A Circus Kind of Calling

By Tom Callahan

Just as qualifying trials began for next week's Indianapolis 500, the illustrious class of 1965 lost Gordon Johncock, a two-time winner. His car was ready: it had been running near the front at over 210 m.p.h. But the driver was out of tune and time. "That morning I lay there in bed thinking about everything. All of a sudden I sat up and said, 'That's it for me.' " Mario Andretti, a classmate present later at Johncock's valedictory press conference, called his friend's retirement "clever," an odd word. "I've always thought of race-car drivers as being clever or stupid," Andretti explained. "I'm still trying to figure out which we are."

Twenty years ago, Andretti finished third, Johncock fifth and Al Unser ninth in their first Indy, when a bumper haul of eleven rookies made the field of 33 and five finished in the top ten. "An eternity ago," says Andretti, 45, a compact man with a Roman bearing. "It doesn't seem that long" to Unser, 45, who at first professed to understand Johncock's decision. "No, that's not fair," he amended. "I don't understand it. I haven't done it." This is the usual difficulty in discussing anything about auto racing. No one who hasn't done it can quite understand it.

Sixteen years since his only victory, Andretti will start the 69th Indy 500 from the second row, just behind Pole-Sitter Pancho Carter and just ahead of Unser. Sons Al Unser Jr. and Michael Andretti will follow in the fourth and fifth rows of brilliantly painted cars scattered three abreast across the asphalt track. A circus kind of calling, racing regularly summons more than one generation of the same family, though these are the only fathers and sons who have ever raced together at Indianapolis. In his christening two years ago, Al Jr., 23, brought a smile to the speedway during the closing laps by trying to block the path of Winner Tom Sneva on behalf of Runner-Up Al Sr. Last May, Mario welcomed Michael to the life with a short glance across the row they shared. "I don't have any first memory of my father, the race driver," says Michael, 22, "because that's my whole memory. Ever since people started asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up, there has been only one answer."

"I'm happy but I'm not happy," his father mutters. "I don't like to talk about the downside of racing, but obviously I'm guilty of getting him involved. 'Guilty' may not be the right word. But it's the only one I can think of. In my whole life, I've let myself get really close to just three drivers. They're all dead." One was another of the Indy rookies of 1965, Billy Foster, killed two years later in a stock car. "But on the upside, my son now knows what I do, or he's starting to. All along he's been a passenger on this road. Now he's a driver. He's beginning to see."

Unser would seem to have even greater cause for dread. His brother Jerry was killed at Indianapolis in 1959. But, to the contrary, he says the risks do not haunt him. "If I felt that way, I would never have got my boy involved. You ask yourself: Is it in the blood? I don't know. I don't think anyone does. Let's not kid ourselves: at seven or eight, Al Jr. didn't know what he wanted -- it was me. But at 16 or 17, he started to realize partially what it was all about. It's about being the best there is." Still as boyish as his freckles, young Unser recalls, "When I was five and six, I always sat in my dad's lap and steered the family car. Uncle Louie (nine-time champion of the Pikes Peak Hill Climb) sometimes would clamp his hands over my eyes to scare me."

In this family, helling on highways constituted such a free-form joy that Al Jr. reached the surprising age of eight before discovering it was a business. "We had a wrecker yard and towing service, and Dad was just an auto-repair guy to me. The first time I realized he didn't have an eight-hour job was in 1970, the day of the Indianapolis 500. We went to the closed-circuit showing in Albuquerque, and I got to sit in the front row. I couldn't get over how big the cars looked on the screen. How big and beautiful. Dad won." That was Unser's first championship of three. Another brother, Bobby, would win three too and quit abruptly at 48.

Several multiple winners, other men of advanced years, remain in this year's field. Johnny Rutherford, 47, also seeks a fourth championship. Only A.J. Foyt, an Indy racer since 1958, has won that many. Foyt is 50 now, the age of senior golfers. While old duffers try to make a putt to save their lives, Foyt continues to be the principal star of the Indianapolis 500. Johnny Bench retired from baseball at 35 when his mind started wandering at the plate. If Foyt's attention ever slips in the middle of a game, he will never settle into any sedentary life appropriate to his paunch. "In a race car," says Al Unser Jr., "experience overcomes youth, overcomes strength, overcomes agility, overcomes just about everything there is. That's why the Old Guard endures here."

Johncock's experience must have told him to go at 48. "What he had to tame inside him," Andretti figures, "must have been unbelievable. He was a truly fierce competitor." In 1982 Johncock beat Rick Mears to the finish line by 1 6/100ths of a second, one of the sunniest moments at the dreary old track. But in 1973 he had been awarded the race after several rainy days and 332 1/2 hideous miles. Art Pollard was killed in practice. Swede Savage was mortally injured during the race. A young pitworker named Armondo Teran was run over by a fire truck rushing to Savage. He died too.

Home on his Arizona ranch, tending cattle and repairing fences, Johncock sounds a little let down, left out and relieved. "I guess I've seen the best and the worst of Indy," he says, "and I have to say I've loved the competition, though I needed to get away. If your heart isn't in this, you might get yourself in trouble, or somebody else." After 20 years of loving something, the heart is not always wise. "I'm not going to say that two or three months from now I won't go back to racing," he says wistfully. "But I hope I don't." He says that cleverly.