Spurning Wealth to Run With the Fast Crowd

A race car driver in this country used to be this kind of guy:

He had this pinup of the playmate of the month on the garage wall, he wore greasy old coveralls and oil-soaked boots, he had the American flag and Mother or Dora tattooed on his arm, he drank beer from a bottle and gin from a cup, he didn’t talk much and he didn’t know to the nearest continent exactly where Paris is, much less Monte Carlo.

He knew every cubic inch of the inside of an engine; the outside of the world was more of a problem.

He called his girl friend the old lady , and she rode around on the back of his motorcycle and chewed gum, and chances were her hair was pink and piled up like cotton candy. She didn’t know where Paris is, either.

He was in a hurry to die; anything was better than going to school. You needed an act of Congress to get him to fix a screen door, but he’d spend 18 hours a day under the hood of a car, or with a screwdriver or a grease gun. He slept in his car. He didn’t own a tie.

He kissed girls on the mouth, not on the hand, and he didn’t like movies where they talked a lot. He might have been considered good-looking if it weren’t for the broken nose or the burn grafts.

And, then, there’s Danny Sullivan. Danny’s a race driver, too, and one of the best. He won Pocono last year, for instance. He’s in the hunt at Indy every year.

But Danny never worked in a garage in Torrance--or anywhere else--his entire life. He’d have to call the Auto Club to change a flat.

He never drove a hot rod around empty streets as a kid. He went to military school. He spent ages 6 to 19 learning to march, not drive. He spent more time in uniform than Gen. MacArthur.

The family business sprawled over three states around Kentucky, and Danny could have had his own state, not to mention a rug on the floor and a company car, if only he would have stayed at the University of Kentucky, as his father wanted him to, and learned compound interest.

Danny might have made it if they would have hidden the girls. He never got to see any in military school, and he was like a kid locked in a candy store when he sat behind his first coed. It was like the spring breakup on the Yukon.

The only trouble was, the girls came with the university attached, so Danny split. He went to New York, where you didn’t have to go to class to meet girls. They were all over the place. Danny lived with several of them, and once shared an apartment with three of them.

He had the slick good looks and mysterious aura of an international jewel thief. He was perfect for cocktail parties, a cross between Gary Cooper and Tyrone Power. He worked in a singles bar where he was the only waiter who got 100% tips--with room keys attached.

When the family sent an emissary to help Danny “find himself” and ask what he wanted to do with his life, Danny thought if he offered something reasonably preposterous, the guy would go away. “I want to be a race driver,” he lied.

The family friend, Frank Falkner, an Englishman, took him at his word and sent him off to a driving school in England.

Danny surprised himself by loving it.

In particular, he dug the scene. The Continental motor racing scene was like a reprise of the Hapsburg Empire--beautiful women, glamorous settings, champagne for breakfast.

The kid from Louisville became the continent’s guest. He didn’t know from one night to the next what castle he would be sleeping in. To this day, Danny Sullivan has lived in more baronial homes without owning any of them than the Kaiser in his heyday.

The only thing sub-royal were the cars he was given to drive. They were automotive equivalents of the ox-cart. Still, Danny was competitive. In short, he was not just another pretty face, not just another dilettante baron killing time between gavottes or the season at Biarritz. Danny was a pro. He was in the fast lane on and off the track.

There aren’t too many guys with Roman numerals in their names driving the American circuit. But Danny is the IIIrd Daniel John Sullivan to have come along in that family, and when he came home from Europe, the local opinion was, he could drive well only on those circuits where you had to watch out for trees and cows, and he wouldn’t be able to handle the brutish ovals of America that you can’t drive wearing a monocle.

When he won at Pocono and Sanair, when he walked away from wall-bangers at Indy after screaming around for 158 laps, when he won at Cleveland, people figured he might be just as good as the guys from the Costa Mesa body shops and this might be the first Sullivan to become world champion since John L.

Danny will be driving in the Long Beach Grand Prix this weekend. If you can’t find him, just follow the trail of girls. If you find a pit that looks like a Folies Bergere chorus call, that’ll be Sullivan’s.

You might also try looking at the front of the pack. Danny Sullivan has been known to be there, too.