Against Death and Time: One Fatal Season in Racing's Glory Years Read Online Free PDF Page A

including Wilbur Shaw, were pallbearers. Shaw was an icon in Indianapolis. Not only had he won the 500
three times, with a fourth in his pocket until a wheel broke, but he
was the Speedway's President. He worked for owner Anton "Tony" Hulman, the Terre Haute sportsman who had purchased the track
from Eddie Rickenbacker in 1946. Yale man Hulman's family owned
Terre Haute, for all intents and purposes, as well as the Clabber Girl
Baking Powder Co. and Indiana's Coca-Cola distributorship.

    Following the funeral service, the engines were back at full cry. As
if to take a chunk out of the bear, Duke Nalon was among the first on
the track to make some practice laps in the second Novi. To climb
into a sister car that had killed two of his teammates and had tried to
burn him alive was an act of pure defiance. Nalon was a crafty, lowkey Chicagoan, not given to big talk. Like many Indy veterans, he had
abandoned the sport full-time for a job with Ford Motor Company in
its aircraft division, and only drove once a year at Indianapolis. Many
believed that his deft touch with the evil Novis came as close as possible to maximizing the car's potential. Only one Novi remained.
Owner Lew Welch announced that the Hepburn/Miller machine
would never be repaired. Enough was enough.
    With Vuke on the pole for the race, he was able to relax as seventysix drivers hammered around the track seeking the remaining thirtytwo positions. He remained reclusive, choosing to confine his limited
conversations to Travers and Coon and a few other drivers. Some
believed him to be an angry man, full of venom and hatred for
strangers, but this was not the case. In private he was affable and easygoing. But he sought no public image and asked for none in return.
    One morning we were hanging around his garage when a writer
for Life magazine approached me and asked if I might intercede to
arrange an interview. I told him the possibility was unlikely, but that
I would ask.
    "Hey Vuke, a guy from Life magazine would like to talk with you.
What do you think?"
    "This does my talking," he said, a wry smile crossing his face. He
was pointing to his right foot.
    In fact, Vukovich's entire mind and body were able to talk racing at a level of intensity seldom seen in the sport. He trained vigorously for the ordeal, both back home in Fresno and at the Speedway,
where he ran the 2.5-mile track each morning and flailed away
steadily on an exercise machine mounted in his garage. Like many
drivers, he had fashioned a steering wheel mounted on a shaft connected to a friction shock absorber. Twisting on the wheel developed upper-arm and shoulder strength, a critical component in
controlling a nose-heavy, one-ton race car at speed during an era
when power steering was only available on a few luxury sedans.
Born in Alameda, but raised in Fresno where his immigrant father
had run a small vineyard, when he was sixteen he and his two older
brothers were orphaned and had raised themselves on the tiny
spread on the edge of town.

    He drifted into the world of motor racing before the war, fascinated by the fierce competition and lured by the possibility of making a living away from the hardscrabble farm. He made little impact
prior to his military service in World War II, but returned a stronger,
brighter, more focused competitor; and by 1950 he had won the
national midget racing championship in the face of fierce competition from masses of hungry, restless veterans like himself. Vukovich's
dream was to race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the Mount
Olympus of the sport, and he took an instant liking to the foreboding rectangle. He felt no fear of the place.
    For others it was not so easy. John Fitch was a P-51 fighter pilot,
prisoner of war, and an expert sports car driver with the top-notch
Cunningham team. He had just won the arduous Sebring 12-Hour
endurance race and had returned to Indianapolis, his native city,
where his father was an executive