The Sport of Sports Car Racing

The sports car fan is a lover, and his car is his mistress. She is expensive, and she demands high-priced accessories. She is unpredictable, and she can be dangerous. She is a mystery whose Sortilege is axlegrease, a siren who sometimes purrs and sometimes sends her keeper home unsatisfied. "Not tonight," she says. "Not till you buy me those new cams." But doodlebug Renault or growling Maserati, she is an adventure in pure pleasure.

Something there is about a sports car that can send a chairman of the board sprawling in his Brooks Bros. suit to tighten a bolt or oil a bearing.

Something there is that can drive a cartoonist like Charles Addams or a television personality like Dave Garroway to affix goggles to face and go tooling down the road like a high-school boy with his first Model-A.

What's the lure? Scratch a dozen aficionados and you get a dozen answers. Man likes to tinker. He likes to speed. He likes to give orders to a thing mechanical and see them obeyed. He likes to look over his shoulder and wave goodbye to his fellows. He likes to be different, stylish, courageous, heroic. A school teacher in a red Ferrari is a man with verve. A banker cornering tightly in a Triumph has no paunch at all. An accountant in a Fiat is a gay rogue indeed.

Nor does there seem to be any immunity to the virus. An official of a midwest sports car club tells of the day a motorcycle policeman spent 20 minutes catching up with his Jaguar on the New Jersey Turnpike. "Say, Bud, I clocked you at 100," the trooper said. "This little thing goes that fast?"

"Sure," the owner said, climbing out. "Give it a try."

The trooper roared down the road and returned in about three minutes, his face a picture of joyous surprise. "Okay, Bud," he said, "I don't blame you."

This miraculous machine which so frees a man of his inhibitions is not purely a touring car and not purely a racer. The sports car is a schizophrenic Swiss watch-on-wheels, capable of the widest divergence in performance. It will take you gently to your club or flat-out on the straight at Daytona Beach. It will make you feel at home on cutback mountain curves and in the tightest traffic, on cobblestone alleys and slick superhighways. It is not something you ride in; it is something you drive. A sports car with automatic transmission would be like a mistress who undresses herself. There are times when a man does not want to be helped.

From the pride of possession comes the natural desire to compete—to see how your MG stacks up against the Austin-Healey down the block. American (continued on page 33) Sports Car (continued from page 19) sports car clubs have laid down rigid rules to keep competition pure. To qualify in recognized events, a sports car must have two seats, a door, fenders, headlights, a spare wheel and tire, starter, battery and generator. In races and efficiency "rallies," it must compete with its peers, cars with about the same cylinder displacement. (As soon as a sports car is altered, it must race in a "modified" class, where its competitors also have been tinkered with. The removal of one bumper makes a car "modified.")

On paper, standard American automobiles seem to meet all the requirements, but their own limitations keep them from qualifying as sports cars. Super-powered U. S. cars are not necessarily super-efficient. They are soft-springed, heavy, ponderous alongside their little cousins. Matched with a snippy Simca in a tortuous road race, a 300-horsepower American limousine would be elbowed out at the first turn.

The sports car craze bears a made-in-Europe label; the best cars are British, French, German, Italian. American industry has taken several cracks at the market, with uniformly unrewarding results. Production of Chevrolet's plastic-bodied Corvette has been cut to a trickle. The Ford Thunderbird is handsomely designed and commercially popular, but in sports car competition has been notable chiefly for its large windshield through which the driver can watch the Ferraris and Jaguars diminishing in the distance. American manufacturers, latecomers to the field of the compact miniature, have not been able to solve such problems as rear-end sway on curves and fishtailing on the straights. To their credit, they are still trying.

The sports car fan revels in the things he must do himself. He does not want power brakes, power steering, automatic shift. He wants to feel the car out for himself, make the downshifts and upshifts at his own pace, communicate with the wheels and the engine on as straightforward a basis as possible. A high priest of the cult, John Wheelock Freeman, has observed: "I like to preserve a little autonomy in a car. . . . The current trend toward euphoria isn't compatible with the sports car as an institution. A sports car is to be used, like a rifle."

Sports cars range in price from $1,300 to whatever you want to pay, in top speeds from 75 to 175 mph., in size from the beetle-like German Volkswagens and French Renaults to the rakish Italian Ferraris and British Bentleys. They are refreshingly lacking in posh, with direct mechanical braking and steering and four-speed gearboxes operated by plain levers jutting up between the seats. (Ford's inclusion of power brakes, power steering and automatic transmission in the Thunderbird struck most sports car fans as equivalent to mixing a Martini one-to-one.) They are devoid of such hanky-panky as automatic window controls, hydraulic seat adjustments, jutting taillights, "dagmars" and other chromium fillips. Their body lines are smooth, continuous, uninterrupted. On racers like the D-type Jaguar, you can roll a marble from the hood to the tail-light with the gentlest push.

But despite these points of similarity, one sports car may differ from another as much as a Nash Rambler differs from a Mark II. Some are made for efficiency—50 miles on a gallon of gas is no feat for a Renault. Some are made for speed—the Ferrari, Jaguar, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz can top 100 in third gear, and reach 160 on a straightaway. Some are made for maneuverability — stock Lancias and Sciatas corner like custom-built racers, and indeed have beaten out their speedier adversaries in road races where maneuverability mattered most.

Sports car clubs have designed a variety of races and events to test these differences. Their aim is to match cars of equal abilities, thus making the contests true tests of driver skill. Racers are divided into classes, like boxers, depending on cylinder displacements, starting with the tiniest cars and running up to the big roadsters. A typical sports car race is a frantic phantasmagoria of many simultaneous races. Roaring away from the starting line are Porsches, Oscas, Simcas, MGs, Singers, each racing in its own class, each blithely unconcerned about the cars in other classes. The neophyte spectator soon finds himself thoroughly perplexed. A car which appears to be running fifth might be in first place — in its particular classification. A car which has been lapped three times might turn up a winner.

The undisputed glamor event of the sports car racer's calendar is the wide-open road race, in which any type of car may compete. Sports cars, some of them highly modified, will tangle with specially-built competition racers. The world series of this type race is the Le Mans endurance contest, a 24-hour trial-by-tire in which the winner is the driver who covers the most miles. The big automobile companies like Jaguar and Ferrari spend months preparing for such races, on the theory that the prestige of victory will sell cars. Mercedes-Benz figured that the cost of the three cars it raced in one year was $200,000. An American, Briggs Cunningham, has thrown $1,000,000 of his own money down the drain in a fruitless five-year assault on Le Mans.

Almost every country has developed its own "Grand Prix" — usually a race over a meandering closed course at average speeds of more than 100 mph. Because such courses require maneuverability as well as speed, "big iron" of the Indianapolis type is at a major disadvantage and the sports car is in its native element. Cornering efficiently, capable of rapid bursts of speed on straights, the Ferraris, Jaguars and Lancias regularly leave the "big iron" behind.

Such races are as brutal as a bull fight, as coldly serious as a forest-glen pistol duel. Drivers like the Argentine champion, Juan Fangio, think nothing of deliberately deceiving their opponents in an effort to run them off the track. Fangio has a particular dislike of "slip-streaming" drivers who take advantage of the vacuum created by his car to increase their own speeds by 15 to 20 mph. He has been known to shake such drivers at night by turning off his braking lights. Watching the Argentinian's tail lights for signs of braking, the trailing driver sees nothing, enters a curve at top speed, careens off the road. Stirling Moss, the British driver, often shakes slip-streamers by waggling from side to side as though about to lose control. The parasite slips back to avoid a collision, and Moss gives 'er the gun.

Cunningham, wealthy racing sportsman from Green Farms, Conn., has more than held his own in such races, although his dream of winning at Le Mans apparently has slipped away for good. He is, by acclamation, king-of-the-hill in American sports car racing. A short, wiry man, Cunningham has a prizefighter's aggressive face, the gentle manners of a well-bred aristocrat, and the iron nerves of a riverboat gambler. Every race course has a "groove," a shortest way around, and Cunningham is usually the first to find it. After the second or third lap, his car will move like a train on a track. Spectators on tight curves have noticed time and again that Cunningham will enter at precisely the same point, brake across the same distance, and floorboard into the straight exactly as he had on every previous lap. He seems oblivious to the competition, never deviating from his track, never looking over his shoulder or engaging in high drama. He drives like a robot.

No less coldly efficient was Cunningham's campaign against the road race records previously the exclusive province of the big European companies like Mercedes and Ferrari. As an amateur, Cunningham formed his own company and designed his own car in 1950. Object: victory for the United States at Le Mans. Cunningham's car had a tubular chassis, a Chrysler V-8 engine, Cadillac pistons, dual fuel pumps, multiple carburetion, twin exhaust pipes and Cunningham at the wheel. The Cunningham Special won nearly every major American race and scored a third place at Le Mans against cars designed and built by multi-million-dollar corporations whose every resource was pitted against him. But this year America's blue-and-white racing colors will vanish from Cunningham's cars. The old master has switched to Jaguars—will represent them in America and drive them in competition. If you can't lick 'em . . .

Although America has developed few road racers of Cunningham's stature, it has turned out a first-rate grand prix on what may well be the world's finest enclosed track. "Road America," in Wisconsin's brockwurst-and-butter belt, appears slated to become a sort of U. S. Le Mans. The race course, near Elkhart Lake, is a blacktop strip snaking through a series of kettle moraine depressions forming natural amphitheaters for spectators. The track was laid out by engineers who must have been nursing deep-seated grudges against racers. There are six 90-degree corners and eight curves, with altitude differences of nearly 300 feet. One of the curves is a 180-degree downhill killer of diminishing radius, so designed that a car which does not brake sharply will have to go crashing into the woods.

To this stern testing ground recently came the elite of the sports car racing fraternity for the first "Road America" grand prix. Cunningham brought a stable from Green Farms. Millionaire sportsman Jim Kimberly, the 1954 U. S. champion with 17 wins in 21 starts, entered his fire-engine-red Ferraris. Wealthy racing enthusiast George Tilp of California sent nervous young Phil Hill to do battle in a white Manza Ferrari. Other big names included Bill Spear and Gordon Benett in Maseratis, Ernie Erickson in his D-Jaguar, Stewart Johnston in a Cunningham-owned D-Jag. The entry list was a bluebook of America's sports car racers.

If some of the more experienced hands were nonchalant about the homegrown track, they soon had reason to treat it with respect. In a practice session, Tom Friedmann of Milwaukee lost control of his Maserati and suffered fatal burns in the resulting crash. Before a single race was run, there had been so many spin-outs and crashes that starter Ben Harris called all drivers together and announced sternly: "Look, this is a hairy track. Get wise to it or we won't be having any more races."

The next day a bevy of Porsches, Renaults, MGs and assorted small cars zipped away in the opening race, a 100-miler. As expected, the race soon settled down among the Porsches, classiest cars entered, but not before there was spinning and whirling seldom seen outside the Moslem world. The German-built Porsche has its motor mounted in the rear. As a result, the heavy rear-end mass tries to come up front whenever the driver brakes. Thus the car has a tendency to spin hind-end-to on curves. One by one the Porches entered the 180-degree diminishing-radius curve and spun out. Spectators were showered with hay. Traffic came to a complete halt. Some of the Porsches recovered, only to spin out again. Ultimately the winner was Bob Ballenger of Highland Park, Ill., who had managed to leave the track the fewest times and run the distance at the relatively slow speed of 67.7 mph.

Five other races followed quickly, but none produced the slapdash abandon of the first. Then came the line-up for the feature. Snapping and spitting, the big four-liter cars trundled out on the track, dashed up and down the straightaways, screeched to brake-testing halts. For the first time, the Sten-gun pounding of the Maseratis was heard, and the 50,000 spectators tensed in anticipation.

Most eyes were on the blue-and-white of the Cunningham Special and the bright red of Kimberly's Ferrari. This was where the race figured to be. Only a few knew that Kimberly was driving an alternate car. His 4.5 stroked Ferrari had gone temperamental, mistress-like, just before the race. Cunningham, too, was in trouble. His Special had been coughing and complaining all through the warmup, and he realized he would have to bank on his stable mate, Sherwood Johnston of Rye, N. Y., for a Green Farms victory. As for baby-faced Phil Hill, he went through his warmup methodically, calmly, attracting little attention except among the few who knew he would play Russian roulette with a one-shot pistol to win a race.

The cars lined up. A one-minute bomb went off. The cars inched forward, their engines throbbing soft and low in unison. The starting bomb reverberated across the countryside and the big cars catapulted from the line. They disappeared around the first curve, and for a while the spectators at the starting post had to content themselves with the dull roar of 26 cars carrying across the woods. Then amplifiers began booming reports from way stations around the track. Hill was in the lead. Johnston was slip-streaming him. The rest of the pack was fading. Cunningham's Special appeared to be in difficulty. Kimberly's red Ferrari was well back in the pack.

At the 12-mile mark, Hill shook Johnston out of his slipstream and opened up a 7-second lead. Now it was strictly a two-man race. By the 68-mile mark, Hill had widened the gap to 12 seconds. Then an Allard went off the road and the yellow flag of caution was dropped. Obeying the rules, Johnston held his second-place position, but he gobbled up the distance between him and Hill. When Ben Harris waved green again, Johnston's D-Jag was framed in the center of Phil Hill's rear-view mirror. That's when the deadly in-fighting started. Hill's Ferrari had the advantage on the straights. The Jaguar, considered to be one of the best braked cars in the world, held the balance of power on curves. Hill inched away on the straight runs; Johnston caught up on the bends.

Then Hill ran into heavy traffic, was unable to take advantage of his car's straightaway superiority, and lost the lead to Johnston. Hill began to show signs of the tremendous pressure of the duel. He all but climbed Johnston's car, but the race-wise New Yorker zigzagged like a blocking back and kept the Californian from moving by. At the 108-mile mark, with every other car in the field lapped at least once by the two front-runners, Hill made a near-fatal error. He followed Johnston too closely into a curve and didn't have enough brake power to corner properly. He skidded off the track, scattering the protective hay bales amongst the spectators. A quick recovery put him back in the race, but now Johnston was 8 seconds ahead. Hill began to close the distance.

Twenty miles before the finish, Hill was riding Johnston's tail again. He tried to pass on the main straightaway, drew nearly abreast, then had to fall back for the curve. On the next lap the two cars roared past the main grandstand in a dead heat. Once again Johnston was holding control on the curves, waiting till the last second before hitting his powerful disc brakes.

As the cars began the final lap, Johnston held a car-length lead. Behind him, Hill was feinting this way and that, trying to get by. Now there were two turns to go, seven-tenths of a mile. Johnston needed one more downshift from third to second at the northeast corner and an upshift back to third at the foot of the main slope and the race would be his.

But where was Hill? Johnston couldn't find him in the mirror. That meant only one thing: Hill was in the blind spot to his right, making his move. Now Johnston slammed into the left-hand curve. He came in high, to the left, then started his normal outward drift back to the right side of the track. Then he saw Hill's Ferrari. It was inching toward the space into which Johnston's car was drifting. The moment of truth had arrived. If Johnston continued his drift, Hill would have to give ground or lurch off the track. Still Hill came on. A crash at that speed might have been fatal to both men. There was a moment of uncertainty, then Johnston lifted his foot from the accelerator. Hill won by two car lengths. His average speed was 80.2 mph. He had run the last lap in 2 minutes, 54 and 55/100ths seconds, fastest time of the day and set a record that may last for years.

The two cars finished their safety lap and pulled into the pits. Hill accepted the checkered flag and carried it for one more turn around the course. Johnston yanked the goggles from his eyes, exposing two blood-red circles where they had dug into him. His face appeared wracked by tension. He smiled only briefly, wiped at his eyes, ran his hand across his grimy forehead. Reporters crowded around. Not yet aware of the cockpit battle of wills, they asked Johnston: How had Hill outsmarted him? How had Hill forced Johnston to let him pass?

The tired racer blinked at them and said, "Nobody has to let anybody pass."

Chief steward Roy Kramer grabbed Johnston's sweaty hand. "If it's any consolation," he said, "you drove a great race." To a reporter, Kramer added, "You could watch racing for 100 years and you'll never see another like this."

Hill finished his victory run and pulled up. He shook hands with Johnston and was helped out of the car by friends. Somebody shoved a can of beer into his hand, and Hill drank. How do you feel? he was asked. Tense? Nervous?

"No, I'm not tense," Hill said. "I was just thinking — I didn't realize how closely matched the cars are. We'll have to do something about that before the next race." He drained the can, then gripped it between two taut hands. Tense? Nervous? The beer can lay crumbled at his feet.

Ernie Erickson opens up his D-Type Jaguar in the big race at Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.

Briggs Cunningham in his Cunningham Special (left) and William C. Spear driving his Maserati.

British driver Gordon Benett, Jim Kimberly and Cunningham joke before the race

Cunningham's crew pushes Special to track.

Jim Kimberly in Ferrari and Cunningham in his Special await start of big race.

J. Jefford eats up dirt in 5th race between Jaguars, I Corvette and I T-Bird.

Normand K. Patton takes a sharp curve in his Thunderbird in the 5th race.

Benett, in Cunningham Maserati, pulls ahead of one of Kimberly's Ferraris.

Kimberly Ferrari gets a tire change

Briggs Cunningham walks away from the track after his Special has gone to pieces under him.

Phil Hill closes in on leader Sherwood Johnston.

Phil Hill's Ferrari moves around the final lap and roars toward the finish.

The checkered flag of victory is held high by the winner and carried once around the course.

In a state of near-shock after the race, Phil Hill describes how he drove the George Tilp Ferrari to victory over Cunningham's D-Type Jaguar driven by Sherwood Johnston. Johnston and Hill duelled for the lead during most of the race and were never more than 12 seconds apart. As Hill talked he twisted and bent a beer can in his tense hands.