Sanity Prevails as Race Gets the Red Flag

Silence, like morning mist, rolled over the treacherous corners and turns of the Michigan International Speedway this Sunday morning where 225 m.p.h. four-wheeled missiles were supposed to be splitting the pastoral splendor of these verdant hills with the deafening roars of 30 of the most powerful power plants this side of railroad guns.

TV cameras stood with one blind eye focused on nothing, pit walls stood empty, chemical toilets stood like lonely sentries on stretches of bean fields, winds blew drifts of paper cups aimlessly through the gaily-colored grandstands.

The Michigan 500 auto race would be run another day when the sponsors could be sure that pieces of treated rubber were as equal to the heat and tensions of the course as human beings were. The suspicion was that speeds were getting to be such they were giving nervous breakdowns to pieces of rubber.

The Michigan International Speedway has been one of the most jittery venues of super-speedway racing ever since its inception 17 years ago.

Even though only one person has been killed at this raceway since its construction, and that was a spectator, the evidence is that this high-speed roadway cut in the center of this lush part of mid-America known as the Irish Hills is resented by the great spirits that hover over this Indian land of a hundred lakes.

Thunderstorms have rolled periodically through the races here, a tornado once touched down one year, slamming cars and cameras and people and setting pit fires as if the gods were anxious to change these blasphemous machines back into scraps of metal.

The track itself, severely banked, is the fastest in the world for this kind of racing but so bumpy it could serve as a ride at Coney Island. As track owner Roger Penske points out, “This ain’t some sun belt course in Daytona. The frost buckles this surface unpredictably and you have to keep searching for the low and high spots.”

At 225-miles-per-hour, a race car is a bit like a crashing plane. You have only hairline control of its direction and aim.

“I found a new bump out there,” Ace driver Mario Andretti cheerily announced as he came into the press headquarters one day after a duel with the track in which he spun 360 degrees several times before coming to rest in one piece.

Drivers at Michigan generally climb into their cars in the frame of mind of the World War I pilots of the Lafayette Escadrille just before they went up over the battle of the Marne for dawn dogfights. Gladiators never went more nervously in to the lions.

Last year’s race, for instance, had been one of those where you cover your eyes, cross yourself and make one call to your lawyer. Five crashes and 10 accidents dotted the landscape and sent two drivers to the hospital and several hundred spectators to their knees. One hundred and five laps were run under the yellow light, racing’s warnings there is trouble on the track ahead, a lot of debris, probably human.

So, the 1985 race started with fingers crossed and rosary beads out. And ambulances ready. The fact they were going to try out a new brand of radial tires instead of bias-ply for the first time reassured no one.

When A.J. Foyt, no less, crashed during the first day of practice, sponsors looked at each other. When he was followed by Bobby Rahal and Roberto Guerrero, plus Andretti’s spin, the reaction of the wise race-goers was “Oh, (bleep)! Here we go again!”

When Rahal went out and won the pole, with the fastest closed-circuit time ever run, 215.202, and Guerrero made the grid with a sizzling 205.175, fears were allayed.

And then both Rahal and Guerrero went out within minutes of each other and slammed into the wall as a front tire blew. The track knew it needed more than a yellow light. A red one. The hold-everything flag.

When one unexplained crash comes, it can be an accident. Two can be a coincidence.

Three is a trend. And four is tires.

They had picked the wrong place and time to break in a new pair of shoes. Super-speedway races had always been contested on bias-ply rubber. Goodyear reasoned that the radials had been tested enough for Michigan.

The Speedway had other ideas.

The problem was a neat one for track owner Roger Penske. Roger had bought MIS at a distress real estate sale 15 years ago and since elevated it to Triple Crown status in racing. NBC was poised to televise the event live. Tickets had been sold out, motels were full. Visitors were rolling south from Detroit to Canada. Concessions were stocked. A multi-million dollar investment was at stake. So was Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.’s reputation.

But, so were the lives of 33 drivers.

An emergency 11th hour meeting was held. Sanity won out. Safety got the checkered flag.

This is not as automatic as you might think in auto racing. The motor sport, like the Broadway theater, tends to feel ordinarily that “The show must go on” or “Carmen was announced, Carmen must be sung.”

This was one time the curtain was rung instead. There was no time to van in the 700 or 800 bias tires that might be needed. The mission was scrubbed.

Some years ago, the famed writer, Ring Lardner, describing a fire that had burned to the ground an auto race track in California, wrote: “The Astoria race track near Los Angeles burned down last night at a great saving of life.”

The Michigan 500 had a blowout Saturday afternoon at a great saving of lives. The fault may not be the tires. But the tire company is quitting while it is behind. It is to be commended for not trying to find out if its tires are road-worthy with flesh-and-blood dummies. If the tires are overmatched on this racing surface, anything that bleeds or breathes certainly is. There are worse things than air leaving a tire. Air leaving a lung for example.