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After taking a hiatus during World War II, auto racing resumed. Many of the drivers from the pre-World War II era had retired and their replacements were inexperienced. Additionally, most of the autos raced were between five and eight years old. During this period, it was not unusual for a car to be rebuilt after a crash, even a fatal one. This resulted in increased carnage on the racetracks.
Since the early days of automobiles, the AAA Contest Board was responsible for many different types of racing ranging from the Championship series which included the Indianapolis 500 and 100-mile races run on mile dirt tracks. It also was responsible for sprint car racing run on half-mile dirt tracks and midget races run on quarter-mile dirt tracks. AAA, whose primary focus was on automobile safety, was criticized whenever there was a racing accident, even those not sanctioned by the Contest Board.
By any measure, 1955 was a terrible year for auto racing. The deaths in the Championship series started on March 20 when Larry Crockett, the 1954 Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year, was killed at the Langhorne Speedway after hitting a rut in the dirt track. On May 1 at the Larry Crockett Memorial race, Iron Mike Nazaruk hit a rut on the Langhorne racetrack and his car became airborne. The collision with a tree was so violent that his helmet was ripped from his head and his racing suit was shredded. Ironically, Nazaruk had won the March 20th race at Langhorne.
It was cold and very windy on the first day of qualifying for the Indianapolis 500 on May 14. With winds ranging from 31 miles per hour to 36 miles per hour, most drivers felt it was too windy for a qualifying attempt. If there weren’t any qualifying attempts, the Speedway faced giving refunds to the 60,000 spectators sitting in the stands. Late in the afternoon, Joe Cloutier, the Speedway treasurer, approached Billy Vukovich, the defending Indianapolis 500 champion, to make a qualifying attempt. Vukovich declined. Instead, twenty-six-year-old Indianapolis native Jerry Holt and Tony Bettenhausen both braved the winds and qualified for the race.
On Monday, May 16, Manuel Ayola, took his car out for a practice run two minutes before the track closed. Ayola, who served as both the chief mechanic as well as the driver, had worked the previous night and all day to solve a lubrication problem with the Offenhauser engine. He completed two laps at 139 mph. On the third lap, witnesses reported he never turned going into the corner. He smacked the retaining wall head on and died the next day from his injuries. It is believed that the steering system had failed.
On May 26, Alberto Ascari borrowed Eugenio Castellotti’s Ferrari to work some “kinks out of his back” caused by a crash four days earlier. On the third lap at the Milan Autodrome, the car failed to negotiate the Vialone, a left-hand turn. Ascari was ejected from the car as it flipped end-over-end and he died of his injuries. Four days later, Billy Vukovich was killed in a multi-car crash while trying to win his third consecutive Indianapolis 500. He had been leading the race by nearly a lap when he clipped Johnny Boyd’s car while trying to avoid the unfolding crash. His car became airborne going as high as twenty-five feet in the air before smashing back to the earth. It bounced about 15 feet and landed on three parked cars before scraping a utility pole and landing upside down where it burst into flames. Vukovich was killed instantly of a basil skull fracture.
Two weeks later at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, France, Mike Hawthorne who had just passed Lance Macklin when he noticed his pit crew signaling him to come in for refueling. He slammed on the brakes trying to enter pit row. Following closely behind, Macklin took evasive action. Peter Levegh, also in close pursuit, wasn’t able to avoid the rapidly slowing Macklin. Levegh lost control of his car which slammed into an earthen embankment. The impact caused his car to explode and the front half of his car slammed into a group of spectators gathered near the start/finish line. Levegh and eighty-four spectators were killed.
Between January 1 and June 30, 1955, auto racing accidents resulted in the death of 91 individuals and the injury to 106 resulting in an outcry against the sport. The carnage wasn’t over. Jerry Hoyt, who took the pole for the Indianapolis 500, was racing at a dirt track in Oklahoma when his car hit a rut. The car hit the wall, flipped in the air, landed upside down and then bounced in the air landing right side up. He died the next day of a severe brain injury.
On July 13, 1955, Senator Richard L. Neuberger from Oregon called for the U.S. Senate to outlaw auto racing. Although Senator Neuberger’s bill did not materialize, the sentiment against auto racing caused the AAA to act. On August 3, 1955, AAA announced that at the end of the racing season, they would “disassociate” from the sport.
The next day, Indianapolis Motor Speedway officials, who had been blindsided by AAA’s withdrawal, announced that the 1956 Indianapolis 500 would be run. Tony Hulman, who had purchased the track in 1945, knew that there needed to be a sanctioning body. Both NASCAR and the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) were interested in fulfilling that role. At the time, the SCCA was the only sanctioning body in the United States that would qualify for inclusion in the Federation Internationale Automobile, the sanctioning body for international racing including the Indianapolis 500.
On August 5, Hulman, west coast car owner Bob Estes, Milwaukee promoter Tom Marchese and Speedway, Indiana, magistrate George Ober met at the Speedway offices, then located in downtown Indianapolis. Rather than affiliating with either NASCAR or the SCCA, Hulman expressed his desire that the National Championship series, including the Indianapolis 500, would continue and that he believed a farm system of midget and sprint cars would help to develop drivers for Championship racing.
Two hundred and sixty people attended the organizational meeting of the United States Auto Club (USAC) held on August 10. A small group consisting of Hulman, Estes, Marchese, Ober, mechanic Herb Porter, driver Dwayne Carter, and engineer and industrialist Colonel Herrington were selected as a steering committee for the new organization. On Friday, September 16, USAC was incorporated. Shortly thereafter, Herrington, who had been the chair of the AAA Contest Board, was named president of the newly formed organization. USAC took over the sanctioning responsibilities from the AAA.
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