Word: stops
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Gradually, as the howling machines disappeared into the hills, a hypnotic hush came over Clermont-Ferrand. In the pits, the loudest sound was the ticking of stop watches as mechanics and managers paced nervously to and fro. Even the public-address announcer stopped his chatter. The grandstand crowd sat in silence-eyes riveted on a spot 400 ft. below, where the winding asphalt track curled like a thin, black snake between two green hills. There, any second now, the leading car would appear. The noise came first: the rising nasal whine of a V-8 engine echoing off the hills...
...speeds soared. In 1924, California's Peter DePaolo "cracked a ton"-averaging 101.13 m.p.h. at the Indianapolis 500-and Europe's dark genius, Ettore Bugatti, explained why he equipped his fantastically quick and costly cars with fantastically worthless brakes: "Automobiles are meant to go, not to stop...
...terror of Thurber's aunt, who tried vainly to conquer a car and wound up pleading, "Somebody take this goddamn thing away from me," gave way to something the psychologists called "locomotor philia": the teen-ager in his chromed and channeled-down hot-rod who leaned out at stop lights and sneered: "Wanna drag, mister...
...speed did him no good when the tread peeled off a tire at 150 m.p.h. and the left rear wheel of his Lotus collapsed. Old Indy hands had to admire the way the "sporty-car" driver from Scotland held his bucking car steady and braked it to a stop on the infield grass ("Of course," added Rodger Ward, "if he didn't, his tail would've been a grape"). The same evil luck dogged Clark in Europe all summer: he won three out of his first five Grand Prix, seemed well on his way to a second straight...
...busily in the black too, producing barley for Scotch-whisky distillers, sheep for wool, and cattle for slaughter. He has his Scottish sheep dog, Sweep, who pines for him while he is away-and his flaxen-haired girl friend, Sally Stokes, who travels with him and tends a stop watch in the pits...