of ever gaining the front on account of the continuous seas of dust.”

If the mere act of racing suffered on dirt tracks, then Fisher further reasoned that spectators weren’t getting their money’s worth. He also claimed spectators deserved more than an occasional glimpse of a car flashing by on a long-distance open-road circuit. After seeing Brooklands, a steeply-banked oval track that opened near London in 1907, Fisher found the best expression of motorsport. He wanted to build a massive circular track with a wide track surface that could allow cars to broach speeds of over 100 mph — which would have come close to the 120 mph land speed record of the day — and to compete without having to worry about running out of racing room. Plus, when there was no racing going on, Fisher figured that automakers could rent out his track for testing.

Fisher set his real-estate agent to work finding the perfect piece of property, which turned out to be a level tract of farmland spanning 328 acres. The land was located a close five miles to downtown Indianapolis, and Fisher convinced three other men — former business partner James Allison, as well as Frank Wheeler and Arthur Newby — to join him in both purchasing the property and in founding a new business called the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Company. The property cost Fisher $72,000 when he purchased it in December of 1908, which would be equivalent to over $2 million today. The following year, the IMS Company was founded with $250,000, or almost $8 million in 2024.

Construction of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway began in March of 1909, at which point reality quickly set in. Fisher had originally wanted a five-mile oval track, but the size of the land had forced him to downsize to a three-mile oval with a planned 2-mile road course. Then, he had to downsize again, prioritizing a 2.5-mile oval track and some grandstands and a few buildings.

Building the track was a massive operation that required use of 500 laborers, 300 mules, and a massive amount of steam-powered machinery, plus constant attention by the four founders who had hoped their racetrack would become something of a side hustle, not their all-consuming obligation. The original track surface consisted of graded and packed soil topped by two inches of gravel, two inches of limestone covered with a mix of tar and oil, one to two inches of crushed stone chips also drenched in that tar and oil solution, and more crushed stone. The grandstands could seat 12,000 people, while an eight-foot tall fence lined the perimeter, bridges provided access between the outfield and infield, and 42 buildings provided space for cafés, bathrooms, clubhouses, and more.

Just to illustrate the sheer scale of what went into building this track, Fisher needed to source 90,000 cubic yards of white stone to cover the track and create the high-class racing surface he envisioned. Getting that amount of material was almost impossible in those days, and Fisher had to negotiate with 18 different gravel providers in order to satisfy his quota.

As track prep continued, hiring began. One of the first key employees of IMS was Ernest A. Moross, a publicity representative whose official title was director of contests. Moross took to pitching a fantastical idea of the track to the newspaper reading public, promising “competition such as been dreamed of will be witnessed when cars representing almost every country in the world will whirl by piloted by demons of speed and unrest.”

Ironically, the first race to take place at IMS didn’t involve cars at all. On Saturday, June 5, 1909 — months before the completion of the oval track — featured nine hot-air balloons attempting to travel the furthest distance. A reported 40,000 spectators turned up to watch the balloons take off, but only 3,500 of them actually paid to enter the grounds; almost everyone else realized they could spectate for free by hanging out in local fields. Plus, a competition whose results wouldn’t be determined for several days, or in the place where the competitors first departed, meant no spectator became truly, deeply invested in the competition that the event had to offer.

The second race at IMS did involve wheeled machines, but not cars — instead, a series of seven motorcycle races was planned as a way to celebrate the opening of the track in August. It, too, was something of a disaster, as it became clear that the track surface was not ready. Panicked fixes got underway, but rain delayed the start of the motorcycle race weekend, and over half of the events were canceled. During one race, spectators witnessed a rider blow a tire and nearly die almost directly in front of the grandstand.

The first car race took place immediately after the motorcycle fiasco, and it was just about as disastrous. The good news was that tens of thousands of paying spectators turned up for several days of competition and that land speed records had been broken. The bad news was that the track surface continued to cause issues, temporarily blinding Louis Chevrolet, killing driver William Bourque and his riding mechanic, sending Charlie Merz’s car into a fence and killing three people, and launching Bruce Keen’s vehicle into a bridge. AAA, which sanctioned most forms of motorsport in 1908, immediately called an end to the race and boycotted the track until it was in safer racing condition.

It took a serious amount of effort to revitalize the Speedway. Fisher and his partners decided on repaving the track with bricks that needed to be hand-laid, while a concrete wall was built in front of the main grandstand and in all four corners to better protect spectators. Work lasted until December 1909, when 11 drivers and motorcyclists turned up for some speed trials, with formal racing returning the following year during three holiday weekends: Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day. The surface held up to the stress, and fans flocked to the new track.

But Fisher and his IMS co-founders still felt as if there was more that could be done to truly maximize the Speedway’s potential. According to Blood and Smoke: A True Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and the Birth of the Indy 500 by Charles Leerhsen, it isn’t quite clear who exactly came up with the idea of consolidating all three of IMS’ 200-mile race weekends into one single 500-mile outing. Many credit Fisher with the idea, while James Allison’s wife Sarah maintains that her husband had been thinking about the idea for years before it was introduced. Fisher allegedly wanted a 1000-mile race, but Allison talked him into halving that race distance, saying, “Let’s give people something they can see start to finish in a reasonable amount of time.” Whatever the case, a press release went out in September of 1910 announcing that the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s racing schedule would be pared down to just one event, a 500-mile International Sweepstakes taking place on Memorial Day weekend that would award contestants with a total purse of $25,000 — or just under $800,000 today.

By 1911, Europe had been hosting longer and more arduous events for years, but in America, the prospect of even driving 100 miles on a public road — let alone on any one of the country’s rough race tracks — was a daunting prospect. Congress didn’t pass the Federal Aid Road Act, which gave money to states to support a critical network of roadways, until 1916 — five years after the first Indy 500. Even then, there was no interstate system linking one coast to another. No Average Joe was buying an automobile to travel exceedingly long distances — and that made the concept of a 500-mile event an especially daunting one.

But that 500-mile sweepstakes idea worked. 80,000 paying spectators turned up to the track to watch Ray Harroun take a hotly debated victory behind the wheel of his bright yellow Marmon Wasp. Word of the race spread, drawing in plenty of European talent in subsequent years, and a new American tradition was born.

The Indy 500’s unique provenance means that it has tended to stand outside of any singular championship, and that has made it difficult to govern. In Europe, for example, even before any serious championship grew out of various Grand Prix events in the continent, there was still a general sense of agreement about how those Grands Prix should operate. A Grand Prix in France, for example, would be run with a similar ruleset a Grand Prix in Germany. As a result, combining all those events into one big championship was not only fairly simple, but it also made sense. When the Federation International de l’Automobile finally popped up and linked those races together in the Formula 1 series we know today, it was drawing on what was already a long history of linked events that resulted in one overall Champion. Perhaps most importantly, a Grand Prix in a country like Italy may have been Italy’s biggest race, but it was also part of something much broader.

The Indy 500 has long been America’s most important race, but it originated outside of a Championship structure, and it continued to exist outside of one for decades. The Indy 500 had its own rules, its own procedures, and its own prize structure. Even when the AAA tried to create a national championship, for example, there was still no real agreement about what races counted toward that championship. The Indy 500 has generally been organized by the people who own the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but the Indianapolis Motor Speedway hasn’t always agreed with, well, anyone about how the race should be run and where it should rank within an overall championship. IMS owners, then, have a serious amount of sway. Own IMS, and you own American open-wheel.

It’s that battle for ownership and meaning that created many of the ideological spats that have continually undermined motorsport in America.

Battle for control of the Indianapolis 500

The seeds for a contentious split between rival open-wheel racing factions in America were first sown as World War II came to a close. The event was first paused in 1917 and 1918 due to the First World War, but in 1942, the track closed — seemingly for good — as international tensions rose. AAA suspended auto racing, and the U.S. government even wanted to go so far as to ban motorsport competition due to rationing. Before the final running of the 500, the 29th of its kind, before the war, about a third of Gasoline Alley — the name for IMS’s garage area — burned down. Ownership had changed hands. The track was effectively abandoned, left to grow weeds and crumble to pieces as locals suspected it would be demolished anyway and sold to become a housing development.

But three-time Indy 500 Wilbur Shaw refused to let that happen. Shaw turned up to the track after the war to engage in some long-distance tire testing for Firestone, only to discover the sorry state of the track. When he reached out to then-owner Eddie Rickenbacker, a former WWI fighter pilot and Indy 500 competitor, Shaw discovered that the track was for sale. He immediately engaged in a massive letter-writing campaign in the hopes of finding a buyer that would preserve the track’s sporting tradition, but everyone that expressed interest noted that they intended to transform the track into a private facility. There was one man who was willing to buy the track, repair it, and reopen it to the racing world. That man was a businessman from Terre Haute named Tony Hulman, who had made his fortune thanks to Clabber Girl baking powder.

In November of 1945, Hulman agreed to purchase the Speedway for a rumored sum of $750,000 — or, over $13 million today. Hulman announced that the first post-war race would take place in 1946, and he immediately embarked on an arduous renovation process to ensure that IMS would be ready in time for the big day. Over the years, the race grew more popular, and an organized form of racing sprang up around the 500 to link it to a series of other events around the U.S.

But the real chaos began to set in when Hulman’s grandson, Tony George, took over. Hulman died in 1977, and IMS leadership was assumed by a man named Joe Cloutier, who made significant strides in TV and radio coverage, sponsorship, track management, and grounds expansion, according to the IMS museum.

Before we get to Tony George, though, we need to address what can be seen as the original “split” in IndyCar racing. Hulman had founded the United States Auto Club, USAC, to sanction open-wheel racing in the United States, which included the 500. But the 500 was really still the highlight of the season; every other USAC race was poorly organized, poorly attended, and resulted in very poor prize money for the teams who were dedicating themselves to the series. To compound that, USAC was also firmly stuck in the past; it tried to limit powerful Cosworth engines by preserving the old Offenhausers. When a plane crash killed eight USAC officials on April 23, 1978, tensions only accelerated.

Later that year, several team owners published a so-called “white paper” that accused both USAC and IMS of holding back motorsport. Driver-turned-team-owner Dan Gurney penned that white paper and suggested that a new racing organization be formed — one that could help American open-wheel racing reach its full potential. By the end of the year, several teams defected from USAC to form Championship Auto Racing Teams, or CART. CART took a little extra assistance from the Sports Car Club of America when it started to get off the ground, but its goal was to operate independently.

CART kicked off its first season of competition in a big way: CART teams boycotted the first USAC race of 1979 at Ontario Motor Speedway. USAC responded by rejecting the Indy 500 entries of six key CART teams that year: Penske, Patrick, McLaren, Fletcher, Chaparral, and Gurney. In total, 19 cars were disallowed, with USAC saying that they were “harmful to racing” and “not in good standing with USAC.” CART took USAC to court and were granted the ability to compete in the 1979 Indy 500.

During the Month of May, though, another controversy erupted over the turbocharger wastegate in the engine; several teams had discovered a loophole that would allow them to build extra pressure in the engine to create more power — and USAC decided in the middle of qualifying that those changes to build pressure were actually illegal. Teams were annoyed, especially those that had already qualified for the Indy 500. IMS was forced to add an extra day of qualifying and also add extra starting slots for the teams that had previously been unfairly denied a chance to set a quick time. As a result, 35 cars started the race instead of the usual 33.

In 1980, things got worse. A new organization, the Championship Racing League, was invented to co-sanction the Indy 500 and create a set of rules for both CART and USAC to follow — but USAC pulled out of the agreement after the first five races. CART sanctioned the rest of the remaining seven races solo, and in 1981, USAC tried to create its own national championship that it called the Gold Crown. However, by 1983, the Gold Crown calendar was composed of just one race, the Indy 500, while CART became the sanctioning body representing season-long open-wheel championships in America.

Tony George, grandson of Tony Hulman, took control of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1989, after the death of Joe Cloutier. He took to continuing renovations at IMS and soon aimed to bring other race series, like NASCAR and Formula 1, to the track. But George is better known for creating a brand-new series called the Indy Racing League.

The IRL, as it came to be known, was founded in 1994 in reaction to a move from CART. See, open-wheel racing by CART was theoretically supposed to be called “championship car racing,” but American open-wheel had colloquially been known as “Indy car” racing for decades. So, there was a period of time where CART’s machines were called “Indy cars” even though CART didn’t sanction the Indy 500. USAC’s prominence had faded by that time, so there was no real reason for anyone to defend the name.

Not until CART tried to trademark the term “IndyCar,” that is. The bold move was made in an effort to broaden CART’s appeal, but it so frustrated Tony George that he developed his own series, called the Indy Racing League (or IRL). If there was a series out there named after Indy, then surely CART couldn’t legally claim ownership of the term “Indy car.” CART tried to kick off a lawsuit against the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in March of 1996, claiming that the IRL had infringed on its trademark. The Speedway reacted with a lawsuit of its own, demanding that CART stop using the phrase “Indy car” when speaking about its vehicles.

The dueling lawsuits between CART and IMS were eventually resolved somewhat in both parties’ favor. CART agreed to give up use of the term “Indy Car,” while the IRL agreed that it wouldn’t use the term “Indy” to refer to itself until 2003.

But the battle wasn’t as simple as just a name and a trademark. See, CART teams had continued racing in the 500 despite it still being sanctioned by USAC. CART owners felt that Tony George had way too much say in the overall direction of open-wheel racing in America, since he had a direct line to USAC thanks to his ownership of IMS. Meanwhile, George was growing frustrated with the skyrocketing costs of fielding vehicles in the 500, and he was annoyed that CART was going for a more European road-racing influence. The IRL was designed to level the playing field by reducing the costs of competition, and it would be run entirely on oval courses.

It took years of in-fighting to reach this point, but George had one more trick up his sleeve. On July 3, 1995, he also announced that 25 of the traditional 33 starting slots on the Indy 500 grid would be guaranteed to full-time IRL competitors; CART entrants could battle for the remaining eight places.

“I was never taken seriously in those (CART) meetings, and this announcement may not be taken seriously .. . some may say he’s blowing smoke again,” said George in an Indianapolis Star article. “But I guarantee you one thing is certain ... the time for all the talking and positioning is over.

Tony George had made his move. Next, it was time for CART to make theirs.

The Indy 500 vs. the US 500

Throughout much of 1995, CART and the prospective IRL series danced around one another. Tony George stated that he was tired of the “circus atmosphere” of CART, that he was ready to revive “traditional racing,” and that he felt his low-cost series would be around for decades to come. The folks at CART, meanwhile, were convinced that the IRL would fall apart and that both series would be reunited into one. So confident were these CART teams that they sold their old race cars to IRL teams for pennies on the dollar when it became clear that no manufacturer would bother building machinery to the IRL’s specs. The IRL announced its calendar and chassis specs first; CART followed by scheduling several conflicting races with the IRL and by adopting a set of specs the IRL had discussed but rejected. CART left the month of May open to race in the 500, but CART team owner Roger Penske admitted that it was still unclear if they’d be allowed to race there.

Tony George made himself clear in July of 1995 when he announced that became known as the 25/8 rule — or, that 25 slots would be reserved for IRL regulars as long as they could hit a minimum speed requirement, and that the eight remaining slots were open for everyone. It also meant that those CART cars would be stuck at the back of the field no matter what. As John Oreovicz writes in his book Indy Split, that meant that an IRL car could qualify on pole with a speed of 219 miles per hour, while a CART machine that qualified at 230 miles per hour would still remain in the final three rows of the grid. Robin Miller of the Indianapolis Star said that “besides being high-speed extortion, it’s also a terrible idea that could seriously damage the credibility of this race.”

That was only the beginning.

Influential CART members claimed that George’s actions meant that he must not have support, while three-time CART champion and Indy 500 winner Bobby Rahal slammed the IRL, saying, “I have to ask, where were these people in the 1980s when CART was building the series back up? They were MIA in the 80s. Now, because of the success of Indy car racing, they want to take it over. I’m a believer in fair and open competition. I don’t care if it’s a midget, a stock car, or a Formula 1 car, the drivers and teams should have to prove themselves. There are no gimmies, no exceptions. This special seeing at the Indy 500 is a heavy-handed approach to something that is unneeded. You can ask Al Unser Jr., Emerson Fittipaldi, or myself — we’ve all won the Indy 500 and we’ve all sat on the sidelines and watched the Indy 500.”

Rahal was referring to the 500’s infamous bumping process; with just 33 starting slots in the field and as many as 40+ entries, there would inevitably be some disappointment somewhere along the line for drivers who simply weren’t fast enough to make the show, or who had a mechanical gremlin at the wrong time. In 1995, for example, both of Team Penske’s cars dominated headlines, not by competing in the Indy 500, but by failing to qualify for it. That was all part of what makes the race so iconic.

The IRL, meanwhile, claimed that the 25/8 scheme was actually somehow inclusive, since it rewarded its own full-time competitors while also allowing teams from its rival series to join. Jack Long of the IRL also added, “The Indy 500 makes stars, stars don’t make the Indy 500.”

More chaos ensued. IRL implemented a complex points system that multiplied a driver’s final points in a race by the number of races he’d entered, but it also decided that the Indy 500 would be the season finale for the 1996 IRL season, meaning that a champion would be crowned after only three races. Detractors called it a farce — especially because CART was consistently growing its own schedule to include races all across America.

Tony George had more to say — and I’m going to quote him pretty extensively here.. He wrote in to the Indianapolis Star in October of 1995 to say,

Let’s make this clear before we go any further: There is no lockout. What I believe to be the case is that Championship Auto Racing Teams, following an effort to eliminate the IRL and gain control of the Indianapolis 500, is in the uncomfortable position of having created deliberate and unnecessary conflicts from which it will not extricate itself. Chassis compatibility and schedule conflicts: CART created both of these problems after the IRL was on record as sincerely having tried to avoid them.

The expressed purpose of the IRL is to provide growth, stability, and opportunity for open-wheel oval track racing. That mission is certainly not intended to harm CART or control CART. In fact, it has nothing to do with CART. We simply do not want the Indianapolis 500 to be controlled by an outside group that does not have as its most important goal the future of Indianapolis-type oval track racing. Not to mention, a group that is based out of state (in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan) and is far removed from the significance of the 500 in this community.

On the subject of power, I can only say it as simply as this: My desire is not now, and never has been, control of CART, IndyCar, or the entire series of whatever cars run in the Indianapolis 500. The payback on that side is simply a peace of mind that comes from maintaining the sovereignty of this wonderful event. We are an oval race track, and we want to ensure our future. It is that simple.

CART responded with a hefty letter of its own, penned by Andrew Craig, who represented the series. Again, let me quote him at length here, to fully share both sides of this story.

IndyCar is part of the commercial fabric of Indianapolis and an important part of the community. The actions of the Speedway are not an act of defense against some invading horde but rather an attack against good and hardworking people within the racing industry in Indianapolis and an attack against all the traditions and all that is good about the Indy 500.

What is disappointing about the current dispute between the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and IndyCar is that so much energy is being spent on non-productive tasks as each organization jockeys for position. It is ironic that Tony GHeorge states that his prime objective is to protect the future of the Indy 500. While this ambition is appropriate for someone in the important position of president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the actions taken in recent months appear to have the potential to achieve exactly the opposite. The sport is in grave danger of being deeply damaged at a time when its potential for growth is there for all to see. If the sport is damaged, then it follows that the Indy 500 will suffer as a result.

IndyCar’s sincere wish is to be in Indianapolis for the month of May and to be racing in the Indy 500 on Memorial Day weekend. We have no reason to wish otherwise and hope that an opportunity for sensible, rational discussion and a resolution of our differences can still be found. It must be understood, however, that confronted with barriers to free and open competition, we have little choice but to reluctantly look for alternatives.

They were fighting words in a battle that got more contentious as IRL announced an entirely different engine format for the future, which would force CART to build entirely different cars to be competitive at the 500.

So, on December 18, 1995, CART dealt a final blow: It would lease use of the Michigan International Speedway from owner Roger Penske and run its own 500-mile race, called the U.S. 500, on May 26, 1996 — the same day as the 80th running of the Indy 500.

Drivers like Bobby Rahal and Michael Andretti were both deeply skeptical of the move; they both wanted to race at the Indy 500, but they were both CART drivers who would likely have to race in Michigan that day instead — a losing situation for everyone involved. Then-retired racer Rick Mears weighed in as well, saying, “Indy has always been the best team or the best man wins. That’s what Indy stands for, and I think when you start trying to regulate who can and who can’t run a particular race, such as Indianapolis, it’s just not fair. I really don’t agree with it. I don’t think it should have happened, and I think it is happening for no real reason. Down the road it will be resolved, eventually, but it’s a shame it had to happen to begin with.”

The IRL season kicked off in Orlando with chaos. During the race, safety officials responding to a crash drove directly into the path of a still at-speed Tony Stewart, forcing Stewart to drive through debris and nearly crash into the wall. It also became clear soon after the event that USAC had allowed Buick-engined vehicles to run 60 inches of boost instead of the rulebook-mandated 55 inches that Ford-Cosworth was running. Meanwhile, CART’s season opened with a successful event in Miami, followed by international outings in Brazil and Australia. IRL angered sponsors and teams by informing them that they wouldn’t be allowed to cook their own food, instead forcing everyone from Tony Stewart to Budweiser to purchase track food at inflated prices. Other sponsors pulled out of the series after it became clear that the IRL was not delivering on its promises — namely, that it had claimed plenty of CART racers would be at every IRL event. Big-name brands like KOOL got involved in American racing — but with CART, not the IRL. The personal battles between each major series played out in newspapers, souring many fans to all of American open-wheel.

Heading into the 1996 Indy 500, the IRL decided to reduce the amount of on-track action that would take place, since it was simply too expensive for teams to run thousands of laps. The number of practice laps in 1996 decreased 53% from the previous year, and on one day, not a single car took to the track. Attendance numbers shrunk, and purse money dwindled.

In Michigan, CART had managed to attract a $3.6-million purse as well as 27 entries to compose its field. The series emulated the protracted practice and qualifying schedule implemented at the 500, as well as the badging system that serves as credentials. During 500 practice, fan favorite driver Scott Brayton was killed making a shakedown run in a spare car. It was just another sign that the Month of May was set to be shrouded in disaster.

May 26, 1996 arrived gray and wet. The Indy 500 kicked off a few minutes after its traditional 11am start time, while the folks up in Michigan intended to hold off until 2pm to allow viewers at home to watch both races. The original 500 had attracted a field of 33 starters, 17 of whom were competing in the event for the very first time. That meant the start was a little slow and clumsy, but everyone soon found their footing to host a competent race. There were 10 cautions but only one major crash on the final lap, though only 9 cars were actually running by the end of the event. Drivers Davy Jones and Buddy Lazier duked it out to the finish in pursuit of victory, and their battle perfectly condensed the dueling ideologies of the era: Jones had competed in European circles, beating drivers like Ayrton Senna and Martin Brundle in Formula 3 before returning to the US. Lazier, meanwhile, stuck it out at home in the American open-wheel circles, though always in poor machinery. His first shot at the 500 in a decent car came in 1996, and Lazier used that vehicle to its full potential — when the checkered flag flew, it was Lazier who crossed the yard of bricks first. It was an exceptional showing, especially for a driver who had broken his back earlier in the IRL season and who still needed a cane to walk during the month of May.

If the IRL’s Indy 500 was a cautious success, CART’s U.S. 500 was… entirely the opposite.

A massive crash involving 12 cars struck the CART field before the race had even begun. CART organizers mimicked almost everything from the Indy 500, including the three-wide starting format. That start style had never been done in Michigan before, and pole winner Jimmy Vasser’s car touched second-placed Adrian Fernandez, who shoved outside front row starter Bryan Herta into the wall. With so much chaos in the front of the field, countless other cars were swept up in the crash.

To say that the start of the U.S. 500 was horrifying would be a huge understatement. CART had spent months arguing that it was the more professional and legitimate of the two rival American open-wheel series, and it had completely demolished its credibility before the race could even start.

A.J. Foyt, who had started off a CART driver before moving to the IRL, said, “For the world’s greatest professional drivers, they sure have made a lot of mistakes. The rookies over there have outshone every one of the regular drivers. I’m sick and tired of them running their mouths off about how great they are. Almost every race they’ve had, there’s been an accident on the first lap. And it wasn’t the rookies.”

There was nothing for CART to do but soldier on, and crews immediately set about repairing broken machinery or wheeling out spare cars. After an hour delay, only Adrian Fernandez’s car failed to reappear on the starting grid for a race that proceeded to go off smoothly and unspectacularly. There were a few wrecks, but many cars just couldn’t stick it out. Jimmy Vasser won the race by almost 11 seconds over the competition. Only two cars finished on the lead lap. Vasser took home $1.145 million for his victory; Lazier took home $1.368 million.

After such a tense and protracted battle between CART and IRL, both of their marquee events turned out to be something of a disappointment. Neither the 1996 Indy 500 nor the 1996 U.S. 500 would go down in history as uniquely compelling events — at least not in any positive way — and neither side of the open-wheel battle had emerged as a clear winner in what would become an ongoing battle for control of an entire sport.

Andrew Benson perhaps summed it up best in Autosport: “Both sides in the bitter war for control of Indy car racing in America claimed a moral victory after the first showdown between the Indy 500 and the U.S. 500 — and the struggle between the two rival series shows no sign of dying down. The one definitive conclusion that can be drawn is that neither side is going to back down. For now, neither side has won. The split looks set to continue. And the animosity caused by comments from both sides in the past few weeks has probably widened it.”

The fallout from the 1996 US 500

The remainder of 1996 looked drastically different for both IRL and CART. After the Indy 500, IRL took a 2-and-a-half month break before it kicked off a 10-race 1996/1997 season that would again end in a 500-mile showdown at Indianapolis. CART was forced to run the rest of its season as a form of damage control, watching helplessly as the IRL gained momentum in its sophomore season.

For 1997, the IRL introduced V8-powered cars that looked like simplified version of CART’s complex machinery. CART simply couldn’t hope to turn up at the Indy 500 with such a diverse field, but it also learned its lesson in attempting to run its own 500-mile race to compete with Indianapolis. Instead, it ran a frankly nondescript race at Gateway International Raceway near St. Louis.

The IRL wasn’t so lucky. During the build-up to the Indy 500, there had been 24 accidents that resulted in serious injuries for four drivers. Aside from a poor safety record, the new IRL machinery was also slower. The series eliminated its 25/8 rule in hopes of attracting CART competition back to Indianapolis, but CART shut down any hopes that the series might return to the event. CEO Andrew Craig said, “There remain many major issues that separate CART and the Speedway. We hope motor racing fans everywhere are not misled into believing this announcement guarantees the teams and drivers that comprise CART will be racing at Indianapolis in 1998.”

CART teams didn’t return to the Indy 500 until 2001, when Hélio Castroneves of Team Penske showed the IRL drivers that CART was still a top-level series.

But it was a sign that not all was well over in the CART world. The IRL slowly began to attract CART teams to its lineup as CART fell to pieces. The series lost critical international races and faced a scandal as drivers began passing out while running fast laps at Texas Motor Speedway in 2001. The series canceled the event on race day, kicking off a lawsuit that severely drained CART’s coffers. Then, its triumphant foray into Europe was overshadowed both by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the fact that star driver Alex Zanardi lost both of his legs in a crash. CART lost sponsors, broadcast rights, and manufacturers. After the 2003 season, CART declared bankruptcy, and its assets were liquidated. Three CART owners formed an organization called Open Wheel Racing Series, LLC and purchased CART’s assets, rebranding as the Champ Car World Series.

Champ Car moved to an all road course setup, while the IRL continued to prioritize ovals, but both series began to fall apart. Attendance declined. Drivers looked to other series. The chaos and anger that had powered the fracturing of American open-wheel petered out as it became clear that, under these conditions, neither series would survive. Heading into 2008, neither the IRL nor Champ Car could guarantee they’d have enough cars in their fields to satisfy their TV and sanctioning contracts. Something had to be done.

That “something” turned out to be reunification. In February of 2008, Champ Car authorized bankruptcy and a merger with the IRL. The IRL purchased Champ Car’s sanctioning contracts, its medical team, and the series history for $6 million. George Forsythe and Kevin Kalkhoven, Champ Car’s leaders, signed non-compete agreements. The deal was done with just a few weeks remaining before the first race at Homestead-Miami Speedway. In 2011, the IRL dropped its name and changed it to “IndyCar” in order to signify collaboration and goodwill between the former rivals.

That reunification in 2008 created the IndyCar series that we know today. It was a move that effectively saved open-wheel racing in the United States, but it has taken years for the series to rebuild its legitimacy, its competition, and most critically, its fanbase. It’s work that will likely remain ongoing for several more years.

Why it matters today

The battle between the Indianapolis 500 and the U.S. 500 really highlights the fact that open-wheel racing has always been contentious here in America — but it also shows just what a critical place the Indy 500 holds in American motorsport, and how challenging it can be to fold that one race into a greater championship. The Indy 500 stands alone; for many fans, it’s the only open-wheel race they’ll watch in a year. It completely transcends the championships and sanctioning bodies that have tried to turn that one race into a season-long story.

In my opinion, neither CART nor the IRL were completely wrong in their ultimate goals. Tony George and the IRL respected the tradition of open-wheel racing in America and wanted to return the sport to a more pared-down version of itself — albeit at the expense of technology, safety, and growth. CART, meanwhile, saw the Indy 500 as a critical event, but one that should exist within a more international and multi-skilled context. However, CART’s rabid growth and hard-headed self-assurance also led to its downfall. Both parties were trying to do what they felt was right, but neither were willing to compromise or understand anyone else’s perspective.

And, unfortunately, these problems still resonate today. Tensions have grown now that Roger Penske owns both the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the IndyCar series while still fielding a team — especially thanks to the Push-to-Pass cheating scandal that has already rocked the 2024 season. Engine manufacturers are at odds as IndyCar delays the introduction of its hybrid powertrain, in large part because one manufacturer is not ready. The Dallara chassis underpinning each Indy car was first introduced over a decade ago, and some people argue that it’s time for improvement, while others argue that we should maintain those old chassis to keep costs down. The series attempted to host a competition at a private club track in California this year, but it failed to raise its projected $1 million prize for the winner. Both fans and drivers alike are frustrated with the big gaps in IndyCar’s schedule, with its lack of international flair, and with the fact that IndyCar changed its season finale this year at the last minute, moving it from downtown Nashville to Nashville Superspeedway, while also leaving teams to clean up the mess it made with sponsors. And, on top of it all, Roger Penske is currently considering the revival of guaranteed starting spots in the Indy 500.

The issues that caused both the Split and the reunification are still at play in IndyCar. Only time will tell if those issues can be resolved, or if they’ll fester into yet another disaster for American open-wheel racing.

“Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” is a project by motorsport historian and journalist Elizabeth Blackstock that is dedicated to uncovering the sport’s forgotten tragedies as well as opening up motorsport to aspiring future journalists. If you’ve enjoyed this Substack, please consider a paid subscription; all posts here will be free for anyone to view, but your donations directly support the kind of content you cannot find at any legacy media site.

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Back in 1958, Formula 1 legend Juan Manuel Fangio tried his hand at the Indianapolis 500 for the first — and only — time.

At that point, Fangio was in the tail end of his career. He'd won his five Formula 1 championships along with a slew of major endurance events. He'd been kidnapped in Cuba, which launched him into stardom in the United States in a way he'd never experienced before. And in ‘58, he was effectively dared to compete in America's greatest race.

See, over in Italy, Monza had resurrected the banked oval section of its track with an eye to hosting F1 Grands Prix on it… but the drivers despised it. Part of it was the innate nature of oval racing, which clashed with the ethos of the European road racer. Part of it was practical: cars and tires in Europe simply were not designed to withstand the kind of forces they experienced on ovals, which made the technology legitimately dangerous.

If it couldn't host a Grand Prix on its oval, Monza decided to invite Indianapolis racers over from America, then pit ‘em against the best of the Grand Prix scene. But if you've listened to my DPTJ episode on that event, the Race of Two Worlds, then you know the Europeans had no major incentive to sign up, and it ended with the Americans effectively calling the Europeans chickens for not competing on an oval.

All of that is to say: an American publisher named Floyd Clymer claimed that Juan Manuel Fangio could not be considered a “true” World Champion if he did not try his hand at the Indianapolis 500. (Which, I suppose, is a bit of a fair point, considering the fact that the Indy 500 is what gave F1 its “world” championship status at the start!)

Clymer made a very public wager. If Fangio passed the rookie test, he'd give Fangio $500. If Fangio qualified in the 33-car field, he'd give Fangio $1,000. If Fangio finished the 500 higher than fifth while driving an American car, he'd give Fangio $2,500. If Fangio could finish the 500 higher than fifth while driving a foreign car, he'd give Fangio $5,000.

Fangio accepted.

It wouldn't be Fangio's first time visiting the Speedway, however. In 1948, his racing success prompted folks from Argentina's local automobile club to sponsor a “fact-finding mission” to America, where Fangio visited the facilities of Ford and General Motors, then attended the 500. Not much is written about the excursion in the biography by Gerald Donaldson, other than the fact that Fangio appreciated what he saw.

So, Fangio headed off to Indianapolis. He easily passed the ‘rookie test’, which involves drivers driving around an oval track at increasingly higher speeds to demonstrate their ability to control the car. But the more he practiced, the less confident he felt.

“I was trying to go faster, but the car would not respond,” Fangio said, as reported in the aforementioned Donaldson biography. “I found out that the car was three years old and there was little speed left in it. First there was a steering problem, then an engine problem. The garage had no spare magneto, and I had to go and borrow one myself from another team. When I saw that the mechanics assigned to my car couldn't get a four-cylinder engine in trim, which is the simplest thing in the world, I knew the whole thing was going to be a flop.”

He did manage to hit 140 miles per hour nevertheless, which ain’t bad for a first timer.

Fangio withdrew from competition before qualifying — saved in part because he was determined to use gasoline from his sponsor British Petroleum, while the American car owner was contracted to use Mobilgas. He donated his $500 for passing the rookie test to a local cancer charity, then flew back to Europe.

The thing that has always interested me most, though, is the response Fangio received in America. I think the “bet” posed by Clymer might make you think everyone was antagonistic, but The Indianapolis Star reported the following:

Juan Manuel Fangio — the man everybody had been waiting for — finally arrived at the Speedway yesterday and quickly started winning friends for himselfwith his attitude of modesty and humility.

Fangio was a little embarrassed at all the fuss that was made over him by the Speedway press corps and track officials.

Talking through volunteer interpreter Ed Russell, the Argentine driving ace admitted candidly that he might not even make the starting field for the May 30 race, let alone win it or place well.

“This is a fresh start here,” said the man who has won the world's Grand Prix championship five times.

***

When officials tried to question him on the years that he won the driving titles, Fangio said that he didn't feel it was necessary to go into all of that.

Fangio said he feels that he will have to adapt himself considerably to the Speedway track.

“I will look around and walk around a great deal,” he added.

He believes the American closed-circuit style of racing such as that at the Speedway is so completely different than the road racing and Grand Prix type to which he is accustomed that he will have a big job ahead of him making the transition.

Fangio said that he has wanted to drive in the 500 ever since he saw Mauri Rose win the 1948 race. Here as a spectator that year, Fangio watched part of the race from the infield and the rest from an observation deck on top of one of the stands. He paid tribute to Rose for “a beautiful race.”

***

Fangio said he would like to have come to Indianapolis sooner than this in his career but always had been stymied from doing so by his commitments to race on the Grand Prix Circuit.

The article ends by saying that Fangio “has the wisdom to recognize that he's just a rookie at Indianapolis,” but that “this is a man of purpose and sincerity, a man to be reckoned with.” That's not bad praise!

The reporting on Fangio was breathless. The folks at Indy ate up his every move, and even images of the Argentine legend passing his physical examination warranted space in the paper:

But not all was easy, as this article from The Indianapolis News reports:

George Walther Jr., owner of the car that Fangio is scheduled to test-drive, said Fangio has indicated his plan to give the Clymer money to charity. Walther said Fangio declined to express any opinion or resentment of the Clymer offer.

“He's too much of a gentleman,” Walther added.

[…]

Lloyd Axle, Walther's mechanic, said the language barrier is frustrating. “Fangio wants so much to talk direct to me and I want to talk to him. It's a real problem,” he said.”

That said, Walther was willing to defer to Fangio, who had requested a special transmission that would feature three forward speeds and one reverse. One speed would be used to start, one for going through the turns, and another for going through the straightaways. Naysayers alleged Fangio would have to change gears 800 times during the race, but Walther was willing to defend the man.

“Sure, he might shift eight times or so during his four-lap qualifying run, but if it saves him 1/100th of a second, it's worth it, isn't it?” Walther asked. “He might shift only 10 times during the race itself. He doesn't have to use the extra speed, but it'll be there if he wants it.”

Stewart Johnson added his impression of Fangio in that same article, saying, “He's no stupid person about this track. He asks intelligent questions and he seems to know pretty much what to expect.”

Early in practice, Fangio is reported to have faced a scary accident. Fangio was traveling at 115 miles per hour when Ray Crawford whipped around him at 135 mph in the northeast curve and proceeded to spin, nearly wiping both men out. Reporters flocked to his pit for comment, where he's said to have asked, “Why all the excitement? Spins are all a part of a race driver's work day. No, I don't want to rest. Let's get back in the race car.” A week later, he had his own spin wihle traveling almost 140mph.

Fangio swapped cars, moving to a Novi partway through the month in hopes that he could find more speed. It was not to be.

On May 14, it was reported that Fangio was considering withdrawing from the 500. On May 15, the news was confirmed.

The Indianapolis Star was hugely complimentary of Fangio:

Juan Manuel Fangio is gone from the Speedway scene. But he won't be forgotten for a long time.

Probably never before in the space of two weeks time has one man created such a sensation at the world's most famous automobile racing plant.

And few newcomers have made more friends than did the soft-spoken, agreeable Argentinian. At a time when Pan-American relations obviously can stand a lot of improvement, Fangio did nothing but good as an ambassador of sports from under the Equator.

It is regrettable, of course, that Fangio didn't stay with it, make the race and turn in a good showing. But, on the other hand, it is hard to question the wisdom of the road-racing champion's decision to call it quits.

That Fangio is a great driver there can be no doubt. He proved it conclusively by winning five world's Grand Prix titles. That he is a great gentleman, he proved conclusively during his trials and tribulations at the Speedway.

In fact, opinion was so favorable that a lot of folks were massively embarrassed when Duane Carter of USAC claimed during a pre-race dinner that Fangio “found it too tough here and went home” as part of a spiel that USAC drivers are “really world champions.” Apparently, a lot of drivers and other folks at the Speedway sought out Argentine journalist Dr. Vicente Alvarez, who was at the track, to apologize!

I always liked that sentiment — that Fangio could turn up speaking no English and with no experience racing on a track like IMS and yet still leave folks feeling as if he'd won something nevertheless.

“Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” is a project by motorsport historian and journalist Elizabeth Blackstock that is dedicated to uncovering the sport’s forgotten tragedies as well as opening up motorsport to aspiring future journalists. If you’ve enjoyed this Substack, please consider a paid subscription; all posts here will be free for anyone to view, but your donations directly support the kind of content you cannot find at any legacy media site.

Subscribe now

While the United States hosted a Formula 1 Grand Prix almost a decade before Canada did the same, the Canadian Grand Prix has had a stability on the calendar that we have just never had here in the States. What gives?

Hello everyone, my name is Elizabeth Blackstock, and I’m an award-winning motorsport historian and journalist. I’m posting new videos here on YouTube every week digging into motorsport history, and in honor of the 2026 Formula 1 season, I want to take a look at why each race on the calendar came to be, or at specific and important moments in that event’s past. My hope is that by the end of the year, we all have a much better understanding of just what it takes to host a Grand Prix, taking into consideration everything from historical precedent to contemporary sporting culture.

In honor of the Canadian Grand Prix, I actually want to take a slightly different approach. I want to understand why the Canadian Grand Prix has been such a staple of the Formula 1 calendar when it’s been such a pain in the butt to keep an F1 race in the United States. What has made Canada stand the test of time here in North America?

To do that, we need to start by talking briefly about Canada’s three Formula 1 venues: Mosport, Mont-Tremblant, and the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

Mosport Park first held something called the Canadian Grand Prix in 1961, but it wouldn’t be until 1967 that this circuit in Bowmanville, Ontario actually hosted Formula 1. Bowmanville is a little under 50 miles east of Toronto, and it’s tucked away in a pretty quiet, woody region. Not only is the track itself gorgeous, but it was also a major challenge for drivers thanks to features like its elevation changes.

Mosport Park alternated with Circuit Mont-Tremblant in Quebec for a few years, but Mont Tremblant only managed to host F1 twice, in 1968 and 1970. Its location 90 minutes outside of Montreal made it kind of a pain to get to, and it fell off the calendar pretty quickly — both because of the distance and because the harsh Quebec winters made the track surface extremely worn and dangerous. That left Mosport as the primary host of F1 in Canada until 1978.

Mosport was great in the same way that Watkins Glen was great: It was a gorgeous, natural race road course that provided plenty of challenges. But that also meant Mosport was subject to some of the same safety concerns. As cars got quicker, most circuits failed to actually update things like safety barriers with any actual hurry. That meant we started seeing a slew of nasty accidents, particularly after the introduction of aerodynamics.

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Its final Grand Prix came in 1977, which was a weekend of absolute chaos. Mosport’s track surface was unacceptably bumpy, and one of the bumps pitched driver Ian Ashley off the track, over some guardrails, and into a television tower. Making things even worse was the fact that it took ages for safety crews to reach him and free him. Later in the weekend, Jochen Mass hit a barrier, and it basically just flattened like a pancake rather than offering any resistance.

By this time, there were a few proposals floating around that would have taken F1 off of these road courses and popped them into city streets. The proposal that won out is the one we know as the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, which was known as the Circuit Île Notre Dame at the time.

The name, obviously, comes from the fact that the track is located on the Île Notre Dame. This is a manmade island that was assembled to host the world’s fair in 1967 and then revamped in 1976 to host the Summer Olympics.

Why build a whole new island? Well, no one in government could settle on a location within Montreal proper. Hosting the literal world’s fair requires a ton of space, and it would have been a logistical nightmare for residents and existing businesses. Plus, the other islands in the Saint Lawrence River were already being used for things. If you construct a whole entire island, you have a built-in place to push major events without causing a ton of in-city disturbance.

And when Montreal started talking about hosting a Grand Prix, well — it made sense to use that same island. The track layout was constructed using roads that already existed on the island, and it made its debut in 1978 with a victory from Quebec’s very own Gilles Villeneuve. When Villeneuve was killed four years later, the track was renamed in his honor.

It’s the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve that really gave the Canadian Grand Prix its staying power, because the track is pretty much perfect.

One of the biggest struggles that comes with hosting major sporting events in North America is the sheer amount of effort and infrastructure it takes to make these events happen. We love our sports, but we don’t want to be inconvenienced by them. It’s inconvenient to have public roads shut down for a race, but it’s also inconvenient to have to drive outside the bounds of a major city to get to a track.

Hosting the event at the Île Notre-Dame solves all of those problems. It’s technically a street circuit, but its seclusion makes it feel more like an older, purpose-built track. But it’s still really easy to get to the track, because Montreal has a subway system that leads directly to it. Local businesses benefit from the increased tourism without having to deal with any accompanying road closures or traffic congestion or even engine noise. And for the folks who attend the race, you’ve got a slew of accommodation options, from cheap hostels to five-star resorts. I won’t say it’s super quick to leave the track via subway, but it is very straightforward, and before you know it, you’re popping out downtown for dinner and drinks.

Here in the United States, we have never had anything similar. We still don’t! The closest we’ve come is Las Vegas, where the track is opened back up to the public for a few hours each day during a race weekend. But even then, the circuit is laid out on the Strip, which is a major pain for everyone who actually lives or works in Vegas. Trust me, I have talked to plenty of locals, and they’re still annoyed at the disturbances.

It’s also important to point out governmental buy-in when it comes to the Canadian Grand Prix. Federal, provincial, and local governments have pledged over $100 million to keep the race at the track until 2035, and there were consistent financial efforts to keep that race in place for years prior to that.

We have not had that same amount of buy-in here in the United States. Our races have largely been organized by individual promoters or promotion groups, which are expected to provide the bulk of the funds needed to put on a race. In Texas, for example, our state government sets aside a fund of money that is used to host major sporting events, so the Circuit of The Americas benefits from that. But the US government itself? It’s not really contributing much at all.

And there’s the decision to host the race in Montreal, which I think does a lot for the event’s street cred. Montreal is kind of as European as you can get while still being within North America. For folks like myself, who come from the United States, there’s a certain level of foreignness about Montreal that’s really appealing, but I didn’t have to leave the time zone I was born in to get there, and I could still get by pretty easily only speaking English. It’s a gorgeous, walkable city with incredible architecture and a public transit infrastructure that you can navigate with ease.

For the European contingent that travels for Formula 1, Montreal represents something different. It’s still clearly North American, with its own North American heritage and traditions — but it’s not quite the culture shock that you’ll find in, like, Texas. It’s familiar. Throw an incredible and exciting track into the mix, and you’ve got an incredible recipe for a popularity that transcends borders.

I also want to highlight the fact that tickets for the Canadian Grand Prix have almost always been cheaper than tickets for our American races, too — although, I don’t know if that’s actually the case anymore. But, back in the day, it was totally possible to snag three-day general admission passes for less than $50 USD if you bought your tickets during a Black Friday or Cyber Monday sale.

That has all combined into this perfect little blend of accessibility and also remoteness that makes the Canadian Grand Prix stand out. And as long as F1 fans keep buying tickets and spending their hard-earned money within the city of Montreal, we’re going to keep seeing the Canadian Grand Prix hold down the North American fort on the F1 calendar.

All that being said, though: one thing I’ll be paying attention to this year is ratings. This season, for some godforsaken reason, Formula 1 decided to schedule the Canadian GP in Montreal to fall on the exact same day as the Indianapolis 500, and there’s going to be a period of time where both events are happening at the exact same time. For me, and I think for a lot of other fans of American motorsport, this scheduling conflict kinda felt like a slap in the face. I respect F1’s desire to be more eco-friendly, but it feels absolutely absurd to schedule one of your handful of North American races in direct conflict with North America’s most historic race.

However, I was talking to some British friends about this conflict, and they are absolutely convinced that Indy is going to be blown out of the water by F1, at least in terms of viewership. Globally, I’ll hear your argument. But within North America… I just don’t buy it. But at the same time, I also am heavily biased, so… I guess we’ll have to see.

They billed it as the safest race in Indianapolis 500 history, but by the time the Month of May had wrapped up in 1933, five men had been killed and countless others were left reckoning with severe injuries.

The 1933 Indianapolis 500 was supposed to represent a reprieve from the strain of the Great Depression — a spectacle designed to prove that Americans could survive hard times by relying on stock machinery and the rough-and-tumble dedication that had powered the victors of the 20 previous runnings of the race.

Instead, a regression in the ruleset that mandated the return of riding mechanics meant that drivers weren’t the only ones risking — and losing — their lives as part of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. With a record-breaking 42-car field and countless early safety innovations that promised plenty and delivered little, the safest Indy 500 record actually became the deadliest.

This month on “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” we’re taking a deep look into one of Indy’s most tragic and painful chapters in order to better understand the complex legacy of this race, and to honor those who lost their lives along the way.

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The Junk Formula

Before we can dig into the drama that took place throughout the Month of May ahead of the 1933 Indianapolis 500, we need to step back and look at how the race was evolving — or devolving — at this time.

If you’ve been tuning into “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” then you likely know plenty about the founding of Indianapolis, as well as the fact that it held such a critical place in American open-wheel racing that race series who were otherwise willing to part ways with one another still craved the honor of racing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. If you’re a general fan of the race, then you probably feel that it’s been one of the big motivators behind automotive evolution in America.

But the 1930s brought with it a change. A step back. And to understand why that happened, we need to understand what brought those changes about in the first place.

As we talked about in a previous “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” episode titled “Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s tragic inaugural races,” the home of the Indianapolis 500 was originally founded and run by a gentleman named Carl G. Fisher. But as the 1920s started to come to a close, Fisher and track-cofounder James Allison made the decision to sell off the Speedway.

There are likely plenty of reasons for that. If you’ve been tuning into my YouTube channel, you’ll also know that Carl Fisher was heavily involved in the development of Miami Beach. He was one of the leading figures who helped transform a mangrove-covered swampland into the tourist destination we know today, and he made a fortune off of that investment. But just before the 1926 tourist season kicked off in full force, a hurricane swept through south Florida and caused major damage to the region. Casinos, hotels, and residences were wiped out, and while the damage wasn’t necessarily catastrophic, it was still a disaster for the travel season. Few folks bothered to head to Miami Beach that winter, and that meant Fisher lost ample money. He’d also started trying to launch a similar tourism development project in New York, so his attentions — and his finances — were divided. He couldn’t really afford to keep up.

We were also on the cusp of the Great Depression when Fisher and Allison sold IMS in 1927. Now, 1927 is still two years away from the major economic collapse that kicked off the Depression, but there were still signs that something was on the horizon. Industry slowed to a crawl in the final months of 1926, and farmers had lost money. But all things considered, prices on major goods remained the same or, in some cases, even fell — though that also kicked off a problematic turn by the federal government in attempting to regulate agricultural prices.

But Fisher likely didn’t have the finances to maintain so many high-cost operations around the country, and his interest in the track itself had waned in favor of other projects. Hence the sale to Eddie Rickenbacker in 1927 for an undisclosed amount of money.

Born in Columbus, Ohio on October 8, 1890, Eddie Rickenbacker is, to put it quite simply, a legend. He dropped out of school in seventh grade to work a series of odd jobs, becoming the man of his family after his father was killed in a brawl. One of those jobs was at the Oscar Lear Automobile Company, which encouraged him to study engineering on the side. Chief engineer Lee Frayer took a young Rickenbacker under his wing, and in 1906, he brought Rickenbacker with him to the Vanderbilt Cup in order to serve as his riding mechanic.

From there, Rickenbacker worked his way up through the ranks of the auto industry. He served as a chief testing engineer at the Columbus Buggy Company before his boss, Harvey S. Firestone of Firestone Tire fame, decided to sign him on to work on special projects. At 19 years old, he was director of a sales department that spanned four states.

Racing was an easy way for Rickenbacker to draw attention to his boss’ products, and he proved to be pretty damn good at it. He won a slew of races on dirt tracks in the Midwest, then served as a relief driver for Lee Frayer at the first-ever Indianapolis 500. He was so impressive that Carl Fisher and Fred Allison even offered him financial backing in 1915. Shortly after, he even moved to England to race for the British Sunbeam team.

It was there that he joined the Royal Flying Corps in anticipation of World War I; when tensions ultimately broke out, he joined the United States Air Service and kicked off a training program. His first sortie took place in April of 1918. It was something of a disaster considering he got lost in the fog, but his later performances made him a commander of the 94th Aero Squadron, recognized with a Medal of Honor by President Herbert Hoover in 1931. He was credited with 26 aerial victories, including one spat with Manfred von Richthofen — better known as the Red Baron. He was America’s most decorated flying ace of the war.

When he returned home, he was a celebrated war hero and had made the decision to give up the automobile in favor of the airplane. He succeeded in promoting a few aerial events, but the government wasn’t keen on the safety optics of these still-primitive war machines doing stunts during peacetime, so it became a hard sell. When a billionaire commissioned him to develop a new car for a brand to be called the Rickenbacker Motor Company, the ace jumped at the chance. He continued to develop a legacy for himself in the automotive space.

When Fisher and Allison made the call to sell the Speedway, Rickenbacker was a smart choice.

See, a real estate developer had approached the track co-founders with a proposal we’ve heard time and again over the years: he’d give them a small fortune for the track, which he’d then develop into residential housing. Fisher and Allison liked the idea of selling… but they wanted the track to remain. On November 1, 1927 Rickenbacker is said to have purchased the track for $700,000, with an annual salary for himself of $5,000. Adjusted for inflation, Rickenbacker paid the equivalent of over $13 million for the track, and he’d make just under $100,000 per year to run it and host events there.

One of his first moves was to build a golf course inside of and around the Speedway, which would bring in additional revenue.

He helmed two successful runnings of the Indianapolis 500 before disaster struck. In October of 1929, the stock market crashed. On October 28, 1929, the Dow declined by 13 percent; the following day, it declined another 12. By the middle of November, the Dow had lost almost half its value, and the slide continued through 1932.

To call it a catastrophe would be a major understatement. The early 1920s had been filled with optimism. New technologies like automobiles and telephones made daily life easier and created plenty of work for folks of all backgrounds. Many Americans had money to invest, and a whole industry appeared to help people manage their finances.

When the stock market crashed, those folks who had invested their money lost big time. Not only did they lose money; they also, in many cases, owed money to the folks who had granted them loans. Banks prevented people from removing or accessing their money, and before you knew it, families around the country were on the cusp of homelessness and starvation. In order to preserve what little money they had, folks stopped spending on luxuries, trips, and outings. No one was making big purchases.

And one of the biggest purchases a person could make was an automobile. The US auto industry faced a dramatic decline in sales, which forced a decline in production and led to a variety of layoffs. The folks at major companies were left scrambling, trying to find ways to reduce costs and still sell vehicles.

Obviously, this would also have an impact on major racing events like the Indianapolis 500 — a race that was, if we’re being honest, already in flux.

Back in the early days of the 500, drivers could turn up with cars that were pretty much just road cars with select improvements. For a while, we had this incredible growth cycle, where racers improved their cars and automakers were able to implement those changes in their designs. But the rise of purpose-built race car constructors like Miller started turning up with cars built specifically for racing — expensive, gorgeous machines that were as much art piece as they were race car. Standard automakers looking to keep costs down and production high saw very little appeal in spending reams of money for racing. They’d begun dropping out of competition years prior to the Depression. But the Depression also saw tons of race teams dropping out. Eddie Rickenbacker, who had invested a massive amount of money into the continued running of this race, needed to make a change.

Now, the stock market crash didn’t necessarily lead to the creation of a new set of rules that many have derisively called “the junk formula” — but it certainly came at the right time.

In the late 1920s, if you wanted to be competitive at Indy, you needed a supercharged 91-cubic-inch engine inside your single-seat race car, and if you wanted to win, you probably needed to pay Harry Miller to build it for you. If you couldn’t afford to pay the estimated $25,000 for a race car — which would be the equivalent of just under $500,000 today — then you wouldn’t even bother to attend major events like the Indianapolis race.

If you don’t have cars turning up to race, then you don’t have a race. So, to increase interest, new track owner Eddie Rickenbacker decided to reduce costs and level the playing field by banning superchargers and mandating the use of a variety of engines — four-, six-, eight-, and even sixteen-cylinder machines that could have a displacement of between 100 and 366 cubic inches.

Now, there’s some controversy here in the sequence of events. Many historians argue that the Great Depression did not cause the adoption of the junk formula, because Rickenbacker had been laying out its broadest strokes as early as 1928. His stated goal was to bring Indy back to its “roots” — or, to focus less on purpose-built racing machines and to instead serve as a passenger car proving ground. The AAA approved the regulatory set early in 1929, before the stock market collapse. But anyone with a keen eye on industry would have seen the decrease of production in the years prior to the collapse. More than anything, though, the “junk” formula ended up coming at the exact perfect time to save racing at the Indy 500.

Those rules opened up the opportunity for automakers or even individuals to compete with stock cars and stock engines, and that certainly didn’t make anyone happy. But a big reason folks call this the “junk” formula is thanks to the fact that it effectively banned single-seater cars in favor of bringing back two-seater passenger machines in which a riding mechanic would sit beside the driver for the duration of a race.

I talk in greater depth about riding mechanics in the episode of “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” titled “Riding Mechanics: Motorsport’s Most DANGEROUS” profession,” so that’s worth a listen if you want a full history.

But to keep it really simple, a riding mechanic was pretty much exactly what it sounded like: a mechanic who would ride alongside a driver during a race. Early cars were very much not a single-person affair, particularly if you were in the heat of a competition. You needed someone to crank start the engine, first and foremost. When the engine was started, then you needed someone to sit beside the driver and keep an eye on gauges, to manually pump oil, to serve as a lookout, and to make any necessary fixes while racing at full speed.

Riding mechanics were necessary for those early years, but I don’t know that anyone necessarily believed them to be an integral part of a motor race. They were mainly just present because cars weren’t reliable. Once you could drive a handful of miles without needing someone making constant tweaks to the machinery, riding mechanics were phased out. Even back in 1911, Indy 500 winner Ray Harroun was able to go the full race distance without one.

Two decades later, Rickenbacker wanted to bring these mechanicians back, even though there was no practical reason for doing so. And I think that’s a big part of what made these new regulations so unsavory. I mean, obviously, the folks who had established businesses as part of this new motorsport engineering niche would be annoyed that their business was being compromised by larger and less complex engines. But at the very least, they could still tweak those engines and their accompanying chassis to make them more powerful and technologically advanced. A riding mechanic, though? That was a blast straight from the past, in the most unwelcome way. That was the reminder that your race cars were effectively being “dumbed down.”

Yet the Indy 500 remained the most prestigious race in the United States of America, and if you wanted a shot at winning the honor of victory, then you had to adopt the junk formula.

Unfortunately, it also put more people in harm’s way than necessary at the increasingly fatal 1933 running of the 500-mile sweepstakes.

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The Buildup to the 1933 Indianapolis 500

They claimed it would be the safest Indianapolis 500 on record — “they,” of course, being track owner Eddie Rickenbacker.

On May 3, the Indianapolis Star ran a story that didn’t feature any direct quotes from Rickenbacker but instead included a summation of his comments at a pre-race meeting.

According to the track owner, the shrinking size of the gas tank would be a major factor in making the race safer. Tanks would be limited to just 15 gallons for 1933 — down from the 35- to 55-gallon tanks that teams had been using, which meant drivers would need to stop for fuel at least four different times throughout the 500 miles. According to Rickenbacker, this would allow drivers a chance to rest and recover, and it would enable officials to swing by for a check-up. The reporter didn’t note if Rickenbacker talked about any consequences should an official discover that a driver was too tired or a car too unfit to race, but the extra stops would somehow create a safer environment while also adding in a level of strategy that would increase excitement.

There were indeed a few new safety innovations introduced to championship racing during both practice and the race. One practice-only innovation came from Studebaker. See, on oval tracks like the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the right rear tire is usually the first one to suffer wear, and drivers or riding mechanics may not be conscious of that from the cockpit. As a result, those right-rear tires were prone to blow-outs that could result in catastrophic accidents.

So, Studebaker actually added a fifth tire to a prototype it was testing at Indianapolis. A smaller wheel was added to the outside of the right rear wheel via a flange. Drivers were instructed to practice until the main tire blew — but when it did, that smaller wheel would then hit the racing surface and theoretically keep the car moving at speed without any spins or crashes. Then, the driver could pull into the pits for a repair. It was still a pretty fresh idea, so Studebaker opted against using it in the race, but it highlighted the fact that safety was on the minds of most folks at the track, not just the owners.

Another safety device was equipped in the car of Aiden Sampson II. Sampson had been fielding race cars for a few years at that point, and for a lot of that time, he’d been mulling over an idea. What if he were to equip his race car with a radio that would allow a driver and his pit crew to speak to one another?

During the winter months after the 1932 season, Sampson hired radio technician Lurston J. Knee to outfit a car with a radio, then proceeded to take it through test runs to see if it worked.

“By adoption of the radio equipment, Sampson expects to save his driver much time that would ordinarily be lost through confusion in the pit,” The Indianapolis Star reported on May 14. “The mechanic, who will converse with the pit crew from the car, will keep the ground workers informed as to the progress of the car, its impending pit stops, and their purpose. By this method everything will be in readiness when the stop is made and all unnecessary lost time eliminated. It will also save the pit crew’s nerves in case the car fails on the back stretch.”

In order to add in the radio, batteries were bolted to crossmembers of the car’s frame, with the generator mounted at the base of the cowl support bracket. The receiving set would be placed under the riding mechanic’s seat. Headphones were mounted in the riding mechanic’s helmet, and a microphone was added to the steering wheel; all their transmissions would be beamed back to the pit via a brass antenna.

This was a technology that actually made it to race day, once Sampson received the OK from the AAA. His car, driven by Chester Gardner, went on to finish in fourth place overall. While a battery cable did break during the race, The Indianapolis Times reported that it held on until the 340-mile mark, at which point a battery cable broke. But all things considered, that’s a pretty impressive run.

But there were other concerns at hand, as well — and one big one involved the track surface itself, which drivers had termed the “gateway leap.”

Basically, the gateway leap was a bump in the track surface at the end of the front straight. Many drivers had gone on the record as calling that bump a hazard; they needed to slow down before they came across it, which was annoying in and of itself. But they were also annoyed that they had to constantly be thinking about that bump. Those were the folks calling for this bump to be flattened out.

Not everyone agreed with that sentiment. Driver Dave Evans actually argued that the bump was a safety factor in and of itself.

“For ten years I have entered into and listened attentively to discussions among the men who rode the bump,” he told The Indianapolis Star. “I have found that all drivers eventually respect the leap. As a result, they negotiate the first corner in the south turn with more caution than they exert on any of the other quarter turns of the track.”

Plus, he argued, “many a driver who was exhausted and should come in for relief has had this reality brought to his attention very forcibly by the jarring of the Gateway Leap. I think the bump should remain.”

Speedway officials, however, were reported in mid-April to be considering the removal of that bump, and a handful of engineers even went out to try smoothing things out. According to riding mechanic Spider Matlock, though, a bump remained — it was just different than before.

“There used to be three distinct hops when you hit it,” he explained. “Now there is one fast jump that take all four wheels off the ground. I was disappointed when I heard that they were going to remove it, but I find it almost as thrilling as ever.”

But Indiana’s racing season did not begin with a bang. Instead, it began with a funeral.

Racer Bob Carey had burst onto the AAA Championship Car racing scene the year before, making his debut at the 1932 Indianapolis 500. The 27-year-old hailing from Anderson, Indiana managed to snag the lead of the iconic race on lap 59 and held it tight until he hit the outside wall in Turn 4 on lap 94. He spun three times, dipped into the pits for repairs, returned to the track, then had to pit again with a damaged shock absorber. He still made it back to the track, where he managed to come home in fourth place.

That was the start of a blisteringly quick rookie year. Carey was leading races at dirt tracks in Detroit and Syracuse when they were flagged for rain, and his second-place finish at the Oakland Speedway season finale netted him enough points to win the championship. He was the first driver in American open-wheel history to win a championship in his rookie year, and he would remain the only one to do so until Nigel Mansell headed to the Indy Car series in 1993, sixty years later.

But on April 16, 1933, during practice for a pre-season race at Legion Ascot Speedway in Los Angeles, California, Carey’s race car launched over an embankment with what was suspected to be a stuck throttle. He was killed instantly.

Waldo Stein, a racing expert quoted by The Indianapolis Times on April 25, was at the track that day. He recalled, “Bob set out to make a new record during a practice spin. He went into a spin on a curve and when he gave it the gun to straighten out, the throttle stuck. He went for cover, but the tail of his car hit the fence, threw him partially out of the seat, and crushed him.”

And he wasn’t the only one to die that weekend. Bryan Saulpaugh was also killed at Legion Ascot in a similar incident where he lost control as the only car on the track.

His body was shipped home to Anderson, and a funeral was arranged for April 26. A handful of drivers had already flocked to Indianapolis in anticipation of the track opening for practice on May 1, and those men kicked off their month of May by paying respects to a racer who was expected to be a favorite come race day on Tuesday, May 30.

“Bob Carey was a champion. It was his title,” said T. E. Myers, the general manager of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “He won it with daring and with skill and with the tenacity that made him great. But he was more than a champion in name: he was a champion in deed. He would still have ranked with the championship even had his courageous sportsmanship fallen short of the goal.

“We of the Speedway official family will miss Bob. We will miss his smile and his unrestrained enthusiasm as he rode out of the garage to whirl around the track. Thousands of fans who cheered him last year will miss him, too, but they will find solace in the thought that he has joined other speed kings who have preceded him into the mystery land of eternity which to all of us is a maze of unmarked highways and who have made their supreme sacrifice testing new motoring principles that make travel safer for us who linger behind.”

In retrospect, the Carey funeral could be seen as a sign of things to come.

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Practice for the 1933 Indianapolis 500

Before we get too deep into the action of the 1933 month of May, though, we need to take a moment to talk about what the month of May actually looked like back then. Remember, we got the phrase “month of May” because the Indianapolis Motor Speedway used to open for business on May 1. The full field of drivers was not expected to be present at this point, but if you were at the track, you were free to move into Gasoline Alley and practice to your heart’s content.

Qualifying was a very different affair. Qualifying would take place over the course of four days, on two weekends.

Today — and throughout much of Indy 500 history — drivers qualify for the race by completing four consecutive laps. The average speed of those four laps is totaled together, and drivers are assigned their starting places based on this, with the fastest speed leading the field. The four-lap average was designed to force drivers and team owners to demonstrate their skill as well as the reliability of their machinery. But in 1933, that four-lap average was increased to ten laps. With such a big field, it was thought that the 10-lap average would force both driver and car to prove they could last that duration. Drivers were allegedly quite annoyed about the whole thing. Four-lap qualifying already required an intense amount of focus and exertion; increasing that to 10 laps only added to the strain.

The impact of the Great Depression could still be felt at the Speedway when it came to things like ticket prices and prize purses. In early April, the folks at IMS announced that there would be a 20% reduction in ticket prices that meant the standard $2.50 general admission ticket would now cost $2 — which would be the equivalent of dropping the price of a $66 ticket to $52 today, when adjusted for inflation. The last time a ticket had cost just $2 had been before the stock market crash, back in 1927. Track officials stated that the price reduction was made “in keeping with the times,” though they also pointed out that they felt the $2.50 fee was “extremely nominal” given the fact that folks were granted over five hours of entertainment.

And that wasn’t the only good news for fans. The Prohibition era was in its final year, so while the manufacture and sale of high-percentage alcohol was technically still illegal, the manufacture and sale of 3.2% beer had been federally accepted in March. In mid-April, Indiana as a state approved the sale of beer… so long as buyers also purchased food. How much food? One single cent’s worth — or, 25 cents today. This opened the doors for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to apply for a sales license that was approved in time for spectators to grab a brew while they watched time trials. The track placed a massive order for 10,000 cases of beer to celebrate. You could buy as much beer as you wanted, just as long as you purchased a single cracker.

The drivers, however, had it more difficult. If the economy justified the reduction of ticket prices, it also justified the reduction of prize purses.

Prize money was cut by a whopping 40% for the first 10 places. In 1932, first place had been awarded $20,000, but in 1933, that was reduced to $12,000. Second place dropped from $10,000 in prizes to $6,000. The total purse for the top-10 finishers in 1932 was $50,000. In 1933, it would be $30,000.

The Speedway claimed this was acceptable because it was “only one-half of the cut the speedway will take on a crowd of 100,000 spectators at the lower general admission price” of $2. It also pointed out that baseball fans and competitors had been feeling the effects of the Depression for years, so the fact that Indy lasted until 1933 without feeling the heat of economic impact was promising. And I’d like to point out that there were still plenty of other prizes on hand throughout the race. The Ford Motor Company announced that it would deliver a brand-new V8 convertible to the race leader at 400 miles, while a local department store called Banner-Whitehall offered a free electric refrigerator to the leader at 250 miles.

“There is an unusual interest in both the public and the contestants in the coming race, augmented by rules and regulations which brings the competition between special and semi-stock cars on more common ground,” Pop Myers said in a statement. “But for the perpetuation of the historic speed classic, to make positive its continuation through the coming years, it was deemed economically necessary to shade the prize money this year and offer the public a general admission ticket at a price within the reach of all fans.

“Through all these depression slashes the prize money has remained the same at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Now the speedway has asked the contestants to bear a part of the burden this year so that racing may continue on a definite, high plane, maintaining the public interest which annually brings out the largest crowd for any sporting event.”

As a form of compensation, the entry fee required of all cars and drivers interested in the race was slashed by $100, from $300 down to $200. And the smaller prizes didn’t seem to deter anyone from taking a shot at the 500-mile spectacle; come May 1, it was announced that there were over 40 entrants in the race — a number that would balloon to over 60 before time trials began.

Why the late rush to join the grid? Well, that had a lot to do with superstition. Somewhere along the way, car owners decided that it was good luck to be the very last car to enter the Indy 500, and as a result, there would be a mad rush to join the field in the final days of April.

The field itself was absolutely stacked with talent. Among more than 60 entrants were four former winners — Fred Frame, Louis Meyer, L. L. Corum, and Louis Schneider. Other favorites included Meyer, Frame, Ernie Triplett, Howdy Wilcox II, Babe Stapp, Lester Spangler, and Wilbur Shaw, all of whom had entered strong machinery.

But there were also tons of rookies. Five of those men would make the field, but 20 of the cars entered were men who had never once competed at the iconic Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“In coming to Indianapolis, all these new drivers, no doubt, have a definite idea that they can accomplish something,” reporter W. F. Sturm wrote in The Indianapolis News. “Some of these new names are of lads who have been racing out in the brush on half-mile and sometimes mile tracks. They have been eating dust perhaps for years, but never have gone beyond that stage.”

But he continued, “Others of the names that appear on the entry list may even be drivers who seldom have driven even on the dirt tracks. They may be workmen in a service station or a garage. Their work on the road may have called for driving at all times of the day and night, fast and slow, over good roads and bad. They believe they can make good at Indianapolis.”

Also of note were Juan Gaudino and Raul Riganti — names that you probably won’t recognize unless you hail from South America. Both men were legends from Argentina, and they’d made the long trek to Indianapolis in hopes of making an impact. Gaudino had entered in 1932, praising the kindness of American drivers and the willingness of car owners to allow him to look over their technology. Riganti would be making his Indy debut, driving for Juan Gaudino.

And in terms of technology, 1933 would see a whole variety of engine layouts and drivetrains. The 366-cubic-inch maximum offered plenty of freedom in design. Newspapers expected the primary battle to rage between four- and eight-cylinder engines, though we’d also see a 16-cylinder engine on the entry list. Rear-wheel drive cars had been the standard for years, but front-wheel drive machines had started to populate the entry list in greater numbers, and we even saw the introduction of a four-wheel drive car.

Experts and reporters predicted that, once the action actually kicked off, it would only be a matter of time before we began to see speed records fall.

Even though the track technically opened for practice on May 1, no one actually went out to test the waters until May 9. Part of that stemmed from the fact that many folks were making the most of the workspace in Gasoline Alley to get their cars tuned up and ready for a 500-mile grind — but part of it was also due to the weather. May was shaping up to be a wet one, so even though drivers were ready to set out at the start of the second week of the month, they had to wait for the bricks to dry.

One of the first men on track that day was Ernie Triplett, one of the favorites for the race. He’d been entering the 500 since 1929, but his skill as a driver had only grown since then. In both 1931 and 1932, Triplett earned the AAA championship for “big car” racing on the West Coast — with “big cars” being another name for sprint cars. He turned a handful of laps, with his quickest clocking in at 116 miles per hour. Later that afternoon, a handful of other drivers joined him for a few laps to start breaking in their machines. Two days later, on May 12, his 120.34-mph lap was an unofficial record for unsupercharged two-seaters.

But practice would come to a close quite soon after. Only four cars hit the bricks during the early hours of the morning, but their running was cut short as a cold front moved in and brought heavy rains with it. The rain would continue for days; on Friday, the Warfleigh levee had begun to crack as floodwaters tested the strength of its construction. The Eighty-sixth street bridge was left quaking as rushing water pounded against it, and plenty of other smaller bridges had been completely washed away.

Over at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the torrential downpours left the track so flooded that crews were pictured taking literal rowboats out for a spin. Thankfully, the water never reached the garages, so mechanics were able to continue working without issue, and practice kicked back up on Tuesday afternoon. The four-wheel-drive Miller of Frank Brisko dropped the speed record once again in anticipation of the start of qualifying that weekend.

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Qualifying for the 1933 Indianapolis 500

Tens of thousands of race fans flocked to the stands of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday, May 20 to witness the first of over a week of time trials that would set the field for the 1933 Indy 500. Truckloads of beer stocked the concession stands, and a brand-new system of speakers was in place to allow fans to actually hear the action being called for the first time.

We’ve brushed up on the rules of qualifying, but let’s get a little more in-depth. Drivers needed to average a minimum speed of 100 miles per hour over the course of 10 laps in order to be considered eligible for the Indy 500, and all 60 cars at the Speedway were allotted four attempts at hitting that average. The faster your 10-lap average, the farther up the grid you’d be placed come Memorial Day — but there was precedence given to any cars that qualified during the first weekend. If you waited until the following weekend, you’d only be able to qualify for a starting slot behind the folks already lined up. And if you weren’t one of the fastest 42 drivers, well — see ya next year.

Because qualifying was stretched out over the course of several days, there wasn’t quite as much pressure on drivers to actually hit the track. A lot of the favorites — Ernie Triplett, Bill Cummings, Frank Brisko, Lou Moore, and Howdy Wilcox — were expected to get laps on the board as soon as possible, since their cars were ready and because it’d offer them later opportunities to battle for pole if another driver were to usurp their pace. But for the drivers and cars that had just recently arrived at the Speedway, there would still be time to prepare before they needed to try to make the show.

As it would turn out, only nine drivers would make a qualifying attempt on the first day. Ernie Triplett christened qualifying with a 10-lap average speed of 117.658 miles per hour, setting an early pace for the rest of the competitors to try to best. He’d only be bested by Frank Brisko in his four-wheel-drive machine; his 10-lap average was a record-breaking 118.388.

And the lap record fell, too; Wild Bill Cummings crested 120.919 miles per hour, but a cut tire saw his run come to an early end after eight laps.

Twenty-two cars set qualifying times at the conclusion of Sunday’s action. Cummings, who was able to set a stunning qualifying run, snagged pole position, putting him just ahead of Brisko and alongside Fred Frame on the first row. Ernie Triplett fell down the order to fifth, while eventual victory Louis Meyer headed the third row by qualifying seventh.

Mark Billman was the sole car to qualify on Monday, May 22 — a day that brought with it the first spectacular wreck of 1933. Driver Al Aspen was attempting to complete his 10-lap run at six in the evening when a rear spring rod snapped in the middle of the third lap. The car hit the inside wall, where the left rear wheel was cracked off the frame. The impact sent it spinning down the track, during which time the car repeatedly collided with the wall.

Aspen and riding mechanic Mitz Davis somehow managed to remain in the car during the incident — likely because the car didn’t get airborne. Aspen smacked face-first into the cockpit, which resulted in a broken nose and minor facial injuries. Davis suffered a cut arm. Both men were treated at the hospital, where they were deemed in good shape. The team vowed to mend the car and bring it back to the track for the race.

The incident may have spooked the drivers who were yet to set a speed, because no one hit the track on Tuesday or Wednesday. Two drivers, Wilbur Shaw and Al Miller, made successful runs on Thursday evening, and several more were lined up to make a run when driver Speed Gardner hit the inside wall on his first flying lap. Gardner was thrown from the car and sustained serious bruises and a broken left hip; his riding mechanic Charlie Schneider was unhurt but seriously shaken. By the time the wreckage was cleaned up, it was too dark for any further runs.

Friday saw the total number of qualifiers rise to 30, just before the final push to flesh out the grid. But tragedy would strike again before the weekend was through.

On Sunday afternoon, 32-year-old driver Bill Denver of Pennsylvania lost control of his car in the northwest turn in such a way that it actually crested the outside wall. It flipped three times and crashed into a fiery heap at the foot of a tree. Both Denver and his riding mechanic Bob Hurst had been thrown from the car during the process. Denver died in the ambulance on the way to a hospital, the result of a broken neck. Hurst died shortly after arriving at the hospital, a result of a skull fracture.

In a sick twist of fate, the car involved in the accident was the very same one that Al Aspen and Mitz Davis had been injured in.

“And still everything else was unchanged,” mused one writer in The Indianapolis Times in his report on the incident. “The thousands sat in the stands. The vendors plied their trade. The corn-fed maidens in dimities gurgled and giggled. The tall maples nodded in the heavy heat. The soft-spoken war hero dabbed his forehead nervously with a handkerchief and murmured, ‘the poor devils.’

“Death had come and gone, as it often does to this shrine of speed. Nobody seems to mind it a great deal, and least of all the men who gamble with their lives. They seem to accept death as a casual inevitability. Only they never call it that. Always it is ‘racing luck,’ and either you have it or you don’t.”

The incident meant a handful of drivers were made to qualify on Monday, May 29 — the day before the race. But a full field of 42 drivers there would be come Tuesday morning.

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1933 Indianapolis 500: Race Day

Over 5,000 employees had descended upon the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the course of the month, with the bulk of them arriving on Tuesday, May 30. As 42 drivers geared up to battle the bricks and their competitors over the course of 500 miles, track personnel included national guardsmen, telephone operators and announcers, timers and scorers, parking attendants, score board operators, ticket sellers, ushers, program sellers, vendors, doctors, and so much more.

Hotels were packed, and keen fans had begun to line up at the entrance gate four days in advance of the race; these general admission ticket holders wanted to guarantee that they’d be able to scoop up the best seats in the house. Not even the deaths of two men just hours prior could keep people away.

But the pre-race drama was not through. Namely, countless drivers banded together to protest the entrance of one of their competitors, who was known as Howdy Wilcox II. No, he was not at all related to the original Howdy Wilcox, winner of the 1919 Indy 500 — but he did see some value in carrying on the legendary name, and he’d done well to represent that name with integrity.

Yet somehow, the drivers had discovered that Wilcox was diabetic, likely because he had failed a pre-race physical examination — and not only was he diabetic, but he seemed to be struggling with health complications. It’s hard to parse out exactly what happened here, but allegedly there were worries that Wilcox would faint behind the wheel. I haven’t been able to figure out if there was evidence of him having done so, or if it was mostly just a precautionary concern considering the strain of a 500-mile race.

I also haven’t been able to figure out exactly who was responsible for Wilcox’s removal. Some reports claim that drivers went on strike to protest Wilcox, while others say the drivers banded together in support of him racing. Whatever happened, Wilcox was eventually kept out of his car, and he was replaced by Mauri Rose, who was dropped to the rear of the field for the start.

It actually resulted in a delay to the start of the race, which prompted track owner Eddie Rickenbacker to reflect, “It is one of my greatest regrets that the race started late for the first time in the track history, except when it was caused by an act of God. But I had to sustain Dr. H. R. Allen’s ruling barring Howdy Wilcox, one of four greatest drivers, from participation because of his health even if the drivers carried out their threatened strike. Otherwise, I might have been legally and morally guilty of manslaughter. I feel that I know more about that race than any one other person, and the responsibility for safety of many lives is mine. It is a tremendous responsibility, and I feel it keenly.”

When the green flag finally waved to kick off the race, Bill Cummings held tight to his lead through to the first pit stop — an incident that seemed to throw a lot of reporters for a loop, since there was suddenly a ton of strategy to pay attention to. But it wouldn’t be long before tragedy struck again.

Mark Billman was a rookie at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, though he’d been born near the track and raised on tales of derring-do accomplished by the most successful drivers of a bygone era. With the track just a stone’s throw away from his home, his lifelong goal had been to one day race at the iconic 500-mile event, and when he was 18, he got behind the wheel for the first time at Hoosier Speedway.

Over the course of the next decade, Billman won more than 50 races all across the country, with 10 of those victories coming in 1932 alone. But the one goal he had yet to accomplish was racing at Indianapolis.

His stunning performance in 1932 drew the attention of two men named James Mannix and Jimmie Sharp. Billman had previously raced for Mannix, while Sharp had become a well-known mechanic after forging his early career with Fred Duesenberg. Those two men decided that Billman had earned a shot at Indy, and they entered him in a Duesenberg that they owned. For all of his success in motorsport, the 1933 500 would be Billman’s first-ever AAA-sanctioned championship race. It was called the Kemp-Mannix Special, and he qualified it 22nd on the grid during time trials — the second-highest rookie to qualify for the race.

During the first stage of the race, Billman held his own. But on lap 79, he skidded in the second turn. The loss of control sent him crashing into the wall with so much force that the Indianapolis Star claimed the car tore a V-shaped piece of concrete out of the wall. During the incident, Billman was thrown from the car, but he landed just inside the track, next to the outer retaining wall. The flipping car bounced onto his prone body, which served as the cushion between his Duesenberg and the outside wall.

The front wheel pinned his wrecked body in place; his left arm had been torn off in the wreck, both legs were broken, and he had suffered serious internal injuries. Somehow, he was still breathing, and trackside care workers shuttled him directly to the hospital. Despite receiving immediate blood transfusions, Mark Billman died an hour after his crash.

The Indianapolis News described the wreck in grim detail:

“Billman’s car hit the outside wall. Then, like a demoniac rabbit, it did a macabre dance through the air. Two living, breathing men did an imidation of ragdolls. One disappeared over the outside wall and suffered painful lacerations. The other, hurtling through the air, came down on the hard brick track. The machine, which a second before had represented the consummation of human skill, ricocheted and came down, one wheel across its master’s stomach. A slow red stain darkened the bricks.

“And then came the roar of the crowd. Thousands of persons stretched around that turn surged forward. Thousands of persons had a glimpse of that unconquerable racer they had both feared and hoped to see: Death.”

Billman’s mechanic, Elmer Lombard, was thrown from the car as it flipped upside down. He was thrown 150 feet outside of the track and suffered burns and lacerations, but he nevertheless managed to recover.

On lap 131, the fans packed in the stands would witness still more horror. Indiana native Lester Spangler was racing in his very first Indy 500 — the only rookie in the field who qualified higher than Mark Billman in 1933.

Reports differ on what happened to Spangler. Everyone agrees that he was performing well; he’s reported as racing “within the money” all day, which meant he was holding strong in the top-10, which were, at that time, the only finishing positions that came with a paycheck.

But some reports say that Spangler was riding behind racer Malcolmb Fox at the time of his accident, while others report that he was in front of Fox. In the reports that cite Fox ahead of Spangler, it’s written that Fox had to make a sudden evasive maneuver to avoid hitting a car that had spun in front of him. Spangler, just behind, tried to rush into a gap between Fox’s car and the wall, only for both cars to collide. In the reports that allege Spangler was ahead of Fox, it’s said that Spangler suddenly and strangely slowed down, which forced Fox to slip by. Spangler, seeing that, tried to crowd between Fox and the wall in hopes of regaining his position.

All accounts agree on what happened next. Spangler’s Miller Special struck one of Fox’s rear wheels and took flight. The car landed hard on the outside retaining wall, killing both driver and riding mechanic G. L. “Monk” Jordan, the latter of whom was a paint shop owner who volunteered as a riding mechanic because he simply loved racing. It’s said that the bodies of both men were so mangled that their friends and loved ones couldn’t tell them apart.

Fox spun several times and hit the outside wall with such a force that the car nearly cleared it; one tire caught him, leaving Fox and his riding mechanic Bert Cook dangling over the edge. Thankfully, both men were alive and almost entirely fine, barring some bruises and skull fractures.

Eventual winner Louis Meyer first assumed the lead on lap 130 that he would maintain largely right through to the checkered flag. Meyer, the son of French immigrants born in New York and raised in Los Angeles, had gotten his start competing at various tracks throughout California, where he quickly impressed the racing contingent. His first outing at Indianapolis came in 1928, and he managed to snag victory in his rookie year. His win in 1933 would make him the first two-time 500 winner since Tommy Milton — and his third victory in 1936 would put him into the record books, both for his skill as well as for the fact that he took a long sip of a cool glass of buttermilk and kicked off a tradition that has endured right through to this day.

The deaths of three men during the course of 500 miles did not stop the machinations of the racing industry: Multiple protests had been lodged by competitors alleging that their peers were not deserving of their finishing position, and those problems needed to be sorted out before any prize money could be distributed.

When the protests were resolved, drivers gathered at the Indianapolis Athletic Club to receive their funds. Louis Meyer brought home $18,000 for his victory, or about $475,000 today. Of that sum, $12,000 came from the speedway, $2,500 came from Firestone, $1,000 came from both Champion Spark Plugs and the Tide Water Oil Sales Corporation, $150 from the Packard Electric Company, and a final $850 for having led laps at certain points during the race. The remainder of the top 10 received their checks.

But another award was handed out, too: The Julius C. Walk sportsmanship trophy, which went to Duesenberg driver Ira Hall. Hall had crashed on lap 37, hitting the upper wall in turn 2. Apparently, Hall got out of his car and physically held it against the wall to prevent it from sliding down the track for several minutes. He only let go when he knew someone had arrived to clear the machine. Other drivers were awarded everything from meal tickets to trophies to cash prizes for various other feats throughout the race.

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The fallout

Criticism for the Indianapolis 500 came pouring in after the deaths of five men in the course of May.

Before the dust had even settled, there were rumors that the Indy 500 would be canceled for 1934 — and not just due to the deaths. There were plenty of folks who were deeply unimpressed with the officiating, which led multiple drivers to protest the finishing order, as well as with the banning of Howdy Wilcox. Rickenbacker confirmed that the event would go on as long as he remained at the helm of the Speedway, but it was likely of little consolation to the folks who were displeased with the handling of things.

“The race is an institution that must go on,” he told newspapers the day after the deaths of three men during the race. “There is nothing wrong with the track. It is better now than it was twenty years ago. It was laid on a perfect foundation, and it has been smoothing out for years. To make the curves longer and more gradual would be to destroy the sporting element, the human element, making it just a mere test of the endurance of a machine.”

Onlookers were critical of the race, too. One fan named Maurice Terrell wrote The Indianapolis Star to point out that there were certainly ways the track could improve safety.

“The most obvious fault is the lack of an efficient method of warning the drivers of trouble ahead on the track,” he wrote to the paper. “The flagging system now used seems to me to be hopelessly inadequate. I believe that one accident of Tuesday’s race could have been prevented and several near-accidents nipped in the bud by a warning system that could get results.”

He went on to propose that the track install a lighting system similar to the ones in use at railroads. While the track was clear, the lights would remain green. If there was trouble ahead, you’d swap to a yellow light, with a red light meaning drivers should stop immediately. Placing these lights all around the track, he believed, would reduce confusion and create a much safer environment. And considering the fact that the track introduced yellow lights in 1935, I’d say the folks at IMS were listening to Maurice Terrell’s criticism.

Another person wrote into The Indianapolis Times under the name “the onlooker” to write, “Add to the list of things we can get along without — the annual Speedway race.”

The onlooker continued with a scathing criticism that was echoed by many around the country — one that I’d like to read in full here.

This year five men lost their lives as a result of the race, which proved nothing nor did any of its twenty predecessors.

The idea that the race is “a laboratory in which new engineering principles are developed” is the bunk. The race is a fruit of the union of greed and the savage streak in humanity.

If Nero from the other world can hear himself called names for the gladiator games he sponsored in ancient Rome, he must get a laugh out of the so-called civilization which needlessly slaughters men in a race as cruel as anything the fiddling emperor ever promoted.

It seems that a nation which has within its borders millions of men, women, and children wanting the barest necessities of life could direct its thoughts and energies in fields of human good rather than those in which profit and blood are the only things that can be reaped.

The critique that racing is nothing more than a bloodsport, that the technical gains have never justified the loss of life, was one that had been levied at the sport for decades, most notably after the deaths that transpired in the 1903 Paris-to-Madrid rally. But that had never stopped racing from taking place, and it really wouldn’t until the 1955 Le Mans disaster.

In fact, very little changed in the immediate aftermath of the 1933 Indy 500. Most of the crashes were due to the nature of the track and the cars that raced on them, and a precedent had already been set that this was basically standard operating procedure. I don’t think that was necessarily a callous response; Indy was already staffing trackside hospitals to treat drivers and making efforts to ensure only the best and most reliable racers made the field. But there was really only so much you could do without dramatically altering the composition of the race.

There were, however, some moments of levity in the aftermath.

While most newspapers around the globe reported that Louis Meyer was crowned champion at the Indianapolis 500, one newspaper had a totally different story. That paper, the World-Independent in Walsenburg, Colorado reported that an entirely unknown gentleman named “Will Overhead” won the race.

On staff that evening was a young copy editor named George Zannon, who was set to be manning the World-Independent desk almost entirely solo, considering many of his colleagues were off for the Memorial Day holiday. Zannon’s final task of the day was sharing the news of the Indianapolis 500 victory, and he wanted to get that all wrapped up as quickly as he could. Basically, he needed to include the winner’s name on the front page, then run a story provided by wire service Associated Press after the race. According to reports, Zannon received regular updates from the AP until about halfway through the race, because his paper’s contract with the AP only involved him receiving information for a certain number of hours per day.

Zannon wanted to make sure he had the race results printed as soon as possible, so he sent a telegram to the Denver bureau of the AP in which he requested they send over the name of the race winner as soon as they had it.

The Denver bureau responded with a telegraph that read “WILL OVERHEAD 500 WINNER.” Zannon thought, great! I’ve got the name! I can set the type and get out of here.

What he did not know was that “overhead” was jargon at the time for “telegraph,” since the telegraph lines were strung overhead. The Denver AP office was effectively telling him that they’d received his message and confirmed that they would let him know the winner of the Indy 500 when that information became available. Zannon did not know that. He set the type and called it a day.

Now, if he had taken a minute to actually look over the entry list or even the starter list, he’d have noticed that there was no man by the name of Will Overhead competing in the race. But Zannon was new to the journalism industry, he was ready to celebrate the holiday, and he didn’t really think twice. The anecdote is a nice bright spot of levity amidst a dark weekend, and a good reminder to every writer out there to double-check your work before it goes out to print.

As promised, the Indy 500 would return in 1934 under Eddie Rickenbacker’s stewardship, which would come to an end officially in 1945, but his work there stopped back in 1941. The onset of World War II had made racing a frankly frivolous affair. We needed drivers, engineers, designers, and car builders to contribute to the war effort, and we needed to redirect as much gasoline, rubber, and metal into that production. After the 1941 running of the Indianapolis 500, he closed the track’s doors.

No one touched the Indianapolis Motor Speedway again until 1944, when Firestone sent Wilbur Shaw out to the circuit for some tire testing. What he found when he arrived would have broken the hearts of anyone with a respect for American racing tradition.

In 1941, Shaw had come agonizingly close to winning the iconic 500-mile race for the third year in a row, and he had failed. During the war, he’d taken up a position with Firestone to help them test an experimental rubber tire, and both he and the company assumed Indianapolis would have remained intact.

Instead, they cracked open the gates to find a track in disarray. The track had cracked. Sections of grandstand were collapsing. The only thing truly flourishing at IMS were the weeds, which had sprung up between the bricks paving the track.

Shaw first approached track owner Eddie Rickenbacker, who admitted he intended to sell the track — likely to some land developers who would tear it down and turn it into a subdivision. The very same fate he’d saved Indy from back in 1927.

I think it’s easy to paint Rickenbacker as a villain in this very specific regard, but I do want to point out that it’s not like he spent the duration of World War II twiddling his thumbs. He was an extremely active part of the war effort. He was one of several men coordinating bombing strategies between the United States Army Air Force and the Royal Air Force in England. In October of 1942, during a tour of the Pacific Theater in which he was tasked with reviewing living conditions and operations, the plane he was on ran out of fuel and the pilot was forced to land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Rickenbacker was one of just eight men on that plane, all of whom had sustained a varying degree of injury. After three days, they ran out of food. On the eighth day, Rickenbacker caught a bird that landed on his head, which served as both food and fishing bait. One crewman died after two weeks, and the survivors decided to split up in hopes that it’d make it easier for the Air Force and the Navy to rescue them. One crew made it to an island that was hosting an Allied radio station and could call for help. Rickenbacker was rescued after 24 days. He had lost 40lbs and was on the verge of collapse due to exposure, sunburn, dehydration, and starvation.

That would have been more than enough to justify his neglect of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but as soon as Rickenbacker had returned to health, he traveled to the USSR, visited Allied bases and production facilities in China, the Middle East, Africa, and more. There were much bigger problems on his mind.

Nevertheless, Shaw was shocked, and as he recalled in his autobiography, “To me, the track was the world’s last great speed shrine, which must be preserved at any cost. I felt that all I was, or ever hoped to be, I owed to the Indianapolis 500-mile race. I accepted the situation as a personal challenge and started a one-man crusade to get the job done.”

He couldn’t afford to purchase the track himself, but Rickenbacker agreed to hold off on selling it while Shaw sought a buyer that would preserve it.

Shaw started by contacting car manufacturers, but he struggled to find one with sufficient funds and the motivation to take on a project like the restoration of a track. Then, he ran into a man known as Tony Hulman.

Anton Hulman Jr. was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, and his family had established the Clabber Girl baking powder empire. He had the money to purchase the track — for $750,000, right around what Rickenbacker had paid — and immediately started refurbishing the track after he sealed the deal in November of 1945. He also appointed Rickenbacker president and general manager of the speedway, and the rest is history. The Indianapolis 500 returned in 1946. Nearly 60 drivers entered the race, including European legends like Achille Varzi. Spectators flocked to the circuit for the first race in years, and while it was no marvel of technical engineering or reliability, it was a race, and it would kick off what’s considered to be the golden age of racing at the iconic circuit.

Bibliography

• https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/motor/2015/05/21/indianapolis-500-indy-500-will-overhead

• -1933-newspaper-headline-mistake-history/27678645/

• https://www.hemmings.com/stories/in-all-but-one-small-town-in-america-louis-meyer-won-the-1933-indianapolis-500/

• https://www.newspapers.com/image/105233097/

• https://www.newspapers.com/image/313430554/

• https://www.newspapers.com/image/873257022/

• https://www.newspapers.com/image/105160745/

• https://www.newspapers.com/image/311189214/

• https://www.newspapers.com/image/105155396/

• https://www.newspapers.com/image/105160354/

• https://www.newspapers.com/image/311162451/

• https://www.newspapers.com/image/311183898/

• https://www.newspapers.com/image/105151490/

• https://www.newspapers.com/image/873257006/

• https://www.newspapers.com/image/873255772/

• https://www.newspapers.com/image/313422288/

• https://www.newspapers.com/image/873256688/

• https://www.newspapers.com/image/873256688/

“Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” is a project by motorsport historian and journalist Elizabeth Blackstock that is dedicated to uncovering the sport’s forgotten tragedies as well as opening up motorsport to aspiring future journalists. If you’ve enjoyed this Substack, please consider a paid subscription; all posts here will be free for anyone to view, but your donations directly support the kind of content you cannot find at any legacy media site.

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As more and more women have begun expressing an interest in motorsport, we've been forced to hear from more and more men who argue that we aren't the “right” kind of racing fan. Shocker: as it turns out, women have been following and creating their own ways of relating to major events like the Indianapolis 500 for over a century.

Let's turn our clocks back to 1909, shall we? The first four-wheeled racing event at the freshly constructed Indianapolis Motor Speedway was about to kick off in front of a crowd of 16,500 people. The bulk of that crowd? Women.

Women overwhelmingly flocked to what has gone down in history as one of the greatest race tracks of all time.

One of my absolute favorite things about Indy is the fact that it feels like a down-home tradition, even today. Head to Speedway, Indiana, and you're greeted with checkered flag façades on damn near every house you can find. Hit the airport, and there will be massive Indy 500 banners, plus a dedicated merch store. Grab a drink somewhere, and a local is bound to kick off a conversation with you about the ways the race has evolved over time.

That's been going on for decades. I'm currently combing through the archives of Indianapolis-area newspapers as I work on a podcast episode about the bloody 1933 Indy 500, and I was almost surprised by how involved the town was. Now, obviously, we're talking about a dramatically different era — but still.

Breathless coverage for the 500 began in late April, as the first drivers flocked to Gasoline Alley in hopes of being the first driver out on track on May 1. Between then and race day, May 30, the papers were loaded with Indy 500 goodies that had absolutely nothing to do with the on-track action. I spied ads seeking employees, grocery stores marketing their sandwich-assembly sales so you'd have a snack at the track, regular reports of the celebrities and notable folks coming to the race, announcements of Speedway dances and “hops” and dinners and rotary meetings. By 1933, the 500 had been woven into the fabric of the region in such a way that it was far more than just a race: It was the social event of the year.

And with all those announcements came something I, for some reason, was not expecting: Female-driven coverage of the fashions that you should wear to the race, plus a look into the WAGs of the era! Two things that we've seen many younger, female fans enjoy… things that their male peers have tended to harass them for.

I'm not just talking about advertisements, either — though there were plenty of those!

So, let's dig in.

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Ladies, don't forget to stock up your Indy 500 wardrobe!

We're going to start with what I'm roughly popping under the “advertisements” headline. These are ads for local stores, often department stores, that weaved motorsport into their fashion advertisements.

I love this first one for a bouclé dress, selling for $16.75 (~$440 USD today when adjusted for inflation). Bouclé actually refers to a type of fabric; it has the knitted look of textile crafts, but with a little more irregular knotted or looping design. They were usually made of wool, which is a great fiber for regulating body temperature (as long as it's a thinner, lighter weight wool) — i.e., perfect for outdoor activities like sitting at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Bouclé fabrics were often usually a bit stretchy, which made them nice and comfy.

From the May 11, 1933 edition of The Indianapolis Star:

From the May 14, 1933 edition of The Indianapolis Star:

This next ad is offering a two-part sale: One for wool or silk swagger coats, and one for summer hats. Swagger coats were big in the 1930s through 1950s, usually including a wide shoulder and a raglan sleeve (or, a sleeve that connects to the shoulder in one big piece). They were often nice and swing-y and light, so they were versatile for plenty of weather conditions — including the high of 76 and low of 55 degrees Fahrenheit these gals would have experienced on race day. (Remember, races also started at 10am, so there could indeed be a need for a coat.) From the May 24, 1933 edition of The Indianapolis News:

More hat advertisements. I love the confidence of a white hat at IMS! From the May 25, 1933 edition of The Indianapolis News:

And now for some more affordable options. The $1 “wash frocks” would be the equivalent of just over $26 today. “Wash frock” refers to a general style of dress that was usually made of durable cotton or linen, designed for everyday use and able to be washed in tubs (hence the name!). The $3.95 dresses are a little more costly, clocking in at just over $100 today when adjusted for inflation.

From the May 25, 1933 edition of The Indianapolis Times:

And if you want to snag a “sure winner at the Speedway” for $5, be ready to shell out around $131 today. From the May 28, 1933 edition of The Indianapolis Star:

I am also obsessed with this ad selling a night cream that could double as an early sunblock. From the May 26, 1933 edition of The Indianapolis Star:

Florence Webster Long and Helen Lindsay, Speedway fashion correspondent

I've tried to find a more detailed history of one Mrs. Florence Webster Long, was a journalist in the Indianapolis region. According to her obituary in the New York Times, she was born in New York, attended school at Oxford College and Madame Blaker's Teachers School, married a Cosmopolitan editor, and kicked off her career in Indianapolis. She started at The Indianapolis Star and continued on to The Indianapolis News in 1922; in 1939, she was awarded a certificate of merit from the National Federation of Press Women to recognize “the keen mind that moves her pen and has made her an outstanding figure in journalistic work.”

Meanwhile, Helen Lindsay is described in a 1934 edition of The Indianapolis Times as being that publication's shopping writer. She was born in Evansville, Indiana and started working in journalism when the local newspaper needed writers after its normal journalists went to war. She became a courthouse reporter and later a fashion and shopping writer.

And both of these women published articles on the fashions on display around the Indy 500 — with Lindsay focusing on how to shop for the race and Webster Long reporting on what she saw on offer.

Here's Lindsay in the May 19 edition of The Indianapolis Times, where she predicts we'll see a slew of dark-colored linen dresses at the track come race day:

On May 24, she talks about the proliferation of checkered handkerchiefs — a fashion trend that would do well even today, where fans are encouraged to don their best checkers for 500 Fashion Fridays throughout the month of May.

On May 24, in The Indianapolis News, a journalist named Cecily Chaillé shared a story on the “razzle-dazzle sports costumes” that women will be wearing at the Indy 500 as part of a longer article on what women will be wearing in the summer of 1933. (I'd include more about the author, but I wasn't able to find much about her.)

And here's Florence Webster Long with her post-race fashion debrief on May 30:

Beauty items used in racing applications!

We've all heard the story of George Russell using a sanitary napkin inside his helmet to sop up his sweat — but motorsport applications of typically female-coded health and beauty items are nothing new. Take, for example, this May 26, 1933 story from The Indianapolis News that details how drivers use a velour powder puff to wipe dirt and grime from their goggles:

Celebrity coverage back in 1933

I hear a lot of contemporary criticism about the number of “celebrities” or other notable people turning up to races, and how we shouldn't be giving them the time of day. But lemme tell you: that kind of coverage has been essential to motorsport for decades.

Here's Beatrice Burgan, Woman's Page Editor of The Indianapolis Times talking about the high-profile race attendees who had already come to town:

And, again, a post-race debrief on May 31 showing those celebrities in question:

And yes, we loved WAGs in 1933, too

With fan accounts dedicated to collating what the wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers are wearing to a race weekend and cover-page features of some of the women with bigger fandoms growing in popularity, it might be easy to thing “WAG coverage” is some new beat. But I've got plenty of proof to show that was not the case.

Here's a feature in The Indianapolis News from May 26, 1933:

And another from May 29:

I can't say that I'm necessarily the greatest lover (or understander) of fashion, but I'm not one to talk down to someone who channels their love of motorsport through the clothes they wear or the analysis of what the drivers/WAGs turn up to the track in. If anything, I'm just stoked that there are new access points for folks who may not have otherwise found anything to relate to in racing! And I will absolutely die on the hill that women are allowed to enjoy things, including in ways that maybe don't make sense to a dude who only understands engineering.

So the next time someone claims these new female fans are somehow less legitimate if they care about clothes or WAGs, send ‘em this post, because that specific form of fandom has existed before any of us were born.

“Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” is a project by motorsport historian and journalist Elizabeth Blackstock that is dedicated to uncovering the sport’s forgotten tragedies as well as opening up motorsport to aspiring future journalists. If you’ve enjoyed this Substack, please consider a paid subscription; all posts here will be free for anyone to view, but your donations directly support the kind of content you cannot find at any legacy media site.

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One of the single most challenging elements of early motorsport was timing and scoring. Humans have been trying to find ways to measure the passage of time for centuries, but motorsport brought with it a brand-new challenge in keeping track of the times of multiple cars on the same race track, then organizing those times into a cohesive running order. And today, I want to talk about one of the most infamous early timing and scoring systems in racing history: The Warner Horograph, which was used in the very first Indianapolis 500 back in 1911.

Hello, my name is Elizabeth Blackstock, and I’m an award-winning motorsport journalist and historian. It is nearly time for the Indy 500, and in honor of the very best race in the world, I want to introduce you to the complexities of keeping an accurate score in the early days of racing.

The sheer scale of the 1911 Indianapolis 500 required a more robust timing system than anything we’d really seen in motorsport prior to that point. Somehow, both race organizers and fans would have to keep track of the progress and position of 40 different cars over the course of 500 miles — which, in 1911, was expected to take between six and seven hours to complete. Each car would have to make multiple pit stops, and those early stops could last several minutes at a time. When that car returned to the track, someone would have to have been keeping tabs on how many laps down it was. Plus, drivers were expected to actually get out of the car and hand it over to a relief driver at points during the race, and those changes also needed to be tracked. Then, that information needed to be adequately conveyed to the paying spectators packing the grandstands, so they could actually have some idea of what was happening and who was in the lead. Timing and scoring for the 1911 Indianapolis 500 would require a small army and constant vigilance.

But track founder Carl G. Fisher thought he’d found a way to make that system simpler. It was called the Warner Horograph.

Brothers Arthur and Charles Warner from Wisconsin had a passion for invention and speed, and they’re both credited with a variety of accomplishments that include developing one of the earliest speedometers. It was Charles Warner who is said to have developed the electric horograph, which many newspapers hailed as being “the only time device to accurately measure the division of time” in motorsport.

Now, I set out to film this video thinking that maybe perhaps I could track down an exact description of how this machine worked, but I am afraid that was hubris on my part. That would be like trying to describe the exact function of a Rube Goldberg machine after only seeing it in action once. You’re going to understand what I mean the more we talk about this.

Now, I’ve read a lot of more modern sources that claim the Warner Horograph was not actually tested in real-world conditions, and that’s only kind of true. I found that the AAA, which sanctioned the Indianapolis 500 as well as other major races around America, had implemented the Warner Horograph in some events as early as April of 1910, though The Atlanta Constitution newspaper refers to the horograph as a “redesign.” The goal of that redesign was to “put it in a more compact and workmanlike form” that could measure time in the hundredths of a second as opposed to tenths of a second. But I’ve struggled to find any information about the non-redesigned horograph.

Anyway, the point was: this timing system was used before the Indy 500, including allegedly at the Vanderbilt Cup. But it was primarily used for time trials. That means it was only keeping track of one car at a time. And if it was keeping track of multiple cars, then it was probably over the duration of a brief race — something like 10 or 25 miles as opposed to 500 — and it would probably be keeping track of far fewer than 40 cars.

In a lot of ways, I don’t know that we can blame the Warner Horograph entirely for what happened at the 1911 Indy 500, because it needed to be hooked up to a whole lot of other devices to actually accurately keep time.

See, the horograph was hooked up to four Burroughs adding machines, two Columbia dictaphones, more telephones than anyone could count, a whole lot of numbered marbles that would be transferred between different chutes, and 200 judges to actually keep track of the whole thing. And it was all this stuff added to the Warner Horograph that had not been tested in real world conditions.

So, how exactly did the Warner Horograph work?

At its most basic, the Warner Horograph featured a tripwire strung across the track that was connected to an electric current maker and a clock. When a car ran over the tripwire, it would cause a “break” in the electrical current being recorded on a long sheet of paper. You could record accurate lap times based on when that break took place, because the “break” would trigger a hammer that would thwack onto the paper and stamp the time. Think of how a typewriter works: you press a key, and it causes a little hammer featuring that letter to stamp the paper. It was pretty much the same thing.

For single-car races, or for short races, that was plenty fine. You could easily record the car and driver combo that made the lap. But for a race as hefty as the Indianapolis 500, you needed something more.

Here’s where we come back to the Rube Goldberg situation.

The timing and stamping operation was chaotic in and of itself. But how do you keep track of which car set that specific lap time? Well, each car was assigned a spotter, and usually a backup spotter. So, let’s say you’re assigned to car No. 10. When Car No. 10 crossed the timing line, you’d yell out, “10!” And then there’d be another person (or people) jotting those numbers down alongside the breaks they made in the electric current.

Now, with 40 spotters hollering numbers and 40 cars roaring around the track, you could imagine it’d be tough to hear and keep an accurate record. Well, the track also set up a few dictaphones in front of the spotters, and it hired some “recording specialists” to make sure everything was working properly. The thinking here is that every shout would be recorded on tape, so you could theoretically listen to the tape and follow it down the length of the spooled paper tracking the electrical current breaks. You might miss a number call in person, but the recording would be able to verify it later.

There were also people manning marbles and giant tubes. Each time a car completed a lap, they’d place a marble in a tube. That way, it was possible to keep better track of pit stops and determine who had retired.

But how would fans know the running order? Well, Speedway officials thought of that, too. They constructed four separate scoreboards around the track, each of which would be manned by a handful of folks to change the numbers. But how would those folks know who was running where? Well, there were also a ton of people employed to basically run between the timing stand and the scoreboards, delivering the latest updates. They’d shout out position changes, and the people at the scoreboard would change the board to reflect the changes in the running order.

Now, I think it’s pretty obvious that there are many instances where human error could come into play, so it should not be surprising to know that, at any one point in the race, each scoreboard would reflect a totally different running order. Speedway officials would variously claim one scoreboard was more accurate than the other, but it’s not likely anyone was actually sure of that.

Oh, and at one point in the race, if not more than one point, no one was keeping score. The timing stand was built on a wooden platform beside the track, and according to some sources, it ended up directly in the path of a crashing car, which prompted everyone in the tower to flee. Others dispute that and say that officials were present the entire time, but that some element of the Warner Horograph had stopped working. According to the New York Times, there was no one keeping track for at least an hour. Other sources say it was longer than an hour. We really have no clue. What we do know is that there was some amount of time during which retirements, crashes, pit stops, lead changes, and passes happened, and no one was there to jot it down.

So, when the inaugural Indy 500 ended, there was a problem. Two different men believed that they were the rightful victor. Ralph Mulford, driving a Lozier, was allegedly sworn to be the leader by Speedway officials as the laps wound down. He was holding that lead into the final lap. He’s said to have crossed the timing wire first, but given all the chaos of the day, he completed an extra lap, just to be sure. By the time he finished that lap, he arrived to victory circle to find Marmon-Wasp driver Ray Harroun accepting the trophy.

Mulford’s team owner and Howard Marmon of the Marmon car company both stuck around waiting for the results to be confirmed, which took several hours. A victory celebration had been scheduled for that night, and Harroun was whisked away to start taking part before there was official confirmation. And when it became clear that reviewing the records would be a very involved affair, Speedway officials carted all those records off to a hotel room.

Officials vowed to study the reams and reams of timing information accumulated during the race, but they soon ran into another problem: They had no idea how to accurately verify what was in those records.

See, the thought was that they’d be able to follow the record of the race because, every time a car would cross the timing line, someone would yell out the car number, and another person would jot that number down over the mark it made on the Horograph. It should be pretty easy, then, to see what happened to car No. 12 — to see how many laps it turned, to guesstimate when it stopped in the pits, and to figure out where it finished relative to the rest of the field.

And perhaps that would have been the case if race organizers had made sure that every car had a very distinct number that could not be confused with any others. But I think it’s easier if I just explain what happened instead.

Let’s say two cars crossed the Warner Horograph timing line at roughly the same time, one car slightly in front of the other. There would be someone watching the track and yelling out the numbers of the cars in the order that they crossed that line so that the person jotting down the numbers on the horograph sheet record could keep track of who was ahead of the other.

But let’s say car No. 20 crosses that line just ahead of car No. 6. When the folks in charge of hollering the numbers hollered the numbers, that would sound like “Twenty! Six!” And the person furiously scribbling down the numbers on the horograph sheet would have no idea if that meant Car No. 20 and Car No. 6 crossed the line inches apart, or if one single car, Car No. 26, crossed the line all on its own. They probably didn’t have time to look up and verify. And because none of the folks in charge of any step of this process had training, there were 200 different places where human frailty could come into play. And that’s not even taking into account that period of time during the race where no one was in the timing booth. There was literally no way to understand what transpired during the race.

After 36 hours, Speedway officials announced the official finishing order to the press. But before they did so, Carl Fisher ordered all of the records from the race be destroyed. There would be no way for anyone in the future to pore over the timing, compare it to the race reports of various journalists, and dispute the results.

Based on the fact that some version of the Warner-Horograph is reported by the New York Times to have still been in use for the Indy 500 in 1915, I’m going to assume that the folks at the track had managed to successfully work out the main kinks. Looking at the car numbers from that year, it seems that they’d skipped over some of the more problematic ones like 20, so there were fewer opportunities for mix-ups. And presumably, there was some simplification going on there, and maybe also a back-up in case any cars went flying at the timing stand.

“Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” is a project by motorsport historian and journalist Elizabeth Blackstock that is dedicated to uncovering the sport’s forgotten tragedies as well as opening up motorsport to aspiring future journalists. If you’ve enjoyed this Substack, please consider a paid subscription; all posts here will be free for anyone to view, but your donations directly support the kind of content you cannot find at any legacy media site.

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No engine builder is more synonymous with the Indianapolis 500 than Offenhauser. With a whopping 27 victories at the Greatest Spectacle in Racing between 1935 and 1976, no other engine maker has even come close.

But for as storied as the Offenhauser legacy is, few folks know its origins actually stem back even further, to a different builder known as Miller that was its own force to be reckoned with in the pre-Offey era. Between 1922 and 1938, Millers dominated, taking a whopping 12 victories, before the company was effectively taken over by Fred Offenhauser. But what was that first company, Miller, actually like?

That’s exactly what we’re going to explore in this episode of “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” because it is a fascinating and forgotten era of American racing history. Eponymous company founder Harry Miller was once the most successful builder in Indy 500 history, defying expectation from his Los Angeles-based shop with designs he claimed were delivered to him via supernatural intervention. Between 1923 and 1926, the cars he built accounted for at least 83% of the starters in the Indianapolis 500. Yet somewhere along the way, he went broke, sold his company, and died, bankrupt, after a failed attempt to create armored vehicles for World War II.

Where did Harry Miller come from? What made him so successful? Why did that success rot into failure? And what became of Miller’s legacy via Offenhauser?

Buckle up, because today, we’re going to find all of those answers.

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Early motorsport in Los Angeles

In order to truly understand the magnitude of Harry Miller’s accomplishments in motorsport, we must first understand motorsport’s legacy as it pertains to Los Angeles, California.

Now, when we hear “Los Angeles” today, we’re probably not thinking “race car manufacturing hub.” But Southern California has boasted a robust and flourishing car culture for decades.

As we talked about earlier this season in our episode on the life and death of Mickey Thompson, we tend to attribute the growth of California’s motorsport scene to the car culture that exploded after World War II. Countless engineering talents had moved to California in order to work in production facilities manufacturing planes, munitions, and other vehicles for the war effort, and when the conflict ended, we were left with a hotbed of both talent and surplus parts in an era where America’s economy was flourishing. Aspiring hot rodders could afford to buy cheap cars as teens, then pillage military surplus junkyards for engines and other elements that could give them a speedy edge over their peers. And many of those engineers and mechanics stuck around, plying their trade and offering their expertise to those young speed demons.

That led to this incredible explosion of auto enthusiasm… but the foundations of that enthusiasm had been built decades earlier.

Indigenous peoples have inhabited the Los Angeles area for thousands of years, but its modern history didn’t kick off until 1781, when folks from New Spain established a permanent settlement in what we now consider to be downtown Los Angeles. A century later, after the city was incorporated into the United States, it became one of these dream destinations that folks flocked to in hopes of striking it rich.

Part of what made Los Angeles so hospitable to the automotive industry was actually the fact that it was so dependent on an earlier form of transportation: the railroad.

The first transcontinental railroad connected Los Angeles with the greater United States back in 1876, and it quite literally transformed the city in a matter of years. For one thing, it was actually much easier to reach the city now: You could literally hop off the train and find yourself there, rather than having to try to navigate via horse. The railroads brought more traffic. Obviously, both the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and the railroad companies wanted to draw as much traffic to the region as possible, so they both kicked off aggressive marketing schemes that branded LA as a place where your dreams could come true.

But maybe even more importantly, they branded that dream as an accessible one. You didn’t need a small fortune to live in paradise: You just needed to turn up to Los Angeles, where rolling orange groves, snow-dusted mountains, and clean air awaited.

The myth of California as a land of plenty was already well underway. The Gold Rush of the mid 1800s had transformed even the most unsuspecting men into millionaires so long as they were willing to get dirty looking for riches. The impact was massive. Thousands of people flocked to the state, which had become associated with prosperity. We saw new towns pop up all across the region. We saw members of industry figure out how to connect the people in those towns to one another. We saw real estate developers arrive to advocate for better public transportation, since it would make it easier to get prospective buyers out to their town. The economy boomed, not just in California but across the entire world. Just hearing the word “California” would conjure up images of wealth, health, and success. All you needed to do was turn up.

As more folks arrived, Los Angeles began to supplement its transnational railroads with local streetcar systems, but those streetcars would be crowded out by the automobile in just a few decades. In 1914, the US faced a recession that led to an influx of unlicensed taxis called “jitneys” that served as cheap transportation for locals. Two years later, in 1916, the US government poured federal funding into the construction and maintenance of roads, and states would match that to improve their local infrastructure. By the start of the 1920s, driving your own personal car was easily more effective than trying to take public transit, at least if you wanted to get around quickly and cheaply.

As you can imagine, this growth and promise attracted a ton of enterprising minds who were interested in finding new and improved ways to make a quick buck and to capitalize on the pursuit of glory. That soon led to the development of a robust racing scene that found its footing in board track racing.

Board tracks are pretty much what they sound like: They were race tracks constructed of wooden boards that were assembled with impressive arced banking.

One of the first board tracks in America was the Los Angeles Motordrome in Playa del Rey, which was then called the “Venice of America.” Racing historian Harold Osmer recalled, “People would go to the piers. They’d go dancing and ride on the canals and do the roller coasters. And they decided to build an auto racing track out there too because, ‘Hey, while you’re in Venice, why don’t you come on over and watch the races?’” It was this easy, natural way to capitalize on the fact that this region was quickly becoming known for its tourism and its fun.

Racing had already come to California’s shores. In 1903, racing legend Barney Oldfield dazzled audiences by speeding around a mile-long dirt oval in the place that today hosts the Los Angeles Coliseum in a record-setting 55 seconds. The Los Angeles Times reported of that moment, “Barney Oldfield’s attempt to commit suicide at Agricultural Park yesterday only resulted in a compound fracture of the world’s automobile record. It would seem simpler and easier for him to hire someone to brain him with an ax than suffer this lingering destruction.”

Dirt track racing was fairly common, but two enterprising promoters had bigger plans. They wanted a more permanent facility — something that wouldn’t result in audiences being choked out in clouds of dust or pelted with clods of dirt, that theoretically would require less maintenance to prepare. If you tuned into the “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” episode about the construction of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, then you know that our paving technology of the era was not particularly robust, in large part because we simply didn’t have the heavy machinery we do today which meant that paving a track required hundreds of humans and animals. And it was expensive to truck in all of the necessary materials.

Wooden boards, though, were plentiful. They were cheap. They were easy to transport. They were, in theory, just as durable as anything else. And therefore promoters Fred Moskovics and Walter Hemple determined that boards would make the best paving surface for their Los Angeles race track.

Interestingly, this concept was pulled straight from Europe. See, Fred Moskovics was born in Hungary back in 1879, and at some point in his youth, he moved to the United States to study engineering in Chicago, then undertook post-graduate studies with Daimler in Germany. He was back in America, where he started doing some bicycle racing, became the first seller of the Continental Tire Company, became a partner in another company, and took on roles overseeing engineering and designing at a variety of factories.

He’d seen the impressive velodromes in Europe firsthand and thought they held potential. A velodrome is basically an oval-shaped bike racing arena, often featuring steep banking in the corners. The banking is there to serve as something of a counterforce to the natural lean angle of a rider moving through that curve when traveling at speed. But the physics of the affair mattered less to Moskovics than did the fact that the velodrome provided a confined space for riders to display impressive speeds. And as a man intimately associated with the early automotive universe, he thought a larger version of this velodrome concept would be great to host some car races.

Velodromes are traditionally made of wood, too. In Moskovics’ eyes, if wood worked for bicycles, then it could certainly work for cars.

He snagged a job with Delco Electric, who sent him off to California for work, and in California, he met a gentleman named Howard Marmon.

If that name sounds familiar, it’s probably because you know a little something about early Indianapolis history. Marmon was born and raised in Indiana; he’s the mind behind the Marmon Motor Car Company; and his Marmon Wasp took victory in the very first Indianapolis 500 back in 1911.

According to Moskovics, “I had made a wager with Howard Marmon that a car could hold a speed of 100 miles an hour on a closed course. Howard was thinking in the more conventional terms of the driver having to slow down for the turns, but I had something else in mind.”

That “something else” would be the Los Angeles Motordrome located in Playa del Rey. This would be a massive circular structure featuring heavy banking that would basically allow a driver to run flat-out in order to achieve the greatest speed. The track width was about 45 feet, and it was banked at an angle of 20 degrees. According to Moskovics, “I figured a car would hold a line on the banking just like it was being driven straight and wouldn’t skid. I was almost right, but the really fast ones broke loose right from the start.”

The Los Angeles Motordrome was a fascinating location, but its existence was short-lived. The novelty of seeing newfangled automobiles driving at top speed around a large, banked, board-paved oval drew major crowds for the first racing event — though this was well before the invention of the standard “race weekend.” Thousands of spectators turned up, but on-track action was spread out over the course of an entire week, and it culminated in a match race between two drivers rather than a long-distance racing event pitting a full field of racers against one another. Subsequent events did not draw much of a crowd, so when the track was consumed by a fire after just two years of its existence, there wasn’t much incentive to spend all the money to bring it back.

But the track had brought plenty of like-minded entrepreneurs out of the woodwork. By 1913, racers in the Los Angeles region had at least 20 different board tracks to compete at, along with plenty of dirt tracks. Racers from around the country started to flock to California, which often promised handsome prizes — or, at the very least, a reprieve from icy Midwestern winters and a longer racing season.

Those early board tracks defined the first era of motorsport in Los Angeles. The intersections of the railroad industry, real estate, wealth, and novelty collided in a way that resulted in a proliferation of board tracks throughout the 1920s, but every one of those tracks would be a flash-in-the-pan affair.

As it turned out, it was hard to actually maintain a track made of lumber. It’s not too hard to build a house out of wood and find a way to make it last, but you’ll have a harder time keeping your boards alive when you’re racing cars around them every few weeks. The heft and speed of those early vehicles would cause the wood to splinter. Then those splinters would split even further, and chunks of the boards would go flying. Dirt tracks were dangerous because they were prone to developing large potholes and ruts… but those problems could be easily solved with a little extra dirt and some creative raking. It wasn’t quite as easy to fix a gap in the planks at a board track.

Many of the tracks were torn apart. Any halfway decent planks would be repurposed in the construction of the suburban sprawl that were sure to replace the circuit. Plus, the widespread adoption of the automobile and the improvement of self-propelled mechanical technology had led to advances in paving. There really wasn’t a reason to opt for the boards as opposed to anything else.

But for that fruitful period of the 1920s, when Los Angeles-based board tracks were plentiful, local racers, designers, and mechanics had almost unfettered access to places to test their speed, and it led to the creation of the Miller-Offenhauser-Meyer-Drake engine empire that we’re going to talk about today.

Harry Miller: Early life and times

Born to a father from Germany and a mother from Canada, Harry Arminius Miller was an unlikely candidate for engineering success. When he entered the world on December 9, 1875, it was to a family who prized education… but young Harry didn’t pick up that trait. He had very little interest in actually attending school — something that is abundantly clear from his grammar and spelling if you read some of his written work later in his life.

But when Miller skipped school, he wasn’t out causing a ruckus. Instead, he was spending time at a local bicycle repair shop in his hometown of Menomonie, Wisconsin, and as soon as he was able, young Harry took on a job as a repairman.

From bicycle repair, Harry Miller moved on to servicing team engines and other heavy equipment in local brickyards and lumbermills. And in this era where mechanical technology was evolving at a rapid rate, there was plenty of work all around the country for anyone who could display even a smidge of talent.

With more than just a smidge of talent under his belt, Harry Miller departed his small Wisconsin home to take on work all around the country. He moved to Minnesota, Idaho, and Missouri. At age 19, he took up a job in a bike factory in Los Angeles, but he’d move across the country several more times before he finally picked Southern California as his home. Something about the region called to him, likely a result of its rapid growth and its confluence of mechanical and engineering skill. A job as a shop foreman at an iron foundry taught him the arts of metallurgy and casting techniques, and his penchant for tinkering meant he was building his own motorcycles in his garage. A role at Kirk Manufacturing Company taught him more about automobile construction. After that, he’s said to have prepared cars for the Vanderbilt Cup.

But by 1909, Miller was back in Los Angeles, where he opened a machine shop that would gradually expand over the years. There, he began fiddling with new carburetor designs for automobile engines that quickly gained traction; in fact, he was one of the many spectators at the inaugural Indianapolis 500 back in 1911 because he was in town to establish a subsidiary of his company. Over time, Miller moved on from only building carburetors to constructing entire engines and, later, complete race cars.

But what was it that made a Miller engine so powerful, so special? How did we go from fielding a variety of engines in the Indianapolis 500 to basically having Millers up and down the starting grid?

Between 1920 and 1979, every single Miller-Offenhauser-Meyer-Drake engine featured the same basic layout composed of an integral head and block with double overhead camshafts on a separate barrel-type aluminum crankcase. What made this unique? Well, many engines at this time were manufactured so that the crankcase was part of the head and block. The problem was, those engines were extremely difficult to repair; if you had a problem in one specific area, you pretty much had to scrap the entire engine and buy a new one. Obviously that costs plenty of money. On Miller engines, the block was separate from the crankcase, and the cam housings and gear towers were all separate components. If one element broke, you could replace that element. So, it was cheaper.

It was also more reliable. Combining the block and head into a single piece eliminated head gasket failure, since you didn’t even need head gaskets, as well as all the inefficiencies associated with tightening head studs.

And there was also the four-cylinder, double overhead cam, or DOHC, layout. Now, Miller didn’t invent this; there’s evidence folks were experimenting with this all the way back in 1905. Four-cylinder engines have a longer stroke than engines with more cylinders, which means they produce more torque — basically, the rotational force that actually transmits power to the racing surface via the wheels. Torque is especially critical when you’re trying to start a race; if you have more torque than the competition, you’ll be able to accelerate more quickly at the start of the race, out of the pit box, and out of corners.

The DOHC design also introduced greater volumetric and thermodynamic efficiency compared to other engine layouts. Miller engines, and all the engines that followed in that lineage, had very short intakes and exhaust gas ducts. Those shorter passages make it easier to guarantee you’re filling the intake with the greatest amount of fuel-air mixture possible. That’s the volumetric efficiency. But because these intakes and exhaust ducts were short, it also meant that hot exhaust gas was quickly expelled out of the engine. Obviously, the less time an engine spends full of hot air, the less likely it is to hold onto that warmth and overheat.

And while this maybe didn’t add to any performance gains, Miller was fastidious about ensuring his technology was beautiful. In this early racing era, folks didn’t really prioritize aesthetics. All that mattered was that something was quick, so if you showed up to the track with a grimy, filthy car, no one really batted an eye. Harry Miller could not abide by that. Every single surface of his engines — even the ones you couldn’t see — were polished until they shone. The external surfaces of his race cars would glitter under the sun. It may not have done much in terms of gaining speed, but it certainly added the aesthetic of professionalism.

Now, none of this was necessarily revolutionary, at least in the sense that many of these individual elements had already been discovered and put into use. Harry Miller patented countless engines and components throughout his career, but his major success was creating a reliable, affordable, and relatively simple racing engine that never really needed major innovations. Obviously, as the years passed, we saw refinements, like smoother intake ports, better lubrication, electronics, and plenty of others, but the very basic Miller layout reigned supreme in American motorsport for over five decades.

Much of that success started, interestingly enough, with the French. In the 1910s, it was pretty common knowledge that the most powerful and quickest engine you could purchase for motorsport was built by Peugeot… but while those Peugeot engines may have been impressive, they weren’t exactly reliable.

Racer Eddie Rickenbacker had purchased a Peugeot to race in the United States, and he was quick, but he found that the engine was prone to breaking under even the most basic amounts of stress. After all, it doesn’t really matter how quick you go in a race if you can’t actually finish that race.

So, in early 1915, Rickenbacker took his Peugeot over to Harry Miller’s shop for a little tune-up. He wanted to see if there was anything that could be done to make his machine capable of withstanding a race.

For Miller and main mechanic Fred Offenhauser, this was a godsend. Everyone wanted to get their hands on a Peugeot, but costs were so prohibitive that most folks couldn’t justify it. Yet here they were, being instructed to tear this engine down with the express intention of looking for improvements.

The timing couldn’t have been better, at least as far as the Miller company went. World War I had swept over Europe by this time, but the United States was yet to get involved and had yet to feel the impact. Racing continued in America, with just one major hurdle: It was almost impossible to actually import the parts necessary to repair machines built in France. But the Miller boys had reverse-engineered the Peugeot engine, and they were able to start producing those replacement parts to fill the void.

By this point in time, Miller had already been hard at work patenting engine designs and fiddling with improvements in powerplants, so I don’t want to claim that he only managed to succeed by copying someone else’s design. But remember, this is a man with very little formal education, who was operating more on intuition and experimentation than formal theory. He understood the basic elements that made an engine work. He knew he could make improvements in certain areas. But it can also really help to see someone else’s take on a design in order to further your understanding.

Think of it this way: Let’s say I hand you a pile of blocks and tell you to build a house with them. You might understand, basically, what makes a house: It has walls, rooms, a roof, windows, doors. But if you’ve never used blocks before, you might struggle to understand the best way to turn those concepts into reality. In a similar vein, if you’ve only ever seen single-story ranch-style houses, you may not know that houses have multiple storeys, or that they could feature the indoor-outdoor blend of a Mediterranean-style home. You could absolutely make improvements in your construction of a ranch-style home, but you may find that your imagination is kind of constrained by your previous experience.

Now let’s say I hand you a pile of blocks, but I also hand you a completed block house in the Mediterranean style. It’s your first time seeing a Mediterranean-style house; you may not completely understand every design choice, but you could deconstruct it to gain a better understanding of why things are the way they are. You could also put it back together and make “improvements” along the way. If you live in a cold climate, it may not make sense to feature a big open-air cooking and dining area, so you’ll want to enclose that. But you may appreciate the value of high ceilings and natural light in a way you didn’t before.

That’s kind of the process of invention and inspiration we’re talking about in the automotive scene in the early 1900s — and I want to stress that Harry Miller wasn’t the only one doing this. In fact, Miller deconstructed that Peugeot engine and found ways to make it more efficient and reliable. That Miller engine then made its way back to France, where engineers deconstructed it and found ways to implement Miller’s improvements into their own, also improved, designs.

But Miller couldn’t have done it without the help of two key figures — Fred Offenhauser and Leo Goossen — that we need to discuss before we go any further in this episode.

Enter: Fred Offenhauser and Leo Goossen

Fred Offenhauser was a born and bred Los Angeleno long before the city had flourished into the hotbed of entertainment and motorsport that it was destined to become. In fact, when young Fred entered the world some time in 1888 — exact dates differ, with some folks citing a February birth and others one in November — Los Angeles clocked in at just around 40,000 residents.

But even then, Los Angeles was a city in flux, and the very fact that the Offenhauser family ended up there proved it. Offenhauser was born to German immigrants, both of whom had made the trek to America separately and for different reasons. His father, Frederich H. Offenhauser Sr., was born in Berlin and was a proud officer in the West Bavarian army until he was forced to flee after a military disagreement. He landed in America in New York back in 1861, slowly winding his way to California picking up jobs as a barber and wigmaker. He arrived in LA in 1886; by this point, he was 41 years old and ready to settle down. He married a fellow German immigrant named Martha Muller, 12 years his junior, and the two quickly began to build a flourishing family of nine children. Their second, Fred Jr., came in 1888.

At that point in time, the city of Los Angeles had effectively been marked out based on the intersection of two different railways, the Southern Pacific and the Sante Fe. Irrigation ditches were cropping up, which meant farmers were able to grow gorgeous, rolling fields of grapevines and orange farms that would draw so many people that those fields would soon give way to subdivisions and gas stations to accommodate a growing population. The early pieces of that industrial development were in full view along the railyards, where heavy industrial plants like forges and machines brought a new kind of life to the region.

Now, Fred Offenhauser Sr. ran his household as if it were a military boot camp, which meant he held his children to immensely high expectations. It also meant that he was adamantly unimpressed when his son, age 12, informed him that he intended to quit school and instead snag a job at an iron foundry. Fred Jr. was supposed to take over the family barbershop, and for a while, he did work alongside his father. But when he was only in seventh grade, he started picking up shifts at the foundry after school. He’d later say that “Working there was like being in heaven.”

Machining would dictate the course of young Offenhauser’s life. In 1903, he became an apprentice machinist at the Pacific Electric Railway. By 21, he was a journeyman machinist who not only made tools but installed and cared for the machines and tools in his shop. In 1909, he married a young woman named Ethel Lowery. And in 1913, he made a move that would define his career. He took a job at the Harry A. Miller Manufacturing company, which had carved out an impressive niche crafting carburetors for the automobiles that had begun to spread across America.

Now, neither Harry Miller nor Fred Offenhauser had much in the way of what I would call “formal training.” These were men who had something of an innate understanding of how things worked, and they gained hard evidence of that understanding the more they worked and tinkered.

As we talked about before, Harry Miller designed his machinery based on what looked good and what felt right. In his eyes, if something looked like it would work, then it would. But Miller was more well-versed in the ideas department than in the actual manufacturing department, so he was somewhat limited in what he felt he was able to physically produce. While he initially hoped to hire someone with more technical knowledge, he instead ended up with the hands-on understanding brought by Fred Offenhauser.

But it wasn’t just Offenhauser’s manufacturing prowess that Miller respected. See, Offenhauser was one of the few people who could hear Harry Miller describe what he was looking for in a new piece of machinery — either via words or rough sketch — and then actually deliver a final product that matched Miller’s vision. Offenhauser was just 25 years old, a junior member in a shop packed with more than 60 experienced workers, but he was almost immediately put in charge of designing the special tools and fixtures required to actually construct their machinery.

Another key member of the Miller racing era is a gentleman named Leo Goossen. Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan to Dutch immigrant parents in 1895, Leo William Goossen was a decent student but was forced to quit school to go to work while he was halfway through high school in order to support the family finances. That first job saw him running a blueprint machine for Buick, where he made $17.34 per month — a pretty decent living, all things considered. He did so well in his role that he was promoted, and with the extra money he made, Goossen attended night classes and paid a tutor to teach him math. Six months after his promotion, he was moved to the drawing desk at Buick.

Despite the fact that no one would necessarily brand him a car enthusiast, Goossen was passionate about his work, and he made a strong impression on his bosses. Walter E. Marr, one of the original Buick collaborators, was so impressed that, when he retired to Tennessee to focus on special projects from home, he brought Goossen with him.

The partnership worked well until 1919, when doctors found a tubercular spot in Goossen’s lung. He moved to New Mexico to work on a ranch for a while as the drier climate worked its magic to bring him back to health. When he was cleared to return home to Michigan, Goossen decided he’d just take a quick jaunt to Los Angeles first.

He fell in love and decided that, if he could find work, he would stay. As it turned out, he’d meet a gentleman named Harry Miller.

“I have always felt it was some strange act of providence that caused me to contact one Harry A. Miller, maker of carburetors and fast becoming famous as a racing expert,” Goossen would remember later. “Miller was without formal education and in those days a wonderful guy. His ideas dovetailed perfectly with my Buick experience.”

Leo Goossen would prove to be exactly what the Miller operation needed at the time. According to Mark L. Dees, Harry Miller was competent on the drafting board and was able to do a decent job transforming his ideas into a technical sketch, and he had Fred Offenhauser on hand to transform those ideas into reality. What Goossen brought was finesse, technical understanding, and the calm demeanor required to inform the ever-audacious Miller that his current idea simply would not work — and the grace to explain how things could be done again. Miller’s guiding ethos that a car would perform well if it looked good took him far, but it did lead to a lot of over-engineered products. Goossen maintained the elegant look that Miller preferred but also had the technical understanding to trim back the fat so that everything that made it onto the car was as spare as it could be while still being completely functional.

As the Miller operation would grow, Goossen would be joined by other designers and draftsmen, but they largely followed his model. And for fifty years, Goossen held a truly impressive record in American motorsport: he was the only American to make a living designing racing engines and chassis. The only other person in the world doing the same thing at the time was Dr. Ferdinand Porsche.

With the addition of Leo Goossen, the three-pronged operation of Harry A. Miller was complete. Miller had the ideas. Goossen knew how to refine those ideas based on theory, physics, and concepts in engineering. Then, Offenhauser would transform it all into a sleek final product ready to hit the race track.

Miller's successful racing cars

I also want to take a moment to highlight the sheer diversity of Miller’s projects, which I don’t think I appreciated until I picked up The Miller Dynasty. This book makes a point of sharing the information we know about every single thing Miller built, from his carburetors and early patents to Grand Prix cars, supercharged racers, marine engines, airplane engines, and so much more.

But there are a few racing machines I really want to highlight here: The Golden Submarine, the Miler 122, and the Miller 91

We’ll start with the Golden Submarine, because that’s the car that really put Harry Miller on the map. Miller and his crew had just finished poring over Bob Burman’s Peugeot engine when Barney Oldfield, one of the icons of early American racing, commissioned the Miller shop to build him a race car in 1917 — and there were a few particularly fascinating elements of this machine.

First and foremost is the fact that it’s a closed-cockpit racer in an era where most championship racing was done with open-cockpit cars. There are conflicting reports on where this idea originated; some say it was commissioned exactly as it was designed by a racer named A. A. Caldwell, who backed out of the deal after growing afraid he’d be trapped in the cockpit when he crashed. Others say it was Oldfield who dreamed up the idea while trying to find a way to make racing safer following Bob Burman’s death.

The enclosed cockpit made it possible for Miller to build an enclosed roll cage inside the car that would completely encase the driver. If he crashed, he wouldn’t have to worry about being pitched out of the cockpit or struck in the head.

Because the enclosed cockpit would add weight, Miller made a point of building it with an aluminum alloy he called Alloyanum, which was expensive but lightweight. The body shape itself looked something like an elongated egg, with a nose that covered the engine and a rear end that tapered to a rounded point. Miller had been working with airplane engines at the time and had access to early wind tunnels, so he was even able to do some early wind tunnel testing to ensure the airflow was sufficiently smooth. And, as a finishing touch, Miller had polished the body until it shone a bright gold.

The Golden Submarine was visually stunning, but its track record was a little more conflicted. It debuted at the Chicago Board Speedway in June of 1917, where it hit an impressive 104 miles per hour before proceeding to suffer from engine failure. Miller made some tweaks before the Submarine went to a Milwaukee dirt track, and there Oldfield beat rival Ralph DePalma in three consecutive races. It started the 1919 Indianapolis 500 but unfortunately retired after just eight laps. Still, of the 54 races the Golden Submarine contested, it took 20 victories, two second places, and two thirds. And that’s not even counting the number of new speed records it set along the way.

One look at this car, particularly if you compare it to others of the era, lets you know it was something special. It was, frankly, years ahead of its time in both concept and construction, and it had the track record to back up its impressive looks.

But as a concept, it didn’t exactly catch on. The Alloyanum reduced what its weight would have been, but it was still heavier than an open-cockpit car. It also didn’t have any interior insulation to dampen the noise, so it would have been an absolute misery to drive.

The Miller 122 would be a much more viable construction. At the end of the 1922 championship racing season, the regulations dictating engines must have 183 cubic-inch displacement were set to expire, with the new engines shrinking down to a 122-cubic-inch, or two-liter, formula.

By this point in time, Miller had garnered plenty of success with its 183, the progenitor, so when Leo Goossen sat down to produce the 122, he felt he didn’t have much to do other than scale down and refine what already existed. That was a good thing, because the factory wanted to set to work producing a whole slew of these cars to begin selling to other racers.

According to Mark L. Dees, the Miller 122 was the first pure racing car to be series produced, which means it was the first car, at least in Miller history, to be designed with the specific and sole intention of building multiple cars to go racing. It wasn’t designed first as a road car. It wasn’t a “special,” or a one-off racing construction. And it wasn’t assembled from outsourced parts: almost every single component was artfully manufactured in-house by Offenhauser’s foundry. The only four components Miller outsourced were the wheels, tires, gauges, and ignition system.

And the Miller 122 engines were extremely versatile. The original engines were created with a bore and stroke of 2.334 by 3.5 inches, but tinkerers and buyers reduced and enlarged the displacement of these engines for decades.

The chassis itself was thin and narrow. The bodywork alone was a mere 18 inches wide, with the frontal area of the car shrunk down to 720 square inches. Because of that, it weighed 1,350 lbs, which was impressive for an era of bulky machinery, and could hit speeds of 141.17 miles per hour. And it was gorgeous; each piece was crafted from the best materials with care. That meant the car was also expensive, but Miller was convinced that folks would buy his race cars, no matter how much they cost.

And he was right. For 1923, Miller created seven different 122s for the Indianapolis 500 that swept the first four positions on the grid. The cars were dominant on the board tracks of the era, too — likely because Miller would have had access to so many different tracks for testing purposes. In sum, it’s estimated that 15 different 122s were made. Three were sent to Europe for Grand Prix competition. Two were built with front-wheel drive rather than rear-wheel drive. And, when Duesenberg introduced supercharging to Indy in 1924, Miller was able to easily upgrade his engines to follow that trend.

Just a few years later, though, the folks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the AAA Contest Board shrunk the engine displacement once again, this time to 91 cubic inches rather than 122. So, at the end of 1925, Goossen once again sat down at the drawing board to figure out how to build this new machine.

One big change came with the supercharger, since they were now designing the engine with that in mind. Rather than just slapping something together, the supercharger was driven off the rear of the crankshaft by its own gear train, which made it independent of the camshaft and accessory drive. Even though the engine was smaller, a Miller 91 could now make 250 horsepower and hit a top speed of 171 miles per hour.

Other than that, though, the car was a very simple and natural progression from the 122 that had preceded it. Rear-wheel drive cars were standard and cost about $10,000 — or, just under $200,000 today when adjusted for inflation. If you wanted the most expensive front-wheel drive, it’d run you $15,000, or just under $300,000 today.

To say these cars were popular would be a massive and frankly crude understatement. While this engine formula was in use for Indy, you could expect at least half the field to be Miller-powered. The 91 became a legend of the American racing scene; everyone wanted to get their hands on one. That’s caused plenty of headaches for historians. It’s almost impossible to find a 91 that has retained the exact features of its original construction because these chassis and engines ran for years, either at dirt tracks or later modified for use at Indy when riding mechanics were brought back. But that remains a testament to just how good those cars were. They could be used time and again for years to come.

I’ve only highlighted a handful of specific machines here, but I cannot stress enough that these were only a few of the countless activities Harry Miller and his crew were getting up to at the time. In 1921, there was a single Miller-engined car entered in the Indianapolis 500. In 1922, that number jumped to three. In 1923, 11 of the 24 cars in the greatest race of the world were Millers — including winner Tommy Milton and the three cars following him at the finish. By 1928, 24 of the 29 cars at Indy were Miller-powered. And Miller derivatives would dominate that race up through the mid-1970s. We’re talking decades after Harry Miller had passed away.

But before we talk about the death of Harry Miller, we have to talk about the dissolution of his beloved and iconic company.

The Fallout

Harry Miller was many things, but a well-informed moneyman was not one of them.

Throughout his career, Miller approached the process of pricing his work in much the same way he approached his early innovation: Throw something out there and see what happens. He wasn’t the kind of man to sit down and crunch numbers to calculate the exact costs of materials and labor. Someone would approach him with a project, and he’d guesstimate a nice, round number that would seem impossibly high. The patron would pay that fee… and somewhere along the way, that money — and the time allotted to the project — would end up diverted into any number of other projects. Miller’s employees often worked at a rapid clip and on deadline, with racers and team owners pitching in to meet deadlines.

As early as 1931, there were signs that Miller’s callous approach to finances, paired with the economic hardship of the Great Depression and a recent turn to experimentation with four-wheel drive transmissions and V16 engines, were combining to leave the man’s company in a tricky situation.

In 1933, all these struggles combined. Simply put, Miller’s company was not producing and selling enough racing machines to offset the high costs of technological experimentation. Though they weren’t being paid, the staff continued to work for Miller out of a sense of duty, but later that year, Miller declared that he would retire from the racing business — both due to Indy’s restrictions on technological advancement and due to a lowering of the prize purses. He made vague mention of working on a car to set a land-speed record.

On July 8, 1933, things fell apart. The outside pattern-makers and foundry filed a petition in federal court that forced Miller’s company — and then the man himself — into declaring bankruptcy. Longtime and dedicated employees like Leo Goossen and Fred Offenhauser had to forfeit their promised back-pay of up to $50,000 when adjusted for inflation today — something that was particularly frustrating for Goossen. His beloved wife Vera had recently died due to a protracted illness that was exacerbated by the fact that she’d been forced to return to work as a result of her husband’s employer’s lack of pay.

Fred Offenhauser took a slightly different tack. He was able to negotiate with the trustee in bankruptcy to keep some of the company’s machines, while the rest went to auction. Of the assets in Offenhauser’s hands were the drawings for the Miller 220, special machine tools and much of the business itself, which he used to open up a brand-new shop just down the road. Many of Miller’s longtime employees had grown to deeply respect Fred Offenhauser, and when he offered them a job that would effectively amount to continuing the work they’d already been doing, they were more than happy to accept. The Miller engines were refined and rebranded as Offenhausers.

As for Miller himself, well — things were not so smooth. The bankruptcy that ended his business also ended Miller’s love of Los Angeles. He lost his home and ranch in the process and fled Los Angeles as the winter of 1933 bled into 1934. He would never return.

He did see some hope in the form of a man named Preston Tucker. Born on a peppermint farm in Michigan in 1903, we best remember Tucker today for his Tucker 48 sedan, which earned the nickname the Tucker Torpedo. A brief run of these cars were built in 1948, and they featured tons of innovative design features, including headlights that turned with the front wheels, an integrated roll bar, a parking brake with a key to lock it in place, and plenty of other ideas that never actually made it into production. But this was well after Harry Miller.

When Tucker met Miller in the 1930s, he had fallen in love with the Indianapolis 500, where he insisted upon meeting the man who had built more race-winning engines than anyone else. After Miller declared bankruptcy, Tucker convinced Miller to join him for a slew of projects that would begin in 1935. That year, Harry Miller returned to manufacturing, bouncing between a variety of companies that offered him work in the automotive and marine sectors. One major deal saw him teaming up with Preston Tucker to build modified V8 engines for Ford to run at the Indianapolis 500… which unfortunately ended when all of those engines retired from the race due to overheating steering boxes.

Unfortunately, even his efforts with Tucker would be for naught, which effectively brought an end to one extremely critical era of American motorsport. For years, car builders at the Indianapolis 500 who hadn’t outright purchased a Miller product to race with had at least turned to him for inspiration. While there was a brief boom period of race car construction in Los Angeles, thanks largely to the fact that countless Miller employees had gone on to establish their own race shops, it wouldn’t really be until after World War II that LA would once again return as a force to be reckoned with in the racing world.

The relationship with Tucker began to deteriorate. Miller accused Tucker of siphoning funds from his paychecks, and allegedly, Tucker pretty much told him to get over it in order to protect his reputation. After the failure of the Ford V8s at Indy, a nasty lawsuit kicked up between Miller and Tucker. Henry Ford was irate and wanted, effectively, to be compensated for the failure. Miller proposed giving all of the race cars — which were technically owned by Miller and Tucker — back to Ford, with Ford potentially offering them an opportunity to lease them for further use. Tucker adamantly refused this arrangement; he wanted to retain the cars. It nearly resulted in a lawsuit, but Miller spoke to other shareholders of their company to create a majority decision to give the cars back to Ford.

Miller then joined forces with a man named Thomas L. Hibbard, who was known around the world as a custom body designer. They struck up a working relationship with the plan of combining their talents to build a sports car, even though neither of them actually had the money to make it happen. That project failed. Harry Miller then turned to military-inspired designs; it’s said that Jeep designer Karl Probst took some amount of inspiration from a little four-wheel drive prototype a former Miller employee had mentioned seeing in 1937. The first Jeep would enter production in 1940.

He made an effort to partner with racer Ira Vail to start another race car operation that succumbed to problems with overheating but that were able to be tweaked into decent machines. It could have been the start of a formidable partnership with Gulf, but Miller was not the kind of man to be content working away in the background while others took credit for his success. He found countless other people to invest in ongoing attempts to start his very own race team. He rejoined Preston Tucker to help design the Tucker Combat Car that was pitched to the US government as a military vehicle, plus the construction of military-grade plane engines. Tucker even received a bit of funding and government interest to bring these crafts to life… but as he pleaded for more government money, it was discovered that he had somewhat fudged the completion rate of the work going on in his factory. The program was shut down, and Miller was once again left scrambling to find somewhere to work.

He tried to continue working with the government, but their demands were… high. Miller pitched an engine idea. The government told him it would be useless unless it made 200 horsepower. He sketched a new design. The government demanded detailed design studies that would show stress and vibration of all major parts, as well as the loads the engine could sustain. Miller — with his rudimentary education and his design-to-the-eye mindset — could not provide those documents.

When Harry Miller died on May 3, 1943, he was 67 years old and had been floundering for years. After he sold his racing company to Fred Offenhauser, he’d slowly slipped into alcoholism. He was diabetic and suffered from a form of cancer on the left side of his face. According to writer Joe Scalzo, he’d long since descended into the occult, where he claimed to be a clairvoyant receiving design information from supernatural voices. He suffered a heart attack in early May of 1943 and was taken to a hospital, where he died.

At least Fred Offenhauser was still going strong, right?

Well… yes. But only for a while. With Leo Goossen at his side, Offenhauser and countless other members of Miller’s former Los Angeles shop continued building racing engines of the Offenhauser and Novi name that had actually stemmed from a marine engine they’d been working on prior to the Miller bankruptcy.

Yet certain issues soon began to arise. Offenhauser was frankly an artist in the design and forging departments, but he wasn’t the world’s most imaginative engineer, and for a decade, he could only afford to hire someone like Goossen on a freelance basis. In fact, he could barely afford to pay the staff a living wage. He was able to establish a strong business based on the technology that had already come into fruition at Miller, as well as through repairing and maintaining existing Millers and Offeys.

World War II brought racing to a halt, and Offenhauser was able to convert his facilities into defense production for Lockheed. It was exhausting work. He was growing concerned that heart failure would come for him at any moment. He also couldn’t help but remember Harry Miller, how his former boss had fallen apart just as things looked most promising.

Offenhauser was worried that he’d reached that point. He’d somehow survived both the Depression and the Miller bankruptcy and a global war to end up, in 1946, making almost $100,000 in profit.

An engine builder named Lew Welch was reportedly interested in buying out Offenhauser to add to his engine plant in Vernon, California, but Fred Offenhauser was skeptical. Welch was professional and had had success at the Indianapolis 500, but he didn’t exactly “fit in” with the racing crowd. Offenhauser wanted to sell, but he wanted to sell to someone he respected, who he could be sure would treat his business with respect.

So, he paid a visit to two longtime friends, former racer Louis Meyer — the man who invented the milk-drinking tradition at Indy — and his former racing mechanic Dale Drake. The two men paid Offenhauser $75,000 — over $1 million today, when adjusted for inflation — and continued to expand the Miller/Offenhauser legacy for two further decades.

But the post-Miller fate of Offenhauser and its purchase by Meyer and Drake is a story for another episode of “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys.”

The motorsport scene in Los Angeles, too, has changed since Miller’s bankruptcy and death, too. There’s still a massive enthusiast community in California, and we have great tracks like Laguna Seca, Sonoma, and annual street race events at Long Beach. But one by one, major tracks in the region have closed their doors.

Why? Well, the biggest reason is the fact that people want to live in California, which has the twin repercussions of increasing land values and increasing urbanization near tracks. It is simply too expensive to operate a smaller race track these days, because there are people willing to pay top dollar for every square inch of land in the state. Tracks like Riverside were demolished to make way for commercial complexes or subdivisions that have proven far more lucrative, since you can pack more money-making opportunities into a commercial complex than you can a race track.

Plus, we’ve had people flocking to California in droves for decades. The more people who move to the state, the more houses we’ll need to accommodate them, and plenty of tracks have been pushed out of business thanks to the slow creep of residential areas. It turns out that the folks who move into houses built near race tracks tend not to consider the noise of said race tracks until they’re already living there, and we’ve seen complaints from locals threaten the existence of California tracks on a consistent basis.

The very population boom that drove the establishment of a robust racing scene has resulted in the destruction of that scene. Most of those early board tracks have been long since plowed under, to the extent that you’d be hard pressed to find any of their remnants. Riverside at least has the luxury of still existing in the minds of living folks who actually attended events there. The folks who attended early races at Riverside might have remembered those board tracks, but at this point in history, I don’t think there’s anyone I could speak to who would have firsthand experience of a board track.

Because of that, this part of LA’s racing history has kind of fallen by the wayside. We remember the hot rodding, the drag racing, the sports car tracks. But we’ve forgotten that there was this whole tradition that preceded that — and that the men involved in building some of the most exceptional machines to come from Los Angeles built a legacy at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway that will take decades to usurp.

Bibliography

• Board Track: Guts, Gold & Glory by Dick Wallen

• The Miller Dynasty: A technical history of the work of Harry A. Miller, his associates, and his successors by Mark L. Dees

• Offenhauser: The Legendary Racing Engine and the Men Who Built It by Gordon Eliot White

• City of Speed: Los Angeles and the Rise of American Racing by Joe Scalzo

• Nobody Walks in L.A.: The Rise of Cars and the Monorails That Never Were (Smithsonian Magazine)

• When California ruled auto racing (The California Sun, Medium)

• BOARD TRACKS : Before Indianapolis, L.A.’s Toothpick Ovals Were King (Los Angeles Times)

• About Frederick Moskovics (The Stutz Club)

• https://www.stutzclub.org/frederick-moscovics/

• https://archive.org/stream/armourengineer18inarmo/armourengineer18inarmo_djvu.txt

“Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys” is a project by motorsport historian and journalist Elizabeth Blackstock that is dedicated to uncovering the sport’s forgotten tragedies as well as opening up motorsport to aspiring future journalists. If you’ve enjoyed this Substack, please consider a paid subscription; all posts here will be free for anyone to view, but your donations directly support the kind of content you cannot find at any legacy media site.

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