Against Death and Time: One Fatal Season in Racing's Glory Years

by Brock Yates

  I rode with Coltrin to the track in his tiny Fiat, thinking twice if this was the vehicle I would choose to take over the Alps to Italy. We rattled and wheezed into a press parking compound and went to the paddock behind the pit area, a long, low building linking the front straight. Unlike at Indianapolis, the Le Mans pits were enclosed on three sides-open-faced boxes with a second story housing officials and guests in open galleries rented by the teams for hospitality during the long hours of the race. Entrance to the pits was through a guarded door at the back. Squeezing through the piles of tires, spare parts, and toolboxes was difficult. Following Coltrin, I edged my way into one of the Ferrari pits, where a swarm of mechanics in greasy coveralls worked on a shimmering red sports racing car to be driven by the star of the team, Eugenio Castellotti, and his co-driver, Giannino Marzotto, a wealthy textile manufacturer who had won the 1953 Mille-Miglia for Ferrari.

  Coltrin, who spoke Italian fluently, moved easily through the crowd and went up to a small, well-built young man lounging in a corner. He was darkly handsome with a proud, aquiline nose and a pair of goggles draped around his neck. They spoke quickly in Italian before the man smiled, gave Coltrin a gentle cuff on the cheek, and walked away.

  "That's Castellotti," said Coltrin, returning. "He's hot stuff with the babes in Italy. They call him "Il Bello," the beautiful one. Now that Ascari's gone, he's Italy's best. He told me that he got a quick time in practice. If anybody can run with Hawthorn in the Jaguar and Fangio in the Mercedes, it's Castellotti."

  "Where's Enzo Ferrari?" I asked.

  Coltrin laughed. "Are you crazy? The old man never comes to the races. Never, except sometimes to the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. He stays home in Modena and runs the whole show by telephone. They say he's only been out of Italy once or twice in his whole life. The general never visits the front line. And believe me, this is a war."

  I looked down the pit lane. The race cars were parked along the narrow straightaway, a strip of macadam that seemed only half as wide as that at Indianapolis. I could see the jaguars and Austin- Healys from England, all painted in British racing green. The Mercedes and Porsches were muted silver, while the French cars scattered among them were light blue. The Italian Ferraris and Maseratis were all bright, bloody red. The cars carried no sponsor decals or identifying logos other than large numbers painted in white roundels for easy identification by the scoring teams at night. The cars represented not only their manufacturers, but more importantly, their nations of origin. Car colors at Le Mans were based on nationality and not on the styling whims of individual owners like those at Indianapolis. No Zink Pinks here.

  A slight, sharp-featured young man came up. He seemed edgy and growled to Coltrin in tense, truncated sentences about the narrowness of the track, then jittered back into the crowd.

  "Who's that?" I asked.

  "Phil Hill. California guy. First shot at the big time. Nervous as a cat on Benzedrine. Like that all the time. But he calms down in the race car. Very bright. Maybe too bright for this business. Thinking too much is not good. Stab it and steer it. Anything more and you're asking for trouble." Coltrin was permitted into the Scuderia Ferrari pits, but the doors to the major teams' boxes remained closed. Thankfully he had access to the Scuderia's hospitality suite, above the Ferrari pits-where a wide view of the action was available. Better yet, a small bar in the corner offered wine and cheese during the race. Coltrin was a hard man to know, but without him I was doomed to a distant back seat for the upcoming drama.

  The Indianapolis 500 had started on a cloudy Indiana morning, but Le Mans, the phenomene de Mans as the French called it, was launched at four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, to then run twice around the clock for a Sunday afternoon finish. Coltrin and I arrived at the circuit early, hoping to beat the crowd, estimated to expand to more than three hundred thousand. We parked in the press lot behind the pits, and, displaying our leather armband press credentials, were allowed access to almost anywhere on the property. We had both decided to stay in the paddock area behind the Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, and Jaguar pit boxes rather than take seats in the giant press-tribune grandstands across the track, the same as I had done at Indianapolis.

  The place was awash in the aromas of crepes, frying bacon, hot pastries, and pungent cheeses-a sharp contrast to the heady odors of hot dogs and French fries that permeated the air at Indianapolis. Wine rather than beer was the drink of choice. In the distance, the tinkle of a merry-go-round calliope drifted over the chatter of the crowds while, towering above the track in the distance, a giant Ferris wheel rotated majestically, making me think of the State Fair at Syracuse.

  Beyond the pits, on both sides of the circuit, an immense camping area called the enceintes popularies had been laid out. The area was littered with tents of all sizes and shapes, offering the campers access to the track, which split the area in a series of ess-bands. Adjacent was the honky-tonk carnival compound, where everything from belly dancers to trained-dog-and-pony acts to boxing exhibitions went on for the duration of the race. A small, temporary Catholic chapel had been erected in the midst of the placehere Mass was said several times during the early Sunday hours. Offsetting the piety were tents housing teams of hookers who had migrated from their customary Parisian haunts to service the predominantly male crowd.

  I was overwhelmed. In less than two weeks I had moved from the essence of the American heartland to what seemed not just another continent, but another time altogether. Following Coltrin, I made my way past two credential checkpoints and into the inner sanctums of the paddock, now piled high with spare tires and extra parts for quick repairs during the race. Among the clutter were small trailers to be employed by the drivers for snippets of sleep during their off-duty hours. The cars would be manned by twodrivers each, each running four-hour shifts, or twelve full hours behind the wheel. During the twenty-four hours, 2,500 miles of driving would be unwound, both in the Sarthe sunshine and in the nighttime hours, when ground fog haunted the long Muslanne straight.

  My notebook and small Kodak in hand, I stepped out with Coltrin onto the main straightaway, where the cars were parked diagonally along the pit counters. At Indianapolis, the start was made at speed, with the cars following a pace car. At Le Mans, by contrast, the race began on foot. The drivers lined up across the track, then sprinted to their silent cars, leapt aboard to start their engines, and powered away in a mad dash toward the giant Dunlop pedestrian bridge that arched over the track.

  Drivers, crews, important guests, and legions of journalists lingered among the all-green Jaguars. Lined up with them was the Cunningham, D-type, painted in traditional American racing colorsstark white with two wide, blue stripes running down its spine. Nearby were the three red Ferraris and the trio of silver 300SLR Mercedes-Benzes, all contenders for victory.

  High above the grandstand a small Esso blimp floated into the light breeze, reminding me that while I was in a foreign land, the long arm of the Standard Oil was omnipresent. I spotted Fangio, the reigning world champion Mercedes team engineer, speaking intently with Uhlenhaut, no doubt over opening race strategies.

  There was little doubt that world champion Fangio would start the race, with his teammate, Moss, taking the second four-hour shift. Fangio would play the rabbit for Mercedes, goading the fastest Jaguar-surely to be driven by Mike Hawthorn-and Castellotti's Ferrari into a furious race for the lead, possibly causing them to break under the strain. The Ferrari and Jaguar teams were planning the same tactics for the opening laps, which assured us of a wild race between the three. The plan was simple: to send one of the three cars out at top speed, while the other two maintained slower, more reliable paces. If the "rabbit" held up, all the better. But if it failed under its lashing, a pair of backup machines was ready to move into contention.

  The team of Fangio and Moss had to be considered the favorite. But the Jaguar of Hawthorn, with his co-driver Ivor Bueb, and the lead Ferrari of Castellotti and Marzotto, were no doubt quick enough to keep pace. In the sec
ond tier were cars like the Mercedes of Fitch and Levegh, who would run steadily and be ready to take up the fight should the lead car fail. So too for the second Jaguar team, to be driven by A. P. R. "Tony" Rolt and Duncan Hamilton, a hard-drinking man known among the British motor sports press as "Drunken Duncan." These two well-born amateurs had won the race for Jaguar in 1953, while Rolt had run second with another driver, Peter Whitehead, the following year. As we sidled down the track, scanning the contending cars, Rolt was chatting with a collection of English journalists. Suddenly he dropped one of his leather driving gloves. He quickly stooped down to pick it up.

  "Oh shit growled Coltrin. "That's all we need."

  I thought of Agabashian and Vukovich's dropped helmet. "Bad luck?" I asked.

  "Yeah, bad. Drivers are spooked about gloves and helmets. Ascari didn't wear his own helmet at Monza, and look what happened."

  "You know that Vukovich dropped his before the race? I saw it happen."

  "I didn't know," said Coltrin, his face tightening with concern. "That only adds to it."

  "What do you think about all that superstition?"

  "Hell, who's to know? I guess when you operate on the edge, you don't mess with the fates," he said grimly.

  Whistles began a shrill chorus as a battery of gendarmes began clearing the track. I looked at my watch. Half an hour until the start. Waggling their batons and tooting their whistles, the police herded the crowds off the track, leaving only the crews and the drivers to make final preparations for the start.

  Coltrin led me through a maze of corridors and up a rickety set of stairs to the Ferrari hospitality box above the Scuderia's pits. The space was jammed with Italian journalists and elite Ferrari customers, all stacked around a tiny bar where a white-jacketed bartender frantically served drinks. A corner table was piled with breads, cheese, and sausages. I thought of the grubby little cafeteria in Gasoline Alley and understood why the Europeans tended to view our form of motor sports as marginally barbaric. A band appeared on the track and began playing a series of national anthems, beginning with "La Marsellaise" and ending with the "The Star Spangled Banner." By then, the drivers, all fifty-two of them, had lined up across the track from their cars, helmets strapped in place. Some stretched and limbered up, as if readying for a hundred-yard dash. The sprint to the cars was little more than fifty feet long, but a quick run meant a chance to leave the pits before the mob scene of iron, aluminum, steel, and rubber clogged the narrow stretch of macadam. Behind the drivers, the crowd, hundreds deep, jammed shoulder to shoulder beyond the low earthen fence that formed the outer barrier of the track. They craned their heads for a better look, forming a sea of faces within spitting distance of the cars and drivers.

  An enormous Rolex clock cantilevered over the pits served as the official timepiece for the race. All eyes turned to its stark white face as the minute hand clicked toward the start. The drivers tensed, all hunched forward. They were a strange collection, all sizes and shapes. Rolt tall and gangly, Castellotti lean and muscular. Fangio, who was forty-four years old and the most senior driver in the field next to Levegh, looked stubby and bandy-legged in contrast to the blond, barrel-chested Hawthorn, who was dressed in his trademark Eisenhower field jacket, white shirt, and bow tie that served as his fashion nod to the days of yore, when true gentlemen went motor racing.

  The minute hand clicked into position. Four o'clock. A wild cheer surged through the crowd. The public address system announcer screamed in French as the drivers sprinted across the track and plunged into their cockpits. The younger, more athletic ones vaulted over the closed doors, while the older men, like Fangio, oozed into their seats deliberately, understanding that the saving of a few seconds at the start meant nothing in the course of twenty-four hours. As a stout man at the start-finish line furiously waved a blanket-sized French tri-color, the first engines exploded into life and a gaggle of cars squirted away, leaving ugly scars of rubber on the pavement.

  "Look at Rolt," Coltrin shouted. "He's having trouble." I thought of the glove. Were they real, these superstitions? After the field cleared, the Jaguar engine finally caught and Rolt was off, a few miles behind.

  Over the din of the cheering crowd, the chatter of an Italian radio broadcast that had been piped into the box escalated to the edge of apoplexy. "The broadcast says Castellotti has the lead. This place will go crazy when he comes by," said Coltrin.

  Heads craned down the track toward a small kink, at a corner called Maison Blanc a kilometer away. A blink of red. The scream of a high-revving engine. Mad cheers around me. Wine and champagne were poured as the clot of Ferraristas went wild. Castellotti powered past the pits to lead the first lap. It meant nothing in the long term, but for an Italian driver in an Italian car to lead the opening round meant a celebration in the little box that lasted for three more laps. Then the relentless pursuers-in the form of Hawthorn's green Jaguar and Fangio's silver Mercedes-hunted down the Italian and passed him.

  With the field strung out around the massive circuit, the smaller machined buzzing fecklessly among the more powerful cars, the race quickly centered on a vicious battle between Fangio and Hawthorn, with Castellotti driving with his typically feverish style to keep up. Two hours into the race, the lead between the Argentinian and the Englishman had been swapped countless times, reminding me of the mad duel between McGrath and Vukovich only two weeks earlier. I fervently hoped that this one would end with less violence.

  I was wrong.

  Peering down pit row from the Ferrari box, I could see a Jaguar mechanic holding up a large board with a chalked message that read, "fuel-in." The Ferrari crowd was more subdued and the screaming of the radio broadcaster had descended into dispassionate muttering. Castellotti had spun entering the Mulsanne corner, and had fallen back to a distant third. "Hawthorn is getting ready to stop," said Coltrin. "One more lap. About time, considering the way he's running."

  The Englishman was averaging over 122 miles an hour, a record pace, and had squeezed out an eight-second advantage over Fangio. Thirty-five laps-280 miles-around the circuit had been completed by the leaders, and fuel stops were in order.

  A buzz of excitement ran through the crowd as they pressed closer to the earthen barrier across from the pits for a better look as the leader's crew set to changing tires and adding fuel in a matter of a few critical minutes. The public address announcer blared in French that Hawthorn might stop on the next lap.

  Ivor Bueb, Hawthorn's co-driver, who was running his first race for the Jaguar team, stood on the pit counter, helmet on, hands gloved, in case his partner wanted relief. This seemed unlikely. It would be a rapid stop, then back to the war. It was expected that Fangio would also come in shortly.

  I looked at my watch. It was 6:26 in the afternoon. Two and half hours had gone by, and had been almost entirely consumed in a desperate battle between Fangio and Hawthorn.

  A hint of dark green arrowed toward us from Maison Blanc. Hawthorn on the inside of the narrow track. He was presumably slowing for his pit stop. A wink of silver to his left was coming at 150 mph. Was it Fangio? No. The number 20 sister car-Levegh. Suddenly another speck of green. A smaller car that had been hidden behind Hawthorn's onrushing Jaguar popped into view. Lance Macklin's Austin-Healy. It veered into the path of Levegh's Mercedes, which didn't seem to alter course.

  In one mad moment, the silver car vaulted up the back of the little green roadster. Its nose pointed high in the air, the Mercedes slammed down atop the outside barrier, and then, in a crazed, blurred second, a pair of shattering explosions, and the Mercedes disintegrated, flinging two enormous hunks of metal into the massed crowd. Macklin's Austin-Healey gyrated crazily down the narrow straight before shuddering to a stop. Then Fangio came through the smoke, angling toward the pits and maneuvering through the madness. He barely missed Hawthorn as the Jaguar rolled to a stop.

  Pandemonium. Sirens screeching. Men waving yellow flags. Screams of agony from the crowded gallery. Macklin scrambled out of his
wrecked car and staggered into the pits. Gendarmes and track officials rushed to the wrecked Mercedes, burning fiercely atop the barrier. Levegh lay face down on the track beside the smoking hulk. Black clouds poured into the darkening sky. Then the place fell strangely silent, save for the distant, confused rumble of cars on the back part of the course, the incessant cacophony of the carnival, and the shriek of ambulance sirens.

  "Holy shit," said Coltrin. "Levegh's Mercedes launched like a fucking rocket off the back of Macklin's Healey. Never seen anything like it."

  "The crowd. They must have gotten hit by all the flying debris," I said.

  The Italians were gaping and drinking hard. The radio was chattering in the background. Coltrin listened. "They're saying Fitch was driving. That can't be right. It was Levegh who started the car. It had to be him. Either way, they say the driver was killed."

  We watched in silence as a near-riot broke out across the track. It was a fair distance away, and difficult to see through the pall of smoke, but it was apparent that thousands were trying to flee the scene-now a gaping hole filled with what appeared to be bodies and smoking bits of car.

  "Let's get out of here. To the paddock. They'll know more down there." Said Coltrin. He claimed that crewmen, drivers, and team managers would know more than what we could witness from our distant vantage point.

  The area behind the pits was swarming with journalists, crewmen, and officials. I was reminded of Gasoline Alley following the Vukovich disaster. Then Fitch elbowed through the crowd, looking frantic. He had lost his suave composure. A pair of driving goggles wobbled around his neck as he rushed up. He said to Coltrin, "I must get to a phone. The Italians are saying on the radio that it was me in the car. I've got to call Elizabeth in Lugano and tell her I'm allright."

  "Try the press tribune. There's a bank of phones there. That's the best place," said Coltrin.