A Dodgem Game

It was a great race all right--for a scrap dealer. Otherwise, the 50th Indianapolis 500 was the most amateurish, confused and frustrating auto race in the history of the famed "Brickyard." Fully one-third of the 33-car field was wiped out on the very first turn; the yellow caution light was on for 41 minutes during the 31 hours; and only seven cars were still running at the finish. The winner of what was supposed to be the fastest race in history was less a hero than a survivor: British Grand

Prix Driver (and 1962 champion) Graham Hill, 37, who on his first try at Indy ground around the course at an average speed of 144.317 m.p.h., the slowest since 1963.

Blossoms of Flame. For much of the day, it looked as if the race would not even get properly started. As the red Mercury Comet pace car, driven by Benson Ford, turned into the pits, the field surged across the starting line at 100 m.p.h. in neat rows of three. Suddenly, the careful symmetry became a tangle of junk. In what looked like a "dodgem" game, the track was filled with spinning, fishtailing, crashing racers. Axles and suspensions snapped, tires sailed through the air, spurts of flame from spilled fuel blossomed on the asphalt. Driver Arnie Knepper climbed from his wrecked Ford and examined a tire mark on his helmet#151;from a car that had flown over him.

"That's quite a load," he sighed, "when a car weighing 1,450 Ibs. is sitting on your head. But it didn't stay there long." Said Dan Gurney in disgust: "It seems like 33 of what are supposed to be the best drivers in the world ought to be able to drive down a little straightaway piece of road without running into each other. Everybody has a brake and an accelerator. If one of these drivers had a brain too, this wouldn't have happened."

The man fingered by some drivers was Canada's Billy Foster, 28, a hot shoe in his second year at Indianapolis. At the prerace safety meeting, track officials repeatedly warned against trying to steal too much ground on the closely packed first lap. Foster missed part of the meeting, and perhaps the message. To careful observers, it seemed that Foster, from his starting position on the outside of the fourth row, thought he saw daylight in the middle of the third row, tried to squeeze through, and missed. He bumped into the man ahead, starting the chain-reaction crash. Foster denied it, said that someone, "I don't know who," had faded into him, forcing him out of line, and into another car.

Three Britons. It took 1 hr. 20 min. to clear the debris of 16 cars, eleven of them out for good. No sooner was the race restarted than Johnny Boyd, accelerating out of a turn, skidded and clipped the wall.

The rest was pure anticlimax. Out, after 27 laps, with an oil leak, went Mario Andretti, the speediest qualifier at 168.5 m.p.h. Out, after 152 laps, with a broken bolt in the cam tower, went Lloyd Ruby, the last U.S. driver to hold the lead. The race was now between three sports-car-trained Britons, all in Ford-powered machines: Jackie Stewart, winner of the Monaco Grand Prix two weeks ago, 1965 Grand Prix and Indianapolis Champion Jimmy Clark, and Graham Hill. Stewart led for 39 laps; then, with but ten laps to go, he lost his oil pressure and his chance. That left Hill in the lead. Or was it Clark? In the final schemozzle of the day, the Scoreboard vacillated confusingly. Finally, it declared Hill in the lead--and the winner by 41 sec. over Clark.

At the victory banquet next night, Hill collected his $156,297 winner's share, but the night belonged to the U.S.'s Rodger Ward, 45, Indy's alltime moneymaker ($421,610), who finished 15th in his 15th start. Stepping to the microphone, he said: "I promised myself years ago that whenever auto racing stopped being fun for me, I'd quit. Yesterday, it just wasn't fun. So, so long. . ."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.