Word: ruttman
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DIED. TROY RUTTMAN, 67, brash hot rodder who sped to short-lived glory in 1952, becoming at 22 the youngest winner of the Indianapolis 500; of lung cancer; in Lake Havasu City, Ariz...
...home third in the Indianapolis 500, Arizona Auto Racer Jimmy Bryan had time to chew up only three cigars while he wheeled around the steeply banked track at Monza, Italy, and won Europe's first Indianapolis-style competition, with an average speed of 160.057 m.p.h. Indianapolis Veterans Troy Ruttman and Johnny Parsons finished second and third. The only non-Indianapolis-type cars to compete were British Jaguars, and three of them, entered by the same Scots team that swept the 24-hour Grand Prix at Le Mans, France, came in behind Parsons. So fast was the new Italian track...
...tire change cost Vukovich the lead, to Ruttman, in the 135th lap; 11 laps later, for the same reason, Ruttman lost it back to Vukovich. And so it went, in a nip & tuck race. With only 50 miles to go, Vukovich, setting new speed records all along the line, had a fairly substantial (31 seconds) lead, but he could see from information flagged from his pit that Ruttman was gaining...
Less than 22 miles from the finish, Vukovich apparently had the race wrapped up with a 19-second (about three-quarters of a mile) lead when he skidded and cracked up on the northeast wall. He escaped uninjured. Ruttman, with the race-now in his pocket (a three-lap lead with eight to go), slowed down and coasted in, still in the fastest time (3:52:41.88) and at the fastest speed (128.922 m.p.h.) in Indianapolis history...
...racer at 16, burly (6 ft. 3 in., 245 Ibs.) Troy Ruttman is also the youngest (22) driver ever to win. He first hit Indianapolis three years ago, fibbed about his age (then 19) in order to qualify, and finished twelfth. A year later, he was 15th; last year he was 23rd. He had only one regret last week: the fire lost nearly two minutes, "and if it hadn't been for this I think I could have averaged 130 m.p.h...