WHAT HAPPENED? I'll tell you what I think happened. Back in "the day" these guy's raced for a living and gave us one hell of a show.
Perhaps all those extra people in the stands were the one's the one's looking to see one of them killed or badly injured, or perhaps it was those of us who enjoyed watching that guy sit straight up in his machine and fight to keep the damned thing under him. I was one of those guy's, I can still remember my first trip to Indy back when I was 9 or 10 years old. It was the first day of quallifing and Jim Hurbedise set a new lap record of 149 mph we were in the infield grandstands and I can still see him in my minds eye sitting straight up arms moving around even going down the front straight just holding on to that old roadster's stearing wheel fighting to keeping it in line. I don't think they had "power stearing" back then and the tire tread was about 9 inches. I stopped going to Indy when I could not see the driver's head in his car.
It was great watching this old film. They are hard to find now also , Watch those drivers work, they were not going close to the speed we are going today but they worked much harder to drive and I know it took a lot of skill. They didn't know too much about stager or which $1000.00 shock to put on which corner. They did know about racing ,and how to adjust for the car and the track as things changed, and they did race close and clean. Things are so much better now and safer we even put our teenage kids in sprint cars and wish them well. Can you see putting a kid in one of those ill tempered beast and pushing them off sitting straight up, no haun's device, no race seat, no full face helmet,no fire suit, no power stearing, no roll cage no safety bars, no arm guards. I don't think too many people would put their kid's in that kind of a ride today either.
We've been lulled into complacency because of all of our new safety devices we can't even see the person driving the thing around the race track, it almost looks like remote control race car. Back in the day you could see the driver, you could watch him do his job and appreciate the skill it took to do what he was doing and know that not too many people could do what he was doing. I get just as much thrill watching the min-sprints or iron block sprints race as I do watching the 410's. As long as the racing is close and the speeds close and they run 3 wide some times it's a great race to me.
May be we could change our rules a little get a smaller tire, cut down on HP, open up the race car a little I'm trying to find some one to make me a lexan arm guard right now. The people could see the person in the car and, know it is a person and say to them selves, how does that guy do that and I wonder if I could. Those guy's amazed people and that is one reason they didn't have to have a large field to draw a big crowd of people to the race track. I would sure go to see that race again, aint nothing more pretty than a big old champ car on a big mile dirt track setting up for the next turn, but I would like to see the driver do his job again also.
