Preface From the First Edition

Author’s note: In 1973 when this book was first published, my editor at Houghton Mifflin, Shannon Ravanel (who was also my fiction editor) made a list of questions that a non-racing person (herself) would have. Here, though it is outdated today, is the original preface that I wrote for readers like her.

ALMOST TWO YEARS AGO I told my publishers that I would like to write the diary of a race driver. I explained that my interest was not in the established champion but the potential champion, and that I would like the book to concern itself with the struggle. I wanted to spend at least one racing season traveling with and observing the inner workings of a team. After two years of collecting rain-soaked notebooks, interviews on matchbook covers and cocktail napkins, the book is done, and, oddly enough, it has followed the original proposal.

The proposal had stated: I will investigate the mechanical side of the racing effort, making sure the driver I choose has a competitive car — in other words, he will need good judgment in selecting a crew and need to be a good test driver with acute sensitivity to machinery, not just a driver who steps out of airplanes into cars. He will have to be articulate, intelligent, and talkative, a man who enjoys driving, and one with an uncompromising ambition to be World Champion. He will have to be a driver on his way up, one who has proven he is going to be something but one who isn’t on top already. I want to start with the car decisions that take place in the fall, work through car delivery, preparation, and testing; to the race, and finally, the aftermath.

In the spring of 1971, I tentatively chose my driver, John Morton, and his team, Brock Racing Enterprises of El Segundo, California. John Morton had won a National Championship and Pete Brock had a reputation for fielding meticulously prepared automobiles. I went to technical inspection to see the Datsun 2.5 Challenge car that Morton was to drive. I had never seen a more beautifully finished race car. The driver was with the car; I complimented him on it, especially the workmanship on the dashboard. He thanked me and told me he had made the dashboard.

I asked him if he was interested in being the hero of a racing odyssey and his ego got the best of him. He asked me why him and I told him that Peter Revson was so good-looking that I was afraid I would be intimidated.

While my prior knowledge of racing and drivers influenced my decision, I also employed a mechanical method in making my choice. I used a system of timing drivers through complicated sections of a track, places on a course where the observer can be fairly sure the driver is the superior component, not the automobile. I picked sections of tracks that are tests of skill, not equipment. To equalize equipment in auto racing is far more difficult than in any other sport, so difficult that the accomplishment of it borders on fantasy. Section timing is not a foolproof method, but the odds are very good; four of six drivers that I singled out this way won championships. I started collecting notes earlier than I had planned, covering the end of the 1971 season as well as 1972, because it looked as if Datsun could upset Alfa in the 1971 2.5 Challenge series.

For many people, John Morton seemed as unlikely a choice of hero as a Southern lady novelist did a racing writer. Most reporters recorded John as bespectacled, soft-spoken, and shy, and closed their notebooks. I soon found that this shyness was a deception. He uses it as a tool to avoid journalists. He also calls Southern lady novelists names behind their backs, like that Okie broad. But he has a frightening honesty, admitting that he answers questions he shouldn’t, continuing to respond before he thinks. He had no idea of the literary workings of a book and this I considered an advantage. My three novels account for fifty percent of his lifetime reading; ask him the last book he read before them and he’ll say Herman the Brave Pig.

Although in one of the early races he was accused by a crew member of showing off because a book was being written about him, the only obvious effect I made on his delusions of immortality showed up in a dream he related to me: ...to make a long dream short: I was trying to qualify for Indianapolis. I had looked promising in practice but qualifying was accomplished by running around the track instead of driving. For some reason I qualified last and they had already taken the track down. My next qualifying attempt had to be made running around a Ping-Pong table. I couldn’t get up enough speed so I didn’t make the race. This was after the author soundly trounced the racer at the game of Ping-Pong.

There have been books written that explain in detail the intricacies of automobile racing, categories, engine sizes, etc., and each year pamphlets come out to update the world’s fastest changing and most expensive sport. Although this book is more concerned with a close look at a single driver, an overall view of auto racing is needed for a reader unfamiliar with the basics.

The driver choice was far more difficult for this writer than the area of racing. There are four major track racing groups in the United States, distinguished primarily by the type of car raced:

NASCAR (Nass’-car), National Association for Stock Car Racing: stock cars — certain U.S. factory-produced cars or variations of these, primarily raced on oval tracks: Chevrolet, Ford, Plymouth, etc.

USAC (You’-sack), United States Automobile Club: stock (large American sedans raced on ovals, road courses, Pike’s Peak Hillclimb), midget, sprint and championship or Indianapolis-type cars (open-wheel, open-cockpit, front- or rear-engined, with wheel base and engine size determined by the rules for each type, run on paved or dirt ovals, using special fuels).

IMSA (Em’-sa), International Motor Sports Association: sports cars, now handling the endurance races at Daytona and Sebring.

SCCA (S-C-C-A), Sports Car Club of America: sports cars, amateur (club) and professional racing — Can-Am (sports racing), Trans-Am (sedan and production), and Continental 5000 (formula).

Only the latter two groups, thus only the sports-car racers recognize women as having full human status. John Morton’s sprint-car rulebook makes constant reference to pitmen and gives two passes to each entrant to make sure the girls are in the stands. NASCAR openly forbids women in the pits. Years ago I heard it was something about bobby pins falling in carburetors. Although I don’t wear bobby pins, I can report that I was bodily removed from the pits at Daytona by a stock-car crew on a weekend shared by NASCAR and SCCA events. A female SCCA driver, who was also removed, left screaming ...our SCCA guys aren’t a bunch of fairies! Since I had been interrupted from coating mag wheels for a friend’s car in preparation for tire mounting, I finished the wheels on the other side of the fence in the parking lot. When the good old boys had safely parked their cars and the SCCA cars were on the track, I was allowed to return. Later I asked stock-car ace Junior Johnson about the ruling and he replied, A little girl like you could get hurt in there. Actually I think they are going to a lot of trouble to keep their wives at home. Or maybe for USAC and NASCAR, pits are synonymous with locker rooms. SCCA and IMSA recognize women drivers, workers, scorers, crew members; wives, girlfriends, mothers. In fact they seem to like having us around.

The major area of my interest in the book is SCCA racing, the Sports Car Club of America’s events. In SCCA racing there is no distinction made between amateur and professional drivers, but there is a difference between amateur and professional events. The topflight amateur series is known as the National Championship. Every year the specifics vary, but primarily:

It awards trophies and points instead of money.

It includes four main types of car that fall roughly into two groups: production and sedan (factory-built cars originally designed for street use), and sports-racing and formula (cars built solely for racing using some street-car components). These four types of cars are further divided into 21 different classes (an average National race can draw over 200 cars), designated C Production, A Sedan, B Sports Racing, Formula Ford, etc.

Drivers from all over the U.S. (some now as young as eighteen) compete in their geographical area, one of seven divisions — Northeast, Southeast, Southern Pacific, etc.

The top three points-winners in each class in each division come to the final championship, the American Road Race of Champions (ARRC) at Road Atlanta. This means approximately 4000 drivers are narrowed down to 400 drivers by the divisional points system, with the final 30-minute race at Road Atlanta crowning 21 National Champions.

A driver can win more than one championship (one driver won 3 of 21 in 1972). He can repeat his championship. He can drive the same car in pro and amateur events: A Sedan in the Trans-Am, B Sedan in the 2.5 Challenge, A Sports Racing in the Can-Am, Formula A in the Continental, etc. Some of the 21 classes are far more competitive than others; some are competitive one year and an easy runaway the next. A driver can have heavy financial support from sponsors or he can be his own driver, sponsor, mechanic, and manager with the wife and kids as helpers. He can make his living as a driver but most amateur racers have another occupation. The roster includes doctors, pilots, actors, schoolteachers, musicians, a lady driving instructor for the highway patrol, and even an astronaut. Above all, the National Championship series is the training ground for the American road-racing driver.

Most drivers prefer not to leave amateur road racing, while some race both amateur and professional events, a status that is acceptable to the rule makers of road racing. For those who want pro racing, the SCCA offers three types:

Sedans (and for 1973, selected production cars) — the Trans-Am.

Sports racing — the Can-Am: cars designed for road racing, two-seaters with fenders covering wheels and tires, no limits on engine size or car weight.

Formula — the Super Vee, Formula B, and Formula A or Continental 5000. Formula means the car is constructed using a formula prescribed by the rules for each racing group. For example, Formula A means: Racing chassis (Lotus, McLaren, Lola, Surtees, Chevron, March, Leda) + American V8 engine (305- cubic-inch Ford, Chevy) = single-seat, open-cockpit, open-wheel, racing car.

In addition to the National Championship in 1971, John Morton was involved in the Trans-Am, driving a Datsun 510 sedan in the 2.5 Challenge, the small American and foreign compact-car segment of the sedan racing series in 1971 and 1972. The latter half of the 1972 season, he raced in the Continental 5000 driving a Lotus 70B Ford formula car.

The racetracks are another variance. A familiar track, Daytona, doubles for both stock cars and sports cars with an oval for the stock cars and a road course for the sports cars. As with most all-purpose designs, one area suffers; the drivers feel the road-racing course at Daytona is not sensitively designed. Tracks such as Sebring are (or were) airports, and therefore are paved with curves but have no hills. Road Atlanta, Watkins Glen, Road America, and Laguna Seca are the true road-racing facilities, the plums. Each of the latter tracks has its own character; in varying ways each winds for miles around curves, up and down hills through the native countryside. Whether viewed through eucalyptus, birch, or Georgia pine, a true road-racing facility is a country road in captivity.

To attempt a definition of a sports car is difficult; a rule instantly brings to mind exceptions. A sports car isn’t family transportation and one can’t go by looks — many cars look sporty but are short on performance. Performance is prob- ably the key word: the ability to perform well on the above-mentioned track, curves and straightaways alike, all weather conditions, on pump gasoline, at high speeds. The pleasure netted by this performance, pleasure being part of the package deal with a sports car, relates directly to the nature of the passenger or driver.

A knowledge of mechanics is not necessary to enter the book for the close view. If a driver says, The mixture was too lean under full throttle and He holed a piston, the reader need only know that whatever it was that happened to that engine was pretty bad, and its performance is going to be cut if not negated.

The questions that occur to the man outside of racing — isn’t the driver afraid that he has given up his identity to the machine for example — simply have no driver relevance. One has to be outside of a race car to worry about identity loss; inside the car there is a lot more to concern the driver than philosophical problems. And as Pete Brock says, A man feels a certain amount of gratitude and pride about sharing an experience with a well-made machine. A race driver doesn’t feel threatened by an electric can opener, or castrated by his wife’s electric scissors. To the contrary, he is fascinated by anything that gets the job done faster. His objective is to get around a track the fastest in qualifying, to get there first in a race, and, as John Morton discovered on the Ping-Pong table, he needs the car to do it in. I once heard a college professor ask a driver what he was running from. Said the driver, This weekend it’s that guy in the number 37 blue Lola.

For the average person, fear must be redefined to understand motor racing. Since a driver’s fears are of a totally different nature, to say simply that a driver is afraid is misleading. If he loses confidence in his crew — say they allow him to go onto the track with a loose wheel or a careless error in the braking system — it is not fear of automobiles that he experiences. He knows that racing is difficult and he is not foolhardy; he damn well wants to have a fair shot at staying in one piece. Call refusing to drive a malfunctioning car at speed fear if you like. I would call it common sense and self-preservation, human enough feelings for anyone. The driver knows what can happen to him if the car breaks at speed; he sees it often enough. A driver may say he has a recurring nightmare of smothering in a small place, of being trapped. It doesn’t take much perception to equate that with a burning race car, but one need not tell the driver he has turned reality into symbol, or that he has a repressed fear. He has a repressed reality. He is saying he is not motivated by fear or a yearn for self-destruction. He is expressing the opposite of a death wish.

Death must be dealt with in any book on auto racing. The cruel fact is that every book on racing has on its pages names of people who were alive when it was written and dead before it went to press. Death is not restricted to the foolish and careless; it takes the best drivers the sport has ever known. A morbid exercise is to read the winners’ names in the major races of the last few years. If one checks the names of those who have died violent deaths in Grand Prix cars, the odds are worse than in Russian roulette. A bullfighter has an average life of seven years in the ring; at the foot of the Matterhorn is the graveyard for those who fell. There is a delicate balance between what men feel is difficult and what is just plain foolhardy. It is easy for the average man to say any unnecessary risk of human life is foolhardy because he is talking about his own life. A curious phenomenon of the average American is that less than 5 percent wear their seat belts when driving, seat belts that have proven repeatedly to be the most reliable mechanical method of auto-fatality prevention known; 100 percent of the race drivers wear their seat belts. A partially committed driver may race only closed sedans because formula cars are considerably more dangerous. Probably only the totally committed driver can see the value of the difficulty of the sport in any pure way. The difference again is in the objective: the avoidance of death is not the object of the sport; the object is to win against great odds.

A driver’s career is short, approximately twenty years of active participation. It is easy to flash in the pan and, like a movie star, be here today and forgotten and replaced tomorrow. A movie star has until his hairline recedes and his chin sags; a driver has until his reflexes dull and his confidence wanes. With the physical and mental demon of age chasing him and youth scrambling in behind, the tapering off to defeat can be more painful to a man than a quiet retirement from the public eye.

Racing may breed chronic weaknesses as well as strengths. In their daily lives drivers can be a wishy-washy bunch, their driving compensating for their failures or the other way around. The late World Champion Jimmy Clark was said to waste an evening trying to make up his mind which show to see, while on the track no man could make faster decisions. John Morton generally calls a waitress back twice as he changes his mind about his order, or she stands impatiently by his chair while he lapses into confused silence. Maybe instead of offering compensation, racing uses up the decision-making quality in a man; he’s wrung dry. John, pleased to find that Clark too was plagued by indecisiveness, was also pleased to find that former Grand Prix driver Masten Gregory wore glasses. The pleasure of shared weakness with the great.

Jackie Stewart, twice World Champion, mentioned inflated ego as the occupational disease of the racing driver. One well-known driver even said, only half kidding, How could a woman love a man who was not a racing driver? Generalizations are to be avoided but, without exception, I found that drivers felt no other sport rivaled racing in difficulty. To mention, say, mountain climbing, to John is a fruitless endeavor. You can’t keep his attention long enough to sustain an argument.

Each driver has his own concept of success, but for most young road-racing drivers, the ultimate is the World Championship. Their idol is not necessarily the current World Champion, who is generally younger than most successful American drivers and, with the exception of Phil Hill, not an American. A driver knows the definition of greatness in driving concerns more than being World Champion. When asked to name the greatest drivers ever, John said without hesitation, Nuvolari, Fangio, Moss, and Clark. Tazio Nuvolari, the legendary Italian driver of the thirties in pre-World Championship days, continued to race while dying of tuberculosis, coughing up blood as alcohol fumes permeated the cockpit. Nuvolari said to those who questioned his sanity when climbing into the lethal machines, How can you get in bed, knowing you might die there! Juan Manuel Fangio, five times World Champion, retired unscathed and is an auto dealer in Argentina. Englishman Stirling Moss, who was severely injured racing and retired from driving, is often seen attending races. Scotsman Jimmy Clark — who won both Indianapolis and the World Championship — died racing. Two of the four, Moss and Nuvolari, were not World Champions although Nuvolari would have been had the series existed. Although their careers overlapped, none of these drivers raced against each other at the peak of their greatness.

How do you know they are the greatest?

Because, John says, they were absolutely unbeatable — untouchable — when they raced in equal cars against the best drivers of their times.

To be World Champion is the symbol of greatness. To beat every other driver in equal equipment is real greatness. But to fix your sights on greatness and ignore the pitfalls is naive — lack of money, of the ability to organize an effort, or of a public image can be the ruin of a great driver. To get a true test, perhaps have the Indianapolis winner drive a young driver’s car and compare lap times, is rarely feasible. As with all questions concerning the ultimate, there is no simple answer, no final sweet wine of victory. But there is, garbed in stainless steel, that illusive carrot to keep reaching for.

1

… if you took all the Grand Prix drivers and gave them eternal youth so they could race for a hundred years, they would all kill themselves.

WATKINS GLEN, a village in New York state, is far enough from the cities to be country with cornfields, a big lake, and distant mountains. Yet on some damp mornings it is close enough to the cities for a cloud of smog to hover between the hills, a mist tinged with yellow. Although it is the home of America’s Grand Prix race for 1971, there are no signs to the racetrack; you have to know where it is or ask a service station attendant.

Most road-racing tracks are hidden away in hamlets, their Sunday morning practice sessions opposed by the churches. Unlike a stock-car or sprint-car track that can have its quarter mile of noise and pollution stuffed into a city, taking less space than the high school football stadium, a road-racing track sprawls across the countryside, weaving around trees and over hills like a public road that ends where it began. the cars scream up to nearly 200 mph, then popping and sputtering, brake down to get through tight turns.

Worrying about the noise and pollution of a road-racing facility is like worrying about steam calliopes — there’ll never be enough of them to notice. But at Watkins Glen there is no racing until the preacher finishes his sermon at noon. And, just in case someone might be interested, on race day, a time for early morning mass for the drivers and crews already at the track will be announced on the PA system. A quick service is held at the start-finish line.

The Datsun team arrives at the track on Thursday, August 12, 1971, their red, white, and blue twin cars corralled in the Kendall Tech Building in a double stall. The crew is at work on the cars but they’re kidding around a lot and the pace is casual. The pressure seems to be off because the team manager, Pete Brock, has not arrived yet from Los Angeles. The crew has on dirty white Levis and T-shirts with a faded Pete Brock’s engine dyno across the back. They get a mimeographed sheet before every race that says on race day, Wear your red, meaning the bright red BRE shirt and white jeans.

Trevor Harris, who does the suspension, has black knees from kneeling to look under the car. Mac Tilton has on a Datsun T-shirt with holes in the back.

Every time I put on a new shirt it ends up with holes in it and they’re always in the same place. I can’t figure it out.

They push the No. 46 car, John Morton’s car, out for testing on a track empty except for a Mustang being worked on at the end of the pits. John goes to put on his driving suit after helping the crew check the car over. The car has a number of races on it but it looks new, the paint thick and patterned in red and white with two short, diagonal blue stripes. The number two driver, Mike Downs, who hasn’t arrived yet, drives a blue and white car.

John really takes care of a car, Pete Brock, the team manager, has said. The worst damage that car has gotten all season came when it was sitting in a showroom and a windstorm broke the glass and peppered the paint. He has that kind of attitude, of never messing up a car, that I feel you have to have to go well in this business. You have to have a respect for the equipment because that’s what racing is all about. You should have seen him when we had to sell the D Production roadster at the end of the season. We were going to campaign the C Production car the next year for the National Championship again and had to let the roadster go. He kept going back and sitting in it. He really didn’t want to do it but he knew we had to.

Morton built his own roll cage and fabricated the dashboard at BRE, Brock Racing Enterprises, where he works on his cars between races. George Britting, a fabricator who works in the BRE shop with John, said, John’s completely meticulous in everything he does, a perfectionist; everything he makes fits and works properly. Most drivers don’t try as hard as he does and he’s trying hard all the time; not just when he’s behind the wheel.

It’s true I care about the car. I really don’t want to hurt it. I don’t feel that way about the blue one, Mike’s car, just the red one because it’s my car, I guess. I’ve been that way about some of the others too, the one I won the championship with especially. Maybe it’s because I work on it all week. I just can’t stand to see it messed up.

John walks back and forth, biting the skin off the ends of his fingers. He smokes a lot, always fumbling for a match like a kid who hasn’t been smoking long. I don’t smoke this much during the week. And I drink a lot more coffee when I’m at the racetrack. I’m different when I’m in the shop during the week. I would like to quit smoking. I don’t like the fact that I smoke but I don’t have any willpower. I can’t eat at the track on race day. I tried to eat a hot dog once and couldn’t even chew the first bite. My mouth was completely dry. Some guys say they don’t eat because if they’re hungry they go faster. I think they’re just saying that because if they did eat, they’d get sick.

John gets in the car to practice. He can’t find his gloves and has to go back and get them from his driving bag.

You remember how they used to do your mittens when you were a little kid, run a string on them that went up your sleeve and down your arm? Trevor says. John comes back with a sheepish look and gets in the car. See those shoes? John is wearing a pair of colorful leather indoor-track shoes. He got those little beauties in Kansas when he forgot his driving shoes.

Mac says, I’m glad that racetracks end where they begin.

John takes his glasses off, so he can put on the Bell Star helmet.

When I was a little kid and found out I had to wear glasses, it was one of the most depressing things that ever happened to me. For a long time I couldn’t find out if a single Grand Prix driver wore glasses. It was like no matter what I did, there was going to be something to keep me from getting what I wanted.

With the wide jaw protector across the driver’s mouth, the Bell Star gives the appearance of a cartoon clam with two eyes peering out, or the helmet of a suit of armor without benefit of a hinged jaw section that can be flipped away. Some drivers can’t adjust to them, feeling claustrophobic like a horse with blinders. Helmets have come a long way from the white bowl with a leather ear and chin strap, along with fireproof suits, gloves that cover the space between the end of a sleeve and a hand, hoods to wear under the helmet for the space at the back of the neck and the hair, fireproof socks, and long johns; an attempt to cover every square inch of the driver for the precious thirty seconds he has to get away from the flames.

After each session, he undoes the harness and climbs out while the crew makes changes on the car. Then back in the helmet he goes, same procedure, glasses on and off; the Bell Star kills any chance of watching a driver’s facial expressions unless he has eyes like the French Grand Prix driver, François Cevert, eyes large and expressive enough to reveal all of his feelings. John is small with very wide shoulders; his build is compact like a gymnast’s. His hair is brown and curly, long enough to show at the back of his helmet when he isn’t wearing his hood. When he stands out of the car in his helmet, his appearance is top-heavy and his back seems to bend under the weight.

In the test session, everything has a cleaner sound to it; few cars are on the track and it isn’t necessary to scream to be heard over the engine sounds. John Caldwell talks about John and the engines he builds for him:

"Some drivers use an engine harder to go faster but this doesn’t necessarily mean they are actually going faster. they might be over-revving to get the effect they could have gotten without doing it. A driver can go slow because he doesn’t know how to use the engine to the limits. John pushes the engines to the limit without overusing them. I think a guy like John has an advantage because he is a natural athlete. Some guys have to make it the hard way and some are naturals and can realize the potential of machinery easier.

"You have to be able to communicate with your driver, and you can’t solve engine problems without it. He has to be able to tell you what’s wrong with it in the corners, how it feels down the straight, and he has to be able to tell you in a way that you can understand in order to fix it. It is a rewarding thing to be able to fix an engine to run right without having to go to the hit-or-miss method. You really hate to tear down one of your engines and find the valves were hitting the pistons or find a broken valve spring, or see that he wasn’t shifting right or he loaded up the engine. You can tell a lot about a driver by looking at the inside of an engine after he’s raced it. I want to have no problems by race time, to sort it all out in practice so that at the last minute we have nothing but routine checking. Some drivers who can’t ever get it right leave it up to you to go out to the edge of the track and try to hear what is wrong yourself. A good thing about John is that he works at the shop and we spend a lot of time talking about things after a race. Some drivers just come in on weekends, get in the car and drive it, then fly home until time for the next race. There is a lot lost in between that way.

"One of the interesting things about John is that he never seems to level out. He goes out in qualifying and drives like a son of a bitch and you think nobody can go any faster. Then comes the race and he’ll go faster every time.

"Pete Brock? With me and Brock it’s different. Building engines for John is really bitchen, but working for Brock is different. It hasn’t been smooth and I came damn close to packing out.

"We were testing one day and John was riding back from the track with me. We stopped to get some lunch because he hadn’t had anything to eat all day. Well, Brock had to wait and it made him mad so when we got back to the shop he came out screaming that when you work for him and you have things to do, you don’t stop for lunch. I just don’t take that sort of stuff off of people.

"When I first started with him, I was traveling to a race and my luggage got messed up and a part I was carrying for the car got sent somewhere else. I learned since then that when I want something for the car, I carry it in my hand but I didn’t know then. I had never even been to a race before. So Brock got bent out of shape and called my wife looking for me and cussed her out. When she called me, I called him back and gave it to him straight, you’ve got something to say to me you say it to me. You don’t talk ugly to my wife. She has nothing to do with this racing thing and you don’t say those things to her. And then I hung up on him.

"Pete just doesn’t have the respect of the guys. He doesn’t have my respect. You don’t have to get things the way he gets them. You could do what he has done, although I admit he does get the money from the sponsors and he did get the deal with Datsun, you could get the job done without alienating all those people. He has crossed people at Datsun and crossed them unnecessarily so. He comes up short as a human being, I guess is what I’m saying. But I make my own friends at the track. I work for him but I want a separate identity, for people to know me separate of him on my own terms. I had never been in racing before, like I said, and I had really gotten hooked on it. I learned working with Art Oehrli, an older guy who used to work at Brock’s who really knows engines. He taught me everything.

I got so damn mad at Brock once, I went storming in and told him that I was quitting and he could get someone else. I couldn’t believe what happened. He looked at me and said, ‘There isn’t anyone else, John.’ I didn’t know what to do. I went out and threw things all over the shop and talked to the guys and went back and told him I was staying. And I know that I would have been out of my mind to quit. That was the smartest thing I ever did in my life, telling him I wouldn’t quit.

When John goes out to practice, you get a clear view of the back of the car as it hits the bumpy section in the pavement before the first turn. There is a Mustang out now that becomes unstable there, zigzagging over the bumps. The Datsun comes around again and goes over the rough section at speed; it hugs in low, the brake lights flash before the turn and then it is gone. Trevor Harris, who is setting up the suspension, says, I’ll have to ask him what it feels like right there.

John Caldwell listens for the sound of the car around the track, waiting for the shift point. John Knepp has made a gear change for this session, the combination of engine and gears that should get the most out of the engine. Knepp explains the meaning of gear change: To get the most out of your motor you select gears to run it in the rpm range where it produces the most power. We have to think about the corners where the lower gears will be used and the straight where the top gears will be used. The right gears help the driver keep up the rpm’s while he is in the corner so he can get on the power as soon as he exits the corner and heads down the straight. He should try to reach as much speed on the straight as he can in order to get the best lap time.

John is in and the crew goes to the window of the car. Sounds like it’s pulling better, Knepp says.

Yeah, it’s pulling better. Eighty-three hundred in top gear.

How are the gears? Knepp asks.

I think they are going to be good.

We can hear you accelerate. the revs have picked up.

Where?

Back there. Knepp points to the back of the course.

Can’t be sure about that. The loop is still wet from the rain last night and I can’t get through there fast enough. He pulls back out of the pits. After he leaves there is talk about percentages and gear ratios and overdrive. It seems you reach a certain combination of gears that is the best compromise because all tracks have a variety of corners; there is no perfect combination. You need gears for the whole course, not just one turn. Also, occasionally, a driver can make up time by cutting out a shift.

John’s lap times are getting better; he is under the course record for a comparable car with a 1:28. the crew can’t decide whether or not to tell him although he asked them to signal when he hit 28. He said at breakfast that he thought he could do a 27.

If I don’t tell him, Knepp says, he might go faster. John is really good at telling you what he wants, he explains, because he knows when there’s time in the car and when it’s in the driver. A lot of drivers have an ego problem that makes them blame their problems on the car. Also he has a real touch with the car, a kind of timing in the turns where he keeps the revs right at the minimum without letting them get so low the engine starts to die. Mike Downs will come in and say the car is blurbering and John will take the same car out and be able to drive it smoothly.

John comes in. I keep goofing up in one turn. It feels a little marbly. I think the new pavement they put down is breaking up.

Do you need more bite? Trevor asks.

No, it’s sticking fine. It already has a tendency to understeer. Don’t change the car. It’s just me that needs to get around faster.

He’s out and around a few more times. He turns a 27.

John Knepp looks pleased: "Having somebody like him around can make you think twice about being involved in the driving side of it. I wanted to drive at one time, still have my old car in the garage. But it would take quite a few bucks to be competitive, and something else too. If I thought I could beat John, I would work at it but there’s no way. He has fantastic muscle control and reaction times. You should see him with those silly hand-slap games, fast hand pulling; he can beat everybody in the shop. He can stand on his hands and not move. And there are other things that keep me from driving. I’m too conscious of speed. I get going faster and I become more and more bothered by the speed. The thought of approaching a hairpin at the end of a straight at over a hundred and fifty sends chills down my spine; something that doesn’t seem to bother Morton.

It’s rewarding to work with a good driver that you have confidence in; I can’t imagine doing this with any other driver. He gives you something for your effort and he takes care of the stuff you work so hard on. I really believe that with the right combination of opportunities he will be the best. He’s one of the most competitive people I’ve ever seen. His brother Lyman gave him a table soccer game for Christmas. First he beat us one at a time. That wasn’t hard enough so he took us on two at a time, soon he was beating us both.

When John comes in, Knepp goes to the window. Guess how fast?

I don’t know.

You turned a twenty-seven.

Really? Then he laughs and says, I knew it. Kwech might do a twenty-six. Horst Kwech is the number one driver for the opposing three-car Herb Wetson Alfa team. The race this weekend is one in a series for a manufacturer’s championship. The Alfas or the Datsuns will win it, but everyone who follows the series follows the showdown each race between these two drivers. Kwech won the previous year for Alfa, with Pete Brock’s Datsun team of two cars entering late in this season. John has won the pole position each race, and when the car has not broken, he has won. But Alfa is leading in points 51 to 39. To lose this race would make winning the series a near impossibility.

That evening the crew is in the restaurant bar. Mike Downs, the driver of Brock’s number two team car, has arrived and joins John Caldwell and John Morton. Mike is grinning, a kind of sideways and self-conscious little-boy grin. The newspaper said he cut his face in the last race when the windshield came apart on him. No new scars are visible but he has the kind of ruddy outdoor face you wouldn’t notice a scar on. His wide eyes are childlike and revealing. Although he is twenty-five years old, his looks and actions seem younger, his exaggerated expressions and movements are almost teen-age, lively. He moves in loose-jointed strides with his neck bent so his head gets where he is going before the rest of him. Mike is a bachelor, enjoying a girl-in-every-port sort of existence, several girls in every port, actually. His tall, thin frame is always clad in mod fashions, leather pants, patchwork shirts, boots.

I had this one teacher in high school, a really neat guy, he relates, all the kids liked him. We went on this class trip out in boats and he disappeared. They never found him. I kept going to class expecting him to show up because none of us could believe the only neat teacher we ever had was dead. It was really a weird thing. He turns his face sideways, silent a moment like an animal hearing a distant sound and trying to recognize it. Then he drops his eyes to his drink and the expression fades to a pout; he’s said something he isn’t particularly sure he should have said. But maybe he meant to talk flippantly about death and didn’t really want anyone to think that once in his life he felt something about someone, his old teacher and his tragedy. It has been filtered by the years and become another story.

Mike drinks double scotches with emphasis on the double each time he orders. The talk drifts back and forth around him about the racial question, teaching school, the South.

"I think there are too goddamn many people teaching school that hate it. The ones that taught me did. And if they hate it they ought to get out of it. And if they don’t think they get paid enough for it that’s another