Kansas City, Mo. (May 30, 1952) – Ralph Dyer, Shreveport, La., won the 100-mile stock car race in 1 hour, 55 minutes, and 47.94 seconds.
Don White, Camp McCoy, Wis., edged out Bill Holland of St. Louis for second place. Bob Dugan, Tampa, Fla., was fourth, and Jimmy Clark, Fort Worth, Tex., was fifth.
Some Memorial Day weekend drivers had some harrowing experiences to report but the experiences will dim beside those of 22 drivers some 7,000 race fans watched speed around the half-mile dirt at Riverside Stadium on Friday night.
Those drivers got a sped-up version of Sunday driving at its worst in the100-mile stock car Friday afternoon at Topeka, fought heavy traffic getting there to here, and drove another 100-miler that night.
All of them, except Bill Holland, winner of the 1949 Indianapolis 500. Holland drove his regular racing car to victory Friday afternoon in the sprint car races at Belleville, Ill., then chartered a small plane from there to Municipal Airport here and drove a car to Riverside.
Corporal Don White, a 24-year-old native of Keokuk, Iowa, now in the Army at Camp McCoy for instance, got his 1950 Oldsmobile smashed up Friday afternoon on the 180th lap of the 200-lap race at Topeka. When he got out of the car, it had a smashed right fender, a drive shaft torn loose, and a universal joint broken.
“I got the fender pulled out, and the drive shaft and universal joint replaced over in Topeka,” explained White, who was there on a three-day pass. “That’s why I was a little late in getting here.”
Ralph Dyer, a member of the accident prevention bureau of the Shreveport police department, got stopped by the Kansas highway patrol for going too fast coming out of Topeka. He had just won the 100-miler there.
“They said I was going too fast with the trailer on the back with the gear in it,” Dyer said sheepishly. “I thought I was going at a moderate rate of speed, but I slowed down, anyway. I always work to promote public safety at all times on highways.”
Bill Harrison, a Topeka restaurant owner, placed third at Topeka in a 1949 Plymouth, then drove his wife and 12-year-old son over here to take part in the races on Friday night.
“I suppose he knows what he’s doing,” Mrs. Harrison said as she watched her husband. “This is one of the roughest stretches of driving he’s tried to do.”
Herschel Buchanan of Shreveport, La., the 1951 national stock car champion, smashed his 1952 Nash at Topeka and never finished the race.
Buchanan got his car in decent condition to drive it from Topeka to Riverside, got mechanics of the Erwin Davis Nash Motors to help him work on it, and was grinding away in the race at the end of 50 laps and still going.
Marvin Copple, the 23-year-old vice-president of Commonwealth Investments of Lincoln, Neb., was driving a 1952 Oldsmobile at Riverside. He had started for Topeka to participate in that race, but he broke a fuel pump about halfway between Lincoln and Topeka.
“I had a fuel pump brought out from Lincoln, got it repaired, and went on to Topeka but I didn’t get there until 4 o’clock,” Copple said.
As Holland said as he watched time trials, “It isn’t really racing when you do it like these guys have been doing today. It takes a lot out of you.”
They were rolling around in clouds of dust, though, to please the 7,000 customers and to get some kind of enjoyment for themselves. They were doing for fun things that most people consider the worst kind of driving hardship and mishaps.
No comments:
Post a Comment