Red for Ferrari

The eyes of Texas--some 35,000 pairs of them--were on sprawling Bergstrom Air Force Base at Austin this week. The biggest crowd in Texas sports-car history turned up for a chance at the gate prizes--a Jaguar, an MG and a Studebaker--and the promised thrills and spills of four races, jointly sponsored by the Sports Car Club of America and General Curtis LeMay's Strategic Air Command.

Cigar-chewing Curt LeMay, a sports-car enthusiast who does his own highway driving in a Cadillac-Allard, was on hand to watch a pet LeMay project. Airport racing, with admissions at $2 a head, swells the treasuries of Air Force Aid societies and local charities, pays for barracks improvements and gives SAC airmen a constructive off-duty hobby--tinkering with engines. Moreover, the Sports Car Club gains the advantage of sporty, twisting courses on the runways, where chance spectators are not so apt to wander out into the turns as they sometimes do in road racing.

At the start of the main 200-mile race, the roar of the Bergstrom crowd was quickly drowned by the louder roar of the 19 entries--Allards, Ferraris, Jaguars, etc. The president of the Sports Car Club, Driver Fred Wacker Jr. of Chicago went out early with engine trouble. After the first few laps over the tortuous 4.48-mile course (including turns of 110DEG and 135DEG) the race settled down to a neck & neck duel between Chicago Manufacturer Jim Kimberly, 45, in a Ferrari, and California's Phill Hill, driving a Jaguar C. The Jag was quicker on the corners, but invariably lost ground on the longest straightaway, a 6,000-ft. runway where Kimberly gunned his slim, low-hung speedster up to 150 m.p.h.

The winner, at an average speed of 86.4 m.p.h.: dapper, greying Jim Kimberly (in red gloves and shoes), who had made an entrance into Austin that was spectacular even by Texas standards. Included in the Kimberly entourage: a trailer loaded down with two Ferraris, a machine-shop truck, a station-wagon car complete with bar, and two expert mechanics. The whole outfit was decked out in Kimberly's favorite fire-engine red.

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