On 05/28/2024 12:32 AM EDT Bob Storck <bstorck@...> wrote:

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I thought I was recording it, but the quaint and curious aspects of YouTubeTV defeated me. I was involved with watching the recorded Monaco GP, and missed the first 100 laps of Indy. Hoping there's a rebroadcast somewhere.

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Not quite curious enough to subscribe to one of the rebroadcast recordings.

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Thank you, Bob Storck in KCMO

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Bob Storck
KC MO USA

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"Vukovich: The Man Who Wouldn't Lift" was released a month ago on Halfcourt Press. This book was originally written by Indy sports writer Angelo Angelopolous, who died in 1962 before it could be published. The manuscript remained untouched until recently, when Indiana journalist Mark Montieth worked with Angelo's family to edit it and get it published. My understanding is that RH member Bob Gates, author of the excellent "Vukovich An Inspiring Story of American Achievement," was involved in this project.

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Also, Art Garner is writing a two-book, 620-page bio on A.J. Foyt expected to be published later this year on Octane Press. Garner is the author of "Black Noon: The Year They Stopped the Indy 500."

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Logan Molen

Steamboat Springs, Colo.

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"Vukovich: The Man Who Wouldn't Lift" was released a month ago on Halfcourt Press. This book was originally written by Indy sports writer Angelo Angelopolous, who died in 1962 before it could be published. The manuscript remained untouched until recently, when Indiana journalist Mark Montieth worked with Angelo's family to edit it and get it published. My understanding is that RH member Bob Gates, author of the excellent "Vukovich An Inspiring Story of American Achievement," was involved in this project.

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Also, Art Garner is writing a two-book, 620-page bio on A.J. Foyt expected to be published later this year on Octane Press. Garner is the author of "Black Noon: The Year They Stopped the Indy 500."

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Logan Molen

Steamboat Springs, Colo.

On May 18, 2024, at 7:58 PM, Bill Blaylock <william.blaylock500@...> wrote:

Here is a book review of Speed Capital, a recent book about the history of IMS.? This appeared in the weekend edition?of the WSJ.? As race fans and racing historians, we should be pleased that the WSJ chose to run this in May.? ?From reading the review, it seems like author Brian Ingrassia may not cover any information about the speedway that members of Racing History do not already know.? Nonetheless, I think I will order the book.

Oh yes, be sure and read Henry Ford's poetic quote about auto racing at the end.? I have never seen that before.

Regards,

Bill Blaylock

Cars previously raced on roads. At Indy, they sped around an oval track. Thousands in the stands could watch at once.

HANG A LEFT?Don Branson (3) and Eddie Sachs (12) at Turn 1 during the pace lap of the 1961 Indy 500.?JOHN G. ZIMMERMAN/ SPORTS ILLUSTRATED/ GETTY IMAGES

Start Your Engines

Speed Capital

By Brian M. Ingrassia?Illinois, 304 pages, $ 24.95

BY MARK YOST

BRIAN INGRASSIA’S?“Speed Capital” has all the chills, spills and thrills that have come to define the Indianapolis 500 and the 2 1 /?2?-mile speedway where the race has been held since 1911. Mr. Ingrassia, a professor of history at West Texas A& M University, occasionally has trouble suppressing his tendency for academic-speak as he explores the race’s broad effect on early 20thcentury America. Thankfully, once he gets to the actual history and development of the race, he proves to be an engaging storyteller.

Mr. Ingrassia begins by reminding us that, since the city of Indianapolis wasn’t situated on the banks of a fully navigable waterway that could connect it to the Ohio or the Mississippi rivers, it wasn’t until the arrival of the train and the automobile that the scrappy city finally carved out an identity for itself.

The driving force behind the historic racetrack was Carl Fisher, an industrialist who made his money in automotive headlights.

Even in the early 1900s, this was big business, and the sale of his company, Prest-O-Lite, in 1913, netted Fisher and his business partner, James A. Allison, about $270 million in today’s dollars. By then, racing fast cars was already a nationwide fascination, but America had nothing like the Indianapolis Motor Speedway that Fisher and his associates wanted to build west of the city’s downtown.

What made Fisher’s racetrack plan unique was not only its size but its accessibility.

Most car competitions at the time were point-to-point road races, the province of the very wealthy. The best the average American fan could hope for was a brief glimpse of a race car as it whizzed around a corner. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway, meanwhile, was an oval track that offered good sightlines from almost every vantage point. It thus democratized the sport, allowing tens of thousands of spectators to attend a race and see most of the action. Even fans without a car could take a streetcar to the track and buy an affordable ticket.

The spectacle of the track and the race, Mr. Ingrassia argues, further encouraged the development of the automobile, as well as the roads to drive them on and the enthusiasts who passionately loved them. When the first races were run at the speedway in 1909 (two years before the first 500), Chicago auto clubs “inaugurated a tradition of race-weekend pilgrimages, with about two hundred Chicagoans riding in fifty cars that departed from a Michigan Avenue hotel at 6:00 a.m.” After stopping for lunch in Lafayette, Ind., many drove the second leg of the roughly 200-mile trip and checked into the Claypool Hotel in downtown Indianapolis. “The Claypool enabled people to travel to a central location in a city,” Mr. Ingrassia writes, “where they paid to watch an entertaining type of the same sort of automotive space annihilation that had brought them there.”

It’s a phrase Mr. Ingrassia is particularly fond of, using some variation of “spaceannihilating racing machines” about 20 times in the first four chapters alone. Given that?most Americans at the turn of the 20th century still traveled by horse or foot, however, 60-mile-an-hour race cars were, indeed, space-annihilating by comparison. Other sentences seem more at home in a doctoral dissertation: “Motor sport reflected transformations in spatial and temporal relations, a cultural ritual where men made visible the promises of technology and infrastructure, testing their own ability to withstand the liberating yet deadly implications of modernity.”

If the prose is highfalutin for a car race, the experience was anything but. Many spectators hadn’t counted on witnessing these “deadly implications.” While some cheered the death-defying drivers, others were appalled at the danger. During the races held in August 1909, for instance, five people were killed, including the driver William Bourque and his riding mechanic, Harry Holcomb; the two hit an uncovered drain on the track and slammed into the fence. “Bourque fractured both legs and his skull, perishing on impact; Holcomb broke his arm and skull, dying on the way to the hospital.” Another driver, Albert Denison, was “hysterical” upon learning of the deaths, and the automotive pioneer Louis Chevrolet “ ‘staggered to a chair,’ unable to stand ‘the physical and emotional strain.’ ”?“Public outcry prompted action,” Mr.

Ingrassia writes. Grandstands “were moved and concrete walls were built to protect pit crews.” The gravel-and-tar surface was deemed unsuitable for racing at those speeds.

The solution was paver bricks—thus the track’s longstanding nickname, the Brickyard.

“The Indianapolis Motor Speedway was now the world’s only brick-paved track, and it seemed to foreshadow the future of transportation,” providing engineers with a laboratory to study the latest automobile-related technologies. It also foreshadowed the nowfamous phrase, “win on Sunday, sell on Monday.” Mr. Ingrassia reminds us that “manufacturers used the new speedway for promotion, claiming their products were able to withstand racing’s strenuous demands.” One ad “touted the company’s success . . . yet assured consumers that it sold ‘safe, reliable, economical and serviceable cars.’ ” Buick claimed its products’ “strength” and “stamina” in racing demonstrated “indestructible soundness.”

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway continued to enjoy great popularity through much of the 20th century. But the Indy 500’s cachet began to deteriorate in the 1990s when Nascar arrived at the track and started to outdraw the 500. IndyCar, the open-wheel series that competes there, has also declined in stature as it has been overshadowed by Formula One. For a handful of auto-racing aficionados, however, Carburetion Day—when teams make their final adjustments on the Friday before the race—remains one of the most anticipated days on the race calendar.

Mr. Yost is the former Detroit bureau chief for the Dow Jones Newswires.

‘Auto racing began five minutes after the second car was built.’

— HENRY?FORD

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Bill Blaylock

Sanbornville NH USA

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On May 2, 2024, at 1:55 AM, Bill Blaylock <william.blaylock500@...> wrote:

Thanks, Dean. ?For whatever year that clip came from, it was ?enjoyable. ?I had not realized how similar NZ midget racing was to ours. ?For a moment, I thought I was watching a USAC ?program at Ventura.

Bill Blaylock

Dallas

On May 1, 2024, at 4:53?PM, Edward Dean Butler via <edeanbutler@...> wrote:

?Not sure I am up to date, but a lot of NZ “midget” racers have used Esslinger ?Ford based four cylinder engines, I think 2.3 liters. Esslinger is based in Chino, CA, but it is owned by a man from New Zealand.

As I say, I am not sure this is current.

BTW, I know that ten years ago some NZ midgets were running Toyota engines.

E Dean Butler

Broughton Green, UK

On May 1, 2024, at 10:31 PM, Bob Storck <bstorck@...> wrote:

Thank you

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Sure wish there was more racing and less survival testing. Sad to see all racing become cookie cutter cars.

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What engines do they use in NZ?

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Cheers, Bob Storck in KCMO

-----Original Message-----
From: <[email protected]>
Sent: May 1, 2024 2:20 PM
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: [RH] 2024 New Zealand "Midget Car Grand Prix."

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Enjoy!

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E Dean Butler

Broughton Green, UK

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E. Dean Butler

Broughton Green UK

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Bob Storck
KC MO USA

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E. Dean Butler

Broughton Green UK

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Bill Blaylock

Sanbornville NH USA

Thank you. I recall in the pre-Offy era, midgets were 'poor boy' racers on all continents, with engines ranging from flathead Ford 4s, Fiats, Willys, etc. Now it seems you go for the hot thing, relying on imports.

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Cheers, Bob Storck in KCMO