Art Garner (1)

Upon starting this book I almost put it aside, as I feared that it was going to be too much in love with the Indy legend for its own good. However, built on what seems to be a deep foundation of actual reporting, Garner gives you a strong narrative of what May of '64 was like in Indianapolis, as technology and corporate ambition roiled the closed circle that was the Speedway. Apart from giving you a joint portrait of race fatalities Eddie Sachs & Dave MacDonald, Garner also gives you a balanced look at why disaster overtook this particular race. A big part of it was the downside of technological innovation, as the governing body overseeing the race really did not have the ability to police men with more ideas than sense; as while Mickey Thompson has received the bulk of the blame for bringing suspect cars to Indy, Colin Chapman of Team Lotus probably wasn't much better in terms of playing fast and loose with safety margins in the pursuit of victory. As for whether rookie driver Dave MacDonald really should have participated in that race, he was probably no more or less ready than any other Indy rookie; his worst sin was probably an unwillingness to walk away from a undeveloped prototype out of fear that he wouldn't get another crack at Indy. It all remains a sad story in a sport where tragedy is always an option. I know that after Swede Savage's death in 1973 it was a long, long time (over twenty years) before I really had the desire to watch racing again.… (meer)

The 1964 Indianapolis 500 made headlines, at the time, for two things: the second victory of a hard-charging young Texan named A. J. Foyt, and a fiery seven-car crash on the second lap that killed drivers Eddie Sachs and Dave MacDonald. The race’s greater significance became clear only in retrospect: Foyt was the last driver to win the 500 in one of the front-engine “roadsters” that had dominated racing at Indianapolis since the 1920s. Jim Clark, a Scot from the European grand prix circuit, was the face of the future. He won the pole position in 1964, and would win the race in 1965, in a machine like those he drove at Monza and Monte Carlo: lightweight, low-slung, and rear-engined. Many American teams were already moving in similar directions, and by the late 1960s roadsters were as obsolete as wood-and-wire biplanes.

The crash is the climax of Black Noon but Art Garner seamlessly, elegantly interweaves the story of Sachs and MacDonald with the larger narrative about technological change. That the two stories mesh as smoothly as they do, and that Garner makes the “technological revolution at the Speedway” thread as gripping as the “two drivers on the verge of a tragic, untimely death” one, is a credit to his skill as a writer. That the voices of (seemingly) every living person with a stake in the story are heard in his pages is a credit to his dedication as a researcher.

Even if your interest in the history of auto racing—let alone a fifty-year-old race—is only casual, Black Noon is well worth a look. If the topic seems too narrow, or too obscure, well . . . how much did you know about the Columbian Exposition of 1893 before you picked up Devil in the White City?… (meer)