Word: speedways
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Automobiles caused the decline in U. S. automobile racing, when traffic made it impossible, except on speedways. In Europe, where automobiles are still a luxury, auto racing thrives because bored patricians find it amusingly dangerous. The drivers in last week's race were divided into two groups. In one group were grease-stained, speedway-trained U. S. professionals whose big, fast cars lacked the transmissions and brakes needed for road racing. In the other group were seasoned road racers like Italy's Count Antonio Brivio and Tazio Nuvolari, England's Hon. Brian Lewis and Lord Howe...
...gates of the Indianapolis Speedway opened at 6 a. m. First customers were two Illinois sisters named Ford who had been camping at the entrance in their sedan for three weeks, selling souvenir photographs of themselves to buyers farther back in the mile-long queue. By 9 o'clock the grandstands were almost full. Inside the oval of the 2 ½-mile brick track, remnants of the crowd of 168,000 wriggled into rows of bleachers on the tops of busses...
...Speedway was first used as a testing ground for the automotive industry, but its Memorial Day race has long ceased to be anything of the sort. Major manufacturers who hate to see their cars finish anywhere but first, still attend the race in droves but rarely enter their products. First eight places in last week's race went to Miller engines, made by famed Harry Miller of Los Angeles or his long-time Assistant Frederick Offenhauser, to whom he last year turned over most of his patterns. Four-cylinder engines are more popular than sixes or eights because...
...Knoxville, Tenn.'s Asbury Cemetery, the parents of the late Pete Kreis, automobile racer killed in a test run at Indianapolis last year, finished installing over his grave an 11-ft.-by-5-ft. monument showing a racing car hurtling over a speedway retaining wall. Said his mother Ida: "Pete always liked things different...
...Angeles fruit dealer, Driver Petillo. who used to get tickets for speeding in his father's truck, had invested his last $500 in a cream-colored Gilmore Speedway Special which he patched up for the race. In his first trial he broke the speed record but was disqualified for using too much gasoline. In his second, a broken connecting rod scattered his motor on the track. Before the race, which his wife and nine-year-old son watched him win, he used an electric vibrator to keep his forearm muscles supple. His prizes, when it was over...