12 replies to this topic

[anjakub]

This is a very interesting website dedicated to the Billy Vukovich crash at Indy in 1955:
http://home.pacbell.net/rdean/

[MPea3]

fascinating stuff.

the part about ed elisian stopping on his own and trying to help vukovich made me think of the movie "Champions Forever", which speedvission showed last sunday afternoon after the F1 race. close to the end of that film is the footage of david purely trying to right roger williamson's car, and at one point looking as if he's having to fight off a marshall who is trying to get him away from the blaze. real heros, these guys.

[fines]

Thanks Andrzej.

[stevew]

Back in the mid '80s, ESPN aired a series of half-hour shows called "Indy 500 classics". One of the years they showed was 1955 which included the Vuky crash.

He just got punted over the wall and went into a series of "end-overs" crashing hard upside down on one of them.

I noticed that one of the photos in the link above showed the "roll bar".

If you look at pictures of the cars from that era, there were no roll bars unless they were there to protect the seat-back padding just below the driver's neck. Also, that outside "wall" was really nothing more than a launching ramp for those tall, skinny wheels.

The mid-50s were certainly not a "golden age" in racing saftey...

[MPea3]

Originally posted by stevew
Also, that outside "wall" was really nothing more than a launching ramp for those tall, skinny wheels.

yeah, it looks like a 2x10. one wonders what the point of such a wall was.

looking at the picture of the rex mays crash shows that the wooden structure on the inside of the track seemed to have contributed to his death. such walls seemed common though in those days of county fairgrounds and the like where tracks were used for both car and horse racing.

you're certainly right about the lack of safety, although it was hardly confined to the 50's. i'm reminded of the pic from the early days of monza, where ditches lined the track, almost like a moat surrounds a castle. the picture of the wrecked car laying in it certainly served as a testimony as to it's inefficiency. perhaps it was meant to protect the spectators.

even into the 70's it seemed hardly better. i was this morning looking at modern pics taken driving around the old spa. the downhill run into burnenville and the exit of masta seem like too risky a playground for any reasonable person. as much as i complain about today's "vanilla" tracks, i'm glad the continual loss of life we used to accept is no longer part of the game

http://puskarutaja.figc.net/spa.htm

[fines]

Originally posted by MPea3
looking at the picture of the rex mays crash shows that the wooden structure on the inside of the track seemed to have contributed to his death.

When I first saw footage of Louis Meyer's crash in '39, I thought this was a pretty harmless spin - UNTIL he hit the wooden fence on the inside! But then again, there weren't any force-absorbing crash structures in those days. And yes, spectator safety was another important feature of walls and fences.

[pedro]

This is a rather disturbing website, and I find myself having a wide range of conflicting feelings about it.

I think that most of us in TNF would admit to being slightly obsessive at times, and we're all grateful to those even more obsessive than ourselves, who publish highly detailed and informative websites.

But for someone to publish such a massive site (70 odd pictures, lots of text) about one single incident in one single motor race, seems to go beyond mere obsession and into the realms of fanaticism. And when that single incident is a fatal crash, we could be into the realms of almost dangerously psychotic fanatical obsession.

Or maybe I'm over-reacting. I admit I found the site interesting and informative - I wish there were more sites like this, so that when I do a search for some obscure information, I could find not just the bare facts, but a fully researched and detailed account. But with this site, I have the uneasy feeling, "why is he doing this?"

The author appears to be an expert in digital photo manipulation, and has, with true obsessive zeal, gone to enormous lengths to produce the clearest possible photos from old and tattered negatives and movie strips. Great! But has his pride in his digital skills blinded him to the nature of what is on the photos? Do we really need to know that badly whether a black mark on an old photo is just a black mark, or a charred human hand?

I think this site is a 'must see' for all TNFers, partly to find out more about the great Bill Vukovich, but also to help get our own obsessions into some sort of perspective.

[MPea3]

pedro, of course it's kind of strange, our fascination sometimes with such sites. i can't explain my own feelings, as while not finding gore fun or exciting in any way, somehow i lok at these things from a historical perspective, understanding that right or wrong, the death is part of the history of the sport. i do the same with my other passion, mountaineering, and was all over the internet after GM Mallory's body was discovered on Everest, and have poured over the book "K2, the 1939 Tragedy", which deals with the ill fated US attempt on K2 in which dudley wolfe and 3 sherpas perished.

as far as the bit concerning the hand, part of the interest i took in that website was the way in which the news was presented then, and is presented now. i can't imagine a news source doctoring a photo now in such a way, yet at that time i have no doubt it would have been considered the responsible thing to do. same with the autopsy and many of the news reports.

i think the site is a worthwhile read for anyone interested, be it obsessive or not.

ok, now back to my 3 year project setting up dominoes.

[ry6]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by MPea3
[B]fascinating stuff.

the part about ed elisian stopping on his own and trying to help vukovich
_________________________________________________________________

In the August 2001 editor of MotorSport Nigel Roebuck writes about Bob Sweikerk, a dirt track racer from USA, in his Legends column.

There is mention of Ed Elisian in the story and if the story is to be believed Mr Elisian was not a nice guy.

Any comments?

[fines]

Elisian was a bit of a loner, I think. He was not well liked amongst his peers, but I'm not in a position to tell if he was a nice guy or not. Nor do I think NR is...

[Jim Thurman]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by ry6
[QUOTE]Originally posted by MPea3
[B]fascinating stuff.

the part about ed elisian stopping on his own and trying to help vukovich
_________________________________________________________________

In the August 2001 editor of MotorSport Nigel Roebuck writes about Bob Sweikerk, a dirt track racer from USA, in his Legends column.

There is mention of Ed Elisian in the story and if the story is to be believed Mr Elisian was not a nice guy.

Any comments? [/QUOTE]

Elisian was a controversial figure in Champ Car racing, but it seemed somewhat fueled by the media at the time. He was blamed for Sweikert's fatal accident, and it's no secret that the two were rivals and not on good terms going back as far as their teenage hotrodding days in the East Bay area of San Francisco (in an article in Open Wheel, Sweikert's widow said Bob called Elisian "Drool"). Elisian was from a bad family background, rather poor, a big, hulking guy while Sweikert was handsome, well liked and his high school's validictorian. Sort of polar opposites.

Then Elisian was blamed for triggering the pile-up on the opening lap of the 1958 Indy 500 that led to Pat O'Connor's death. USAC even suspended him based on past transgressions and the outcry. Elisian also made headlines for being arrested on bad check charges and for taking a swing at a police officer. Every item I ran across while doing research always opened with something along the lines of "Ed Elisian, who triggered the accident on the opening lap of this year's Indy 500 that killed Pat O'Connor, was arrested..."

Don Radbruch, racing historian/writer and sometime poster to this group, raced alongside Elisian in short track dirt oval races in the San Francisco Bay Area (in Track Roadsters). He commented once that he never was concerned racing wheel to wheel with Elisian, that he was never worried about Elisian doing anything foolish or stupid. He also added that Elisian was not exactly the kind of guy he would have wanted to hang out with away from the track.

Most of Elisian's troubles seemed to be off the track, but the Sweikert and '58 Indy 500 incidents were tagged on him, possibly quite unfairly (particularly the latter). I saw an interview with Dick Rathmann (also on the front row of the '58 Indy 500). Rathmann's take on the accident and whose fault it was?..."Hell, we were all stupid."


Jim Thurman

[Buford]

I don't see how Elisian could have been responsible for Sweikert's death. There is a Dick Wallen film of it and Sweikert was all by himself and twitched and went up over the wall into the trees. As a sidenote, the wheel from Sweikert's car fell out of the tree 30 years or so after the crash. OTOH he most certainly was responsible for the 1958 Indy crash. He spun in front of the whole field while diving low to take the lead in turn 3. You spin your car and it causes a wreck, you are responsible.

As for wooden guardrails, I raced in Sprint Cars in 1979 and 1980 on tracks that had wooden inside rails. I remember one race when there were 11 flips in the feature. I missed everything and finished 6th mostly through attrition. I recall coming into turn one on one lap and the entire track was strewn with two upside down cars and pieces of the wooden rail all over. I missed it all!

[fines]

IIRC, there were stories that Elisian was in big debts, and had placed a quite handsome amount of money on him leading the first lap of the '58 500, thus his rather desperate move. I don't know whether there was any truth to it, though.