Those daring young men in their racing machines

With all its glory and death and colour, auto racing roared into my heart from a near past – in black and white. It was tales of derring-do on the printed page. It was grainy photographs of dashing young men, hauling themselves in and out of their souped-up machines.

Their smiles stretched across their faces, long like the Mason-Dixon Line, and their hair was all grease and cowlicks. Little leather helmets hung loosely from their heads like extra skin, nothing at all like the neck-racking, shiny, space-age models of today.

There were a few rules but really not much when it came to specifications for their cars. You moved the gas tank, perhaps, and then welded in a roll bar, slopped a few numbers and the name of a local tire shop on the side, and went racing. In the really early days, you didn’t change anything at all. Drivers often raced what got them to the track.

Safety was for kids on carnival rides. This was a game for daredevils.

Those of us smitten by it in the 1960s and 1970s could already see the sport changing. The era of sponsorships and poster boys would come, and you could literally read its approach on the bodies of the cars. An STP logo here, Tide and Maxwell House and Skoal over there.

More colour photos. More TV coverage. More money.

Today’s drivers bring marketability and image to the track. But the characters from racing’s past came loaded down with nicknames and unpaid bills and barely healed injuries.

Take stock car driver Tiny Lund, who was not tiny at all. Tiny's first NASCAR race was in 1955 at an Arkansas track. He started 23rd in his 1955 Chevrolet, sponsored by Ruppert Safety Belt Company. Remember that name.

Tiny’s car flipped over and over again on lap 65. He suffered a broken arm and multiple bruises, but he was credited with finishing 25th.

Why so many injuries? His seat belt broke.

Tiny earned himself a berth in the Daytona 500 by pulling a friend from a burning sports car at the speedway. Marvin Paunch would not be able to compete in the upcoming event, but he convinced the car’s owners to give his ride to the man who saved his life.

And so, in February 1963, Tiny won the 500. Another super speedway, Talladega, the longest and then the fastest of them all, would claim his life in 1975.

Over in open wheel racing – that is, loosely speaking, the kind for cars without fenders – there was Bill Vukovich. He collected nicknames like some people collect baseball cards. He was the Fresno Flash, Vuke, Vuky, the Silent Serb and the Mad Russian. The latter he hated, and what man from Serbia wouldn’t?

Vuky led hundreds of laps at multiple runnings of the Indy 500, winning it several times but also dying there, in a fiery crash in 1955. He was leading the race at the time.

Fireball Roberts, back in stock cars, got his nickname for his pitching arm. What he feared most about racing, however, was burning in a crash.

These days, race cars rarely burst into flames, thanks to a myriad of safety improvements. Not so in the old days, and Fireball died in hospital six weeks after a flaming crash at Charlotte Motor Speedway in 1964.

Of course, it is not all tragedy. In my brain, land speed records are lumped into the same pleasure centre as auto racing. Craig Breedlove, a speed legend, still lives and breathes today.

Breedlove is one of those ageless, impossibly handsome men. He has the physique of a superhero, his jaw is perfectly squared, and his eyes dance with sheer exuberance and joy.

In 1964, on the famous Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, Breedlove was reclaiming his land speed record in the Spirit of America when something went terribly amiss. His jet-powered machine would not stop properly, and it came to rest, finally, in a pond, its tail in the air and its nose submerged.

As he was pulled from the wreck, a barely injured Breedlove laughed and said, “For my next trick, I will set myself afire.”

Another great quipster was Dale Earnhardt, Sr. After wrecking Terry Labonte from behind to win in Bristol in 1999, he said: “I didn’t mean to wreck him. I just meant to rattle his cage a little bit.”

Jeremy Mayfield bumped Earnhardt out of way on the last lap to win in Pocono in 2000. Earnhardt drove up beside Mayfield and made a gesture involving a single digit.

What was the finger about? Earnhardt was later asked. “I was just telling him: you’re number one,” he replied.

It was a great quote from an old-school driver. And those old-school habits may have contributed to Earnhardt’s death. The Intimidator, as he was known, was quite obviously blocking all comers when he crashed into the Turn 4 wall at the 2001 edition of the Daytona 500.

The block helped two cars he owned, running ahead of him, finish first and second. But the block also killed Earnhardt.

An era also died that day, or so goes the cliché. All I know is that I can picture Earnhardt in those grainy black-and-whites of dashing young men. The new kids with their innocuous, sponsor-friendly sound bites? Not so much.

George Lee lives, writes and edits in Edmonton – and also frequents a few area tracks. Reach him at piecesofgeorge@featureswest.com.