One Test Day

Well aware last week were the 58 automobile racers who had cars entered in the annual 500-mile Memorial Day Classic at Indianapolis that there was small chance for all of them to live through it. The No. 1 event of U.S. auto-racing had killed 27 people since 1909, more than one a year, and the question was merely which ones would die this time. The question was at least partly answered last week. Most accidents on the rough brick track occur not in the race itself but in the qualifying tests held to cut down the original field to the 33 fastest entrants. In one day of qualifying tests last week, near the wrecks of two twisted, tiny cars, track officials picked up four mangled bodies.

First fatality was 26-year-old John Hannon, dirt-track driver at Norristown, Pa., who had never driven at Indianapolis before. Warned to drive carefully on his first trip around the 24-mile oval, he drove high into the third turn, nosed sharply down to the inside wall, then skidded across the track through the concrete retaining wall. Thrown clear of the car, Driver Hannon was dead when the ambulance reached him. His mechanic had a chance to live.

A veteran of five 500-mile Indianapolis races, Hartwell W. ("Stubby") Stubblefield of Los Angeles started out on his ten-lap qualifying test in the afternoon. On the seventh lap, going about 116 m.p.h., his car shot into the curve at the end of the straightaway. Instead of taking the curve, it slid up the track, jumped the outside wall between two grandstands, spun end over end, sliced off 75 ft. of wire fence, stopped 20 yd. from the track, upside down. Driver Stubblefield and his mechanic died soon after they were picked up.

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