THE INDIANAPOLIS 500 : ‘Hollywood’ Is Perfect for the Part

The drivers call him “Hollywood.” “Barrymore.” The Great Profile. They figured he was just slumming. The first time he got A.J. Foyt in his rear-view mirror, he would suddenly remember he had this tennis date in Malibu.

Why would anyone want to go dicing with Emerson Fittipaldi when he could be dating Ali McGraw? Who needs 230 miles per hour when the studio will send a limousine? What would you want to put burn scars on those eyelashes and cheekbones for?

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is no place for a guy with a Roman numeral in his name, an actress on his arm and a handful of screen credits to his name. It’s for a John L., not a Daniel J. Sullivan. This is the real thing, not a simulcast. Blood Alley for real, not the John Ford movie.

Race drivers don’t come from sound stages, restaurants on Melrose, cocktails at the Polo Lounge. They come from garages in Torrance, lube racks in Logansport, dirt tracks in Ashtabula. They drink beer from a bottle, not white wine from a goblet, lunch is salami on rye, not the catch-of-the-day. You don’t have to tip a head waiter to buy a pizza.

This is not 5 o’clock traffic on the interchange, this is Crash Incorporated. You’re not running through the jacaranda trees in Monte Carlo here, you’re on 2 1/2 miles of bubbling tar. You go 500 miles at speeds that would get you from L.A. to San Francisco in two hours if you didn’t run it in a circle.

They had cars on the track Thursday for something as innocuous as “carburetion tests.” Indy cars haven’t had carburetors since the days when Eisenhower was president, but tradition dies hard here, and the drivers were anxious to see how their cars perform in traffic.

They didn’t perform too well. The track was only open a little more than an hour and two cars hit the wall. Over-eager young rookies? Hardly. A.J. Foyt and Emerson Fittipaldi. Fifty years of experience between them.

So, what is a refugee from a Fox lot doing in the midst of all this mayhem? You get stunt men to do these things back where Danny Sullivan comes from. A fellow could get killed around here. About 58 have, to tell you the truth.

Indianapolis is the scariest kind of race-car driving there is. It’s the automotive equivalent of climbing Everest. Boarding the Titanic. Taming a lion.

It’s no place for dilettantes. College boys. And Danny Sullivan was considered the worst kind of social butterfly when he came aboard. Danny wasn’t quite a male mud wrestler or a nightclub hunk, but he was such an unserious wage-earner that his family bundled him off to England to learn how to drive a race car. They probably thought it would be like playing polo.

Speed is one of the worst addictions there is. Danny came back hooked. He dabbled in the Can-Am series, debated Formula One. But when he came to Indy in ‘82, the pit crowd winked at each other. “Watch this!” they chortled.

Sporty car drivers, when they get their first look at this low, long brutish oval, usually can’t wait to get back to the streets of Monaco and the champagne and silk scarves.

For Danny Sullivan, it was love at first sight. It was like getting your first look at Garbo, your first date with a prom queen. He loved every treacherous oil slick in it.

Some guys drive Indy as though they want to carry it back to their cave by the hair. Others romance it. Danny Sullivan treated it as if it were the Queen Mother. He did everything but bring it flowers. He poured around it like syrup around a waffle. Everybody loved Danny Sullivan including the heartless old bawd of a Brickyard.

She saved her favors for him. In 1985, when she let him win here, she even let him do a 360-degree spin at the end of the main straight and go on his silky way. When Indy does that to most people, the next thing they know they’re upside down in what is left of a car and either it or they are on fire with the wheels coming off and the wings coming apart.

Indy is a schizophrenic place, half poets, half peasants. You get the Danny Sullivans, the Johnny Rutherfords, the Peter Revsons and the Mark Donahues. The hand-kissers, the heel-clickers. And you get the Bobby Unsers, A.J. Foyts, Parnelli Joneses. The boys from the back of the garage, the roughnecks. Guys who would be prizefighters or football players if they weren’t in a race car.

They’re all athletes, but they go about it differently. Foyt and Bobby U. won their Indy’s the way LaMotta won his fights. They slugged it to death. Sullivan and company treat it more like a Sugar Ray.

Indy responds to the velvet touch. And the crowd at Indy loves Sullivan. As he proceeds up the pit wall after carburetion practice, the shouts arise. Sullivan is everybody’s Danny Boy. Robert Redford in a flame suit. He brings an elegance to a deadly business, like a Red Baron in a dogfight.

So Indy loves Danny. But why does Danny love Indy?

“There’s no thrill like it,” says Daniel John Sullivan II. “It’s daunting. To get out there in front of 450,000 people is something to charge up your life. I feel the most alive I ever feel. I wouldn’t miss it. Danger? What is living without danger?

“It’s what I’m about. I don’t know if my friends in Hollywood completely comprehend the challenge, but if you’re a race driver and you’re not at Indy, well, it’s an actor and not on Broadway.

Hollywood can relate to that. Above-the-title billing. Look at it this way: Danny Sullivan at Indy is Spencer Tracy playing a priest, Jimmy Cagney going to the chair, Garbo as Camille. The highest form of the art.