Free Against Death and Time: One Fatal Season in Racing's Glory Years by Brock Yates

the field, leaning against the battered blue number
81 Central Excavating Special, was another rebel. Rodger Ward was
the ex-pilot known for his incendiary temper, his profiligate gambling, and his bad manners on the racetrack. Only five days earlier,
during the latter stages of a similar 100-mile championship race at
DuQuoin, Illinois, Ward had barreled off the fourth corner and lost
control of the Central Excavating Special. It plowed into the pits and
instantly killed Clay Smith, the much-liked and widely respected
chief mechanic for the Agajanian team. Before the car tumbled to a
stop, it had injured eight more bystanders-including two children.
    But that was five days ago. Ancient history. The car had its dents
pounded out and the blood wiped away, and the old warrior was
ready for another battle. Like most of the cars at Syracuse, number 81
had been around for years. Built in 1951 by Ohio craftsman Floyd
Trevis for Cleveland contractor Pete Salemi, the car had been Bill
Vukovich's first ride in Indianapolis and had carried a number of
drivers, both fast and slow, over its four-year career. Unlike modern
racing cars, which are replaced after a few races, cars like the Central
Excavating Special labored on for years-sometimes decades-until their innards fell apart and they were scrapped. Many would carry
more than one driver to his death or shatter his bones, yet would
return to the tracks.

    For some, it was too much. Following the DuQuoin death of Clay
Smith, his driver and friend, thirty-five-year-old Chuck Stevenson,
quit racing on the spot. His car and Ward's had touched wheels,
which is what caused the fatal spin into the pits. Shattered by the
experience, the 1952 national AAA champion and two-time winner
of the stock car class in the Mexican road race would not climb into
a race car for another six years.
    Syracuse, too, had taken its toll. In 1911 Lee Oldfield (no relation to the legendary Barney) lost control of his car and plunged
into the crowd, killing eleven spectators. Nine years later, the track
claimed the life of Indianapolis champion and French Grand Prix
winner Jimmy Murphy. Scores of others would be badly injured, in
part because the track funneled from a wide front straightaway
into a back chute barely more than two cars wide. Yet, skating on
the hard cinder surface-which became like polished black granite
after 100 miles of scuffing by the racing tires-average speeds were
climbing to 100 mph.
    At the head of the pack was the cream-and-white Bob Estes Special,
the entry of Inglewood, California, Lincoln-Mercury dealer Bob Estes.
Its driver was a hard-eyed Angeleno named Don Freeland who had savaged the car around the evil old track to win the pole position. Next to
him on the front row was the burly ex-sailor Andy Linden, who packed
a reputation as a first-class bar fighter and something of a loner. Behind
Freeland in the second row, driving the Lute's Truck Parts car, was
handsome, cocky Bob Sweikert. Considered a major talent, the brash
twenty-seven-year-old had often trenchantly remarked, "I'll never live
to retire." Back in eighth, in the cream-and-red Hinkle, was McGrath,
while near the back was Bryan, chewing a cigar and waving a hand still
raw from his Indianapolis trial at a young woman in the stands.

    It would have been hard to believe that among these eighteen
young men, eleven faced early, grisly deaths in race cars. One other,
Linden, would suffer debilitating injuries. Imagine a sport like football or hockey, both considered to be violent tests of courage, in
which half of its participants would die while playing. The risks faced
by those men on that sunny day in Syracuse seem, in retrospect,
intolerable in a civilized society. They even equaled-or exceededthe toll taken in the man-on-man gladiatorial contests popularized
during the Roman Empire.
    The crowd crushed into the rickety grandstands were like the
drivers-blue-collar mechanics,