Vintage Indy: 1955 and the Vukovich accident

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The 1955 motor racing season was the most tragic in the history of the sport. Actually, it was a tragic 17 days. On May 26, Europe’s greatest driver, (of the time) Alberto Ascari died in a test run at Monza in Italy. Four days later, America lost it’s greatest current driver, Bill Vukovich at Indianapolis. Then On June 11, Pierre Levegh’s car at the Le Mans sports car race went airborne into a densely packed crowd and exploded, killing himself and 83 spectators and injuring 120 others. In response to this there were calls to ban the sport but it survived and, eventually the brains in the sport spent as much time thinking about how to make it safer as they did on making it faster.

The 1955 highlight film begins with a series of interviews and sound bites with the drivers themselves. We hear from Jimmy Bryan who finished second the year before but went on to win the AAA national driver’s title and would win at Indy in 1958, Bob Sweikert who would win Indy this year and Jimmy Davis, who never won at Indy but was dominant in what they called midget car races. Later we hear brief clips from Jack McGrath, Johnny Boyd and Jim Rathman. We see some nice shots of Vukovich, Tony Bettenhausen, Pat Flaherty, Shorty Templeton, Johnny Parsons, Cal Niday, (like Bill Schindler, a “one-legged” driver- he’d lost one in a motorcycle accident), Art Cross, Walt Faulkner and Al Herman. Bryan, Sweikert, McGrath, Vukovich, Bettenhausen, Templeton, Faulkner and Herman all died in racing accidents. Niday survived his racing career and then died of a heart attack in a vintage car race in 1988.

Here is Part One of the 1955 highlight film, which ends in an extended view of the parade of the cars behind the pace car as the race is ready to begin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXqX_MPxvLE

Here is another view of the pace car laps and the start, with a tape of the radio broadcast of the opening synchronized to it such that if you’d seen it live on TV, it would have looked like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3AUH74_Y0w
Wilbur Shaw, a three time winner and owner of the Speedway, had died in a plane crash the previous October so this was the first time that Tony Hulman had said “Gentleman start your engines”.

Here is Part 2 of the highlights, the actual race:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyW6055MLJE

 

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Vukovich duels with McGrath until Jack falls victim to mechanical trouble. McGrath was his own chief mechanic, the last of the breed, and we see him climbing out of his car and grabbing a wrench, to no avail. Then Jimmy Bryan joins the chase. But Vuky is leading when on lap 56 Roger Ward, himself a future two time winner, breaks an axel. Al Keller moved to Ward’s left to avoid him, Vukovich to the right. Keller hit Johnny Boyd’s car, which careened in front of Vukovich, who went over the top and over the wall, his rigid car somersaulting several times before coming to rest upside down and burning, ending the life and career of one of America’s greatest racers.

Compare the Vukovich crash to one from the 2010 Indy 500:
Vukovich:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhjCm-23pL8&feature=related
Mike Conway in 2010:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZy-tPkZ3W4
Conway broke a leg and compressed a vertebrae but lived and is racing this year, although he missed the cut at Indy for 2011. Two differences I see here: Vukovich’s car remains basically in tact and catches fire. Conway’s car flies apart and there is no fire. I think it’s an example of the superior design of modern cares. Instead of protecting the driver by making the outside of the car rigid, (which causes the mechanical energy generated by the crash to be transferred to the driver inside), Conway’s car gives the crash something to destroy and has the protection on the inside. Obviously the gas tank is better protected as well, (although Vuky was thought to have been dead before the fire started. You don’t know if Bill could have survived in a modern car but you have to wonder if it would have made a difference.

Vukovich remains the great tragic figure of the speedway: to this date, no one has ever won 3 Indy 500s in a row. With better luck in 1952 and 1955, Bill might have won 4 in a row. His passing in 1955 was the equivalent of losing Dale Earnhardt a decade ago.
There’s a whole web page with audio clips dedicated to this accident:





http://www.vukovichaccident.com/AudioPrograms.htm

It was the first fatality from a crash during the race in 8 years. In fact there have been only three fatal accidents during the actual race since: Pat O’Connor in 1958, McDonald-Sachs in 1964 and Swede Savage in 1973, (and Savage actually died form a contaminated blood transfusion).

The accident is actually similar to Levegh’s except there was not a dense crowd at the point where Vuky went off the track. (Another difference in the Conway crash is the chain fence that kept the car on the track):



http://www.mike-hawthorn.org.uk/lemans.php

Bob Sweikert takes over after than and battles Jimmy Bryan for the lead until Bryan’s car loses power and has to pit- for good. We see him kicking the car. While he was still running but slowing down, his pit crew, wondering what the problem is, holds up a blackboard with a big “?” on it. How is Bryan supposed to answer that? Sweikert, running low on fuel, manages to hold off other competitors.

Drivers mentioned in this highlight film that I haven’t profiled in previous posts are:
Bob Sweikert, who bristled at suggestions that his win was a fluke became “the most active 500 winner in history”, easily winning the 1955 AAA title. He used his winnings to buy his wife and three children a “posh new home in Indianapolis”, his hometown. He was killed in a race at Milwaukee, on June 17, 1956. Just like Vukovich, his car flipped over a wall and burned.
Jimmy Davis survived his career and dominated midget racing but his third place in this race was the best he ever did at Indy.
Johnny Boyd competed in every Indy from 1955-66 but 3rd place, (in 1958) was the best he was able to do. He was a close friend of Sweikert’s and it was Johnny who Bob was wondering about when he asked “Who got hurt?” in his post race interview. Johnny survived Bob by 47 years.
Shorty Templeton ran at Indy five times, finishing 4th in 1961 before dying in a 1962 midget car crash.
Cal Niday survived a serious crash in the 1955 race. That his last of three Indys. He died in a vintage car race in 1988 of a heart attack after being thrown from his car at age 73.
Al Herman was another rookie in ‘55. He complete in five Indys before being killed in a crash in West Haven, CN in 1960.