At Indianapolis

Dirty, bumpy bricks at Indianapolis Speedway will once a year bring fame and fortune to an automobilist, if he will travel over them a sufficient number of times at a speed in the neighborhood of 100 miles per hour. This year the winner of the 500-mile "classic" on the two and a half mile track is a youngster comparatively unknown, a dirt track specialist--George Souders, 27, who spends his more serious moments studying mechanical engineering at Purdue University in Lafayette, Ind. In a Duesenberg special, he covered the 500 miles of bricks at an average speed of 97.54 miles per hour. He made only two brief stops. He was rewarded with the $20,000 first prize, with an additional $5,100 lap-money.

The veterans and the betting favorites--Harry Hartz, Leon Duray, Benny Hill, Peter De Paolo--either tortured their engines or wrecked their cars completing the first 100 miles.

Some 145,000 spectators believed that they had received their money's worth when the automobile of Racer Norman Batten of Brooklyn burst into flames. Batten stood up, like the boy on the burning deck. He steered with his right arm until it was scorched, then with his left, then with his right again--until he brought the car to a stop in front of his pit where the flames were extinguished. If he had leaped to safety when the car first took fire, it might have crashed into the grandstands and killed dozens of spectators.