A Month at the Brickyard: The Incredible Indy 500

A Month at the Brickyard: The Incredible Indy 500

by Sonny Kleinfield
A Month at the Brickyard: The Incredible Indy 500

A Month at the Brickyard: The Incredible Indy 500

by Sonny Kleinfield

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Overview

An all-access pass to Pit Row and beyond at the world’s most famous auto race, the Indianapolis 500

The Indianapolis 500 auto race is the most prestigious event in all of motor sports. Race cars roar two hundred times around the track at dizzying speeds of more than two hundred miles per hour in front of a massive crowd—and millions more watching on television. Every spring, drivers, teams, sponsors, and pit crews all come together to make auto-racing history. Since the inaugural race in 1911, the Indy 500 has become one of the most popular sporting events in the world.

Award-winning reporter Sonny Kleinfield takes readers inside the world of high-risk, high-speed open-wheel racing. A Month at the Brickyard follows the day-to-day race prep of Indy up-and-comer Johnny Parsons and team, showing the endless fine-tuning and customization up to the big day, as well as capturing the personalities and stories that surround the speedway. With Kleinfield at the wheel, there is much more to racing than just the roar of the engines.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781480484658
Publisher: Open Road Media
Publication date: 04/29/2014
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 239
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

Sonny Kleinfield is a reporter for the New York Times and the author of eight books. He has contributed articles to the Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, and Rolling Stone, and was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal before joining the Times. He shared in a Pulitzer Prize for a Times series on race in America, and has received a number of other accolades, including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, the Meyer Berger Award, an American Society of Newspaper Editors Award, and the Gerald Loeb Award. A native of Fair Lawn, New Jersey, he is a graduate of New York University and lives in New York City.

Read an Excerpt

A Month at the Brickyard

The Incredible Indy 500


By Sonny Kleinfield

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

Copyright © 1977 Sonny Kleinfield
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4804-8465-8


CHAPTER 1

Beyond the steel stands lining the track, the crowd begins to build. It spills onto the road. Pigeons wheel overhead. A couple of plump men are already debating who the winner will be. "He will too win." "Nah." A knot of teen-agers is further back; a radio, slung over one shoulder, is pounding out raunchy rock music. They are whooping it up. Their voices reach like claws to the furthest part of the crowd. "Unnnh-hunh! Unnnh-hunh!" It is a cool morning with no breeze to speak of. Inside, engines whine, hammers clank, mechanics are crouched over suspensions. At the very front of the line, a stringy man with a turkey throat is stooped over the steering wheel of his van, the sides of which are tattooed with every imaginable racing decal. His name—Larry Bisceglia—is also painted on the sides. A retired auto rebuilder in his seventies, he got into town a month ago, trundling in from Long Beach, California. He'll be first through the gates, adding to his legend. This will make it twenty-eight straight years. He says he does it to do it.

The stunted skyline of Indianapolis—a city of a million people surrounded by the flat fields of the Midwest—is visible behind him, above a view of adult book stores, gas stations, drive-in burgers. Traffic is bad. All over town, store windows are done up in checkered flags, there are race specials, and the radio and television channels all offer shows featuring interviews with racing drivers. A racing movie is playing at a local drive-in. Signs propped outside motels read, WELCOME RACE FANS, WELCOME VALVOLINE, WELCOME CHAMPION. Big racing tires tilt together inside the lobbies. A radio commercial says, "If you're an avid race fan, come on over and get your hardware at Bill's. That's right. If you need hardware, make a pit stop at Bill's." Cars and trucks keep dragging in. The sky is cloudless. It is Saturday, the eighth of May, the first day of practice for the Indianapolis 500.

Down toward the first turn, Larry "Boom Boom" Cannon and his crew shove their race car onto the pit apron. Bands are pressing down the straightaway; the air rings with the smack of cymbals and high-collared drums. Cannon is trying to be the first man on the track. Being first out is not important in itself, but last year, when Cannon was one of the last men on the track, he never made the race. He figures being first this year will change his luck. Cannon is the recorder of deeds for Vermilion County, Illinois. A short while ago, he ran for state senator but lost. In his words, "the people lost."

Slumped in his car, engulfed by a gauntlet of press people, cameramen, the morbidly curious, Cannon is warned by an official not to go faster than 180 miles an hour today. His car owner—a tall, spare man—stands beside the car. Cannon says to him, "Will you pay the fine if I break the speed limit?"

The man looks away for a long moment. He finds an answer: "Yeah, if you run 200." If Cannon ran 200 miles per hour, he would shatter the track record.

Fifteen minutes to go. Fourteen. "Gimme my hat," Cannon says. He settles a black helmet over his hair, tugs on gloves. Eleven. Ten minutes, and the pace car makes a final inspection of the track. The track passes. Cannon's car is started. The engine catches with a throaty thrum. Its roar cuts up the spring air. A stammer of flashbulbs. Clapping crackles through the stands. Cannon lurches onto the track. Everyone's eyes glued on him, he makes a lap. Suspense: the crowd waits. Stopwatches are consulted. Speed: 43 miles per hour.


In one of the small garages where the racing cars are quartered, Bill Finley, a slightly potbellied man with carroty side-whiskers, nearly fifty, is attempting to fit the hood over the engine of a car. It won't fit. "I swear this son of a bitch is pregnant on me," he says. He draws on a cigarette. Looking on is the owner of the car, a millionaire from New York. His name is Tassi Vatis, but people refer to him as "The Greek." John Barnes, a muscular man in his mid- twenties, is draped over the front of the car, half-disappeared into its innards. Finley hacks away some of the hood with a pair of cutters and tries again. It still won't fit. People come by to say hello, to talk, to stare, to look at the car. The car is white with a wide pink stripe and a narrower black one running the length of the left side. The number 93 is on the nose. Plastered on the side are the words "Ayr-Way WIRE Racing Team." Ayr-Way is a local shopping center chain; WIRE is a local country and western music station. The name of the driver shows up in black lettering, Johnny Parsons. Finley, the car's chief mechanic, massages his scalp. "What in God's name do I have to do to make this bugger fit?"

"Have you considered a smaller car?" Johnny Parsons says.

A crew man named Shorty Harrison, a plump man who looks vaguely like a stubbed- out cigar, is down on his knees smoothing decal numbers on a side of the car. "Now remember, Shorty," Finley says. "The 9 goes before the 3."

"Let me write that down," Shorty says.

Many of the other garages at this early hour on the first day are locked tight. Some gape emptily. The opening days of practice at the big track are a sort of scrambled homecoming. The cars have descended on Indianapolis from all directions. Drivers, mechanics, crew helpers, owners, and sponsors are re- forming their teams, setting up their cars, and mapping out routines for the month. Big vans, painted up gaily, are chugging into the garage area, and out of their backs shining racers slide down wooden boards and then on into their stalls. The crewmen are petting and hugging the cars just like the trainers do the horses at the Kentucky Derby. Racing people are gypsies, hopscotching from track to track in search of gold and glory. Indianapolis is where the biggest dreams are dreamed. A mood prevails of people coming together for a collective celebration—a civic testimonial or class reunion. Everybody is saying hello to people they have not seen in a while, and everybody looks good.

"The first day's always a pleasant one," Tassi Vatis says. "Everybody's got his hopes up. This place can make you rich and famous in a single afternoon. Every race car owner wants to believe. The first day, we all believe we're going to win."

A crewman from another car toddles in, looks around. "Boy, that car of yours, it isn't much, that car."

"It'll outrun yours in second gear," Finley says.

"Doubtful. Quite doubtful."

"Tell us about it in Victory Lane."

Technical inspection is about to start. Three men with authority written all over their faces, officials of the United States Auto Club (USAC), the governing body for the race, shamble into the garage. The car has yet to turn a lap. Sweated over for much of a year, it has been saved for this race. A smorgasbord of some five thousand parts, some no bigger than a match head, the race car is a stumpy-nosed contraption that looks like a giant mosquito or a big doorstop. There's no roof on it. At the front are two small spoilers, and at the rear is a big wing. The spoilers and wing are both like upside-down airplane wings. They squash the car down onto the track, helping traction. A giant eight-hundred-horsepower Drake-Offenhauser engine—developed just for auto racing—billows out of the rear. The engine is turbocharged, which causes it to emit a high-pitched whine. Like a vacuum cleaner, the turbocharger sucks air in and shoots it back through the engine, pumping up the power. The car is about fifteen feet long, nine feet wide, three feet high. It gets around 1.8 miles to the gallon.

One of the inspectors speaks over Finley's shoulder. "Bill, you call this a car?"

"Uh, would you believe a toaster?"

"Sounds more like it."

The inspectors poke into joints, measure the size of the engine, scratch down dimensions. There are shouts back and forth from the men, jokes, announcements, challenges. Inspection takes not more than an hour and a half.

As the men take their leave, Finley says with a smile, "Well, we duped them again."

The crew pushes number 93 to another area of the complex of garages to have the fuel tank checked. Forty gallons is the limit, a way to keep down the fiery wrecks that are common in the sport. The cars run on methanol, which is wood alcohol, because it delivers greater engine power and it's less liable to ignite than gasoline. Winding around the roadway, the crew moves past what look like miniature farm tractors tugging race cars. The tractors are connected to the cars by hunks of rope. Limping along, the cars remind one of sick Plymouths being yanked off the turnpike. Number 93 is brought to a stop in front of an island of two fuel pumps.

"Hey, you got four wheels on this one?" a lantern-jawed attendant says.

"Yeah," Finley says. "I'm improving all the time."

"Next thing you know, you'll put a motor in."

"What the hell's a motor?"

The tank size is found to be legal, and the car is taken to be weighed on a Revere electronic scale, a twenty-five-thousand-dollar marvel that can weigh a quarter as much as a Mack truck. On a giant digital readout that looks like the face of an enormous clock radio, the car number and total weight light up. A car can't run if it comes in at less than fifteen hundred pounds. Car number 93: fifteen hundred and thirty pounds.

"About the same as my wife," Finley snorts.

So far, thirteen cars have taken to the track, a lot of action for the first day. The cars hurry down the straights and around the corners, trying to cut fractional seconds off lap times. The fastest lap of all is run by Mario Andretti, a speed of 178.077. Enough to miss the starting lineup. For being the fastest of the day, Andretti wins two free dinners at the Classic Motor Lodge. Another driver roars out in a brand-new car, brand-new engine, steps on it, and watches as the engine explodes and rains parts over hundreds of feet of asphalt. Drivers call it "losing your lunch." There is nothing to do about a lost lunch but to buy a new one.

An hour before the track closes for the day, the crew eases number 93 out of the garage to fire up the engine and get it ready to run some laps. The engine coughs, sputters, catches. "Oh, damn," Finley says. A valve is dripping fuel, it will have to be replaced. "It was too much to expect to fire that son of a bitch and just go racing," he says. The engine shuts down and the crew shoves the car back into its stall. Finley and Barnes start to work on it.

CHAPTER 2

Downtown, Sixteenth Street rises to the White River and then cuts straight as a plumb line past a strip of bars, car washes, peep shows, 500 Auto Parts, 500 Shopping Center, 500 Bowling, 500 Pizza. Nudging above it all in the deadening heat is the old Speedway. Since 1909, men have been driving cars fast around it. A tract of five hundred and fifty-nine parklike acres, it actually hunkers in a jumble of houses and low buildings fittingly called the town of Speedway. Speedway claims fifteen thousand people but no mayor; a part-time board of trustees runs it. A featureless town. The dominant structures along the road are the billboards, mounted high above the buildings like huge kites. Shaped like a tremendous welcome mat, the track is two and a half miles around, its long straightaways are five-eighths of a mile long, the short ones one-eighth, the turns one-quarter. A cement retaining wall that delineates the circumference has been scarred all over by race cars flogging against it. Once the track's surface was all bricks (they still call it "The Brickyard"), but now the Speedway sports a thin asphalt surface, grubbed up like most well-pounded highways. For history's sake, a ribbon of bricks still remains for two-fifths of a mile at the start-finish line. Each time a driver howls across it, his teeth joggle a bit. Tangent to the rectangle rise eighteen stands of varying size, haphazardly spaced around the track, providing permanent seating for two hundred and forty thousand spectators. Over on turn two huddles a posh thirty- two-unit VIP building, where suites rent for ten to twenty thousand dollars. The waiting list for one is years long. Against the inner rim of the main straightaway are the repair and refueling pits, like one-car service stations. Grafted onto one part of the infield is Gasoline Alley, a tightly policed area where two rows of serried garages hump into the air. Catercornered to the second turn hunches a statuesque museum, spanking clean and brimming with ancient race cars, trophies, memorabilia. A driver might lose control in the curve, blister through the fence, and smash his way into history.

In this setting, on May 30, at eleven in the morning, thirty-three cars will thunder five hundred miles in chase of a million dollars. That's more than double the money paid out by any other motor race. The man who straggles home last, maybe failing to complete even a single lap, will get fifteen thousand dollars. The winner will pocket over a quarter of a million dollars, given out after three hours of wrenching driving. On top of this, the winner can rake in an estimated million-dollar bonanza from product endorsements and personal appearances. An Indianapolis champion can book a speaking engagement every day of the year if he's up to it. Two-time winner Al Unser was, and his wife divorced him; she never got to see him any more.

Fifty million people or thereabouts go to auto races every year in this country, making the sport the second-biggest spectator draw, behind only horse racing (which has the advantage of pari-mutuel betting), and the Indianapolis 500 is racing's mother church. For the big day, a crowd of three hundred and fifty thousand people is expected, more than double the crowd that watches the Kentucky Derby, more than three times as many fans as throng to the Super Bowl, more people than mass together for any single event of any kind in American spectating.

When drivers are just starting to race, showing no promise at all, they already picture themselves at Indianapolis, roaring down the straightaways. Drivers come to the track with speed in their heads, bankrolled mostly by car owners armed with corporation money, and the vision of their car flashing to victory. The odds say they will go back wherever they came from without getting in a lap of competition. It doesn't seem to matter. Neither the oldest race nor the longest, the 500 has come to be known as the greatest of them all. Affinities between the drivers and the race run deep.

"Sure there are other races. There is only one 500."

"For a driver to ever truly reach the heights of his profession, he must have the 500 as one of his credits. He can win everywhere else, but people will wonder what is wrong until he wins here. Once he does, the rest of his record won't mean a damn."

"Heaven for a race driver begins at the entrance to the Indianapolis Speedway. It ends at the exit."

"How often do you race for a million dollars?"

"When I first got into racing, I was taught right away that the race to shoot for was Indianapolis. I was told Indianapolis would change a man."

"Winning this race opens a lot of doors."

"The glory is so thick here you can touch it."

"The winner of the Indianapolis 500 is king of the mountain."

"It is assumed that everyone wants to win this race. Anyone who says different is either a liar or a fool."

There was Frank Lockhart. Slow-minded but doggedly determined, Lockhart would usually throw up when he was about to climb into a racing car. He wore the messiest uniforms around. A near illiterate, he never managed to learn to spell. Go play with the other kids, his mother would insist as he grew up. Instead, he would take things apart and put them back together again. He had little time for anything else, marrying the only girl he ever dated. He could steer a race car as few men could, winning almost everywhere he went, setting tons of speed records. He wanted Indianapolis most of all. His mother had no money, living by sewing. He was broke. Desperation overtook reason. He mortgaged all the furniture in his mother's house to purchase tires to race at Indianapolis. He won in 1926.


(Continues...)

Excerpted from A Month at the Brickyard by Sonny Kleinfield. Copyright © 1977 Sonny Kleinfield. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

  • Cover Page
  • Dedication
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • 11
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • 16
  • 17
  • 18
  • 19
  • 20
  • 21
  • 22
  • 23
  • 24
  • 25
  • 26
  • 27
  • 28
  • 29
  • 30
  • Image Gallery
  • Acknowledgments
  • About the Author
  • Copyright Page
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