Fords, fire and Foyt: The aftermath of the 1964 Indy 500
by will.higgins@indystar.com

As Donald Davidson hustled up the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's front straightaway, toward the fireball and plumes of black smoke in Turn Four, he was sure that the first Indianapolis 500 he attended would be his last. It was clear people were dead, drivers for sure, and maybe spectators.

"I remember thinking, 'How ironic," Davidson said. "I just got here, and now it's gone. Congress will close it down — big government investigation."

He could walk up the straightaway because the race had been stopped, red-flagged. That had never happened before. Davidson, who would later become the Speedway's famously encyclopedic-minded historian, was then a young Englishman in Beatle boots, in town to watch a race he'd studied from afar since he was in middle school. He'd learned the race down to its smallest factoid — who sponsored Joie Chitwood's car in 1947? Peters Special, duh — and had finally had saved up enough money working in Salisbury as a movie projectionist to come to his mecca.

The idea that the race would be permanently mothballed wasn't totally preposterous. In 1955, Switzerland had banned auto racing following a horrific crash at LeMans in France. In 1957, the Automobile Manufactuers Association had come out against auto racing. In '59, Sen. Richard L. Neuberger (D-Ore.) had sought a U.S. ban. "Some people call this sport," Neuberger wrote in Mechanix Illustrated. "I call it wanton, tragically unneccessary bloodshed."

After the 1964 Indy 500, the Chicago Tribune urged that the race be discontinued. The Washington Post sensed a "new revulsion" towards the 500, which called it a "senseless spectacle." A TV anchorman in Detroit, arguing for a ban, said that Memorial Day "is a time to pay our respects to those who have defended our country and our right to freedom. It is not a day to kill people."

The carmaker American Motors, in newspaper ads, proclaimed its aversion to auto racing: "This is not in the public interest, and Rambler will have no part in it."

It had been a weird month of May at the Speedway, and an exciting one, on several levels: Race car technology was advancing at warp speed. Go the the IMS' Hall of Fame Museum and see the winning cars lined up. Notice there is little change between 1953 and 1963, all the cars cigar-shaped "roadsters" with the same Offenhauser engines mounted in the front. In 1964, a third of the 33 starters were configured radically differently, with their engines behind the driver.

It was a trend begun by European road racers, several who were in Indianapolis in 1964, including the superstar Scotsman Jim Clark. Clark's English-built Lotus was not only the fastest car in the field, it was painted green, a color long avoided at the superstitious IMS.

Even the Pace Car was a departure. The now-iconic Ford Mustang had just rolled off the assembly line, so new that many of the 200,000-plus race fans had yet to see one.

Dave MacDonald

Eddie Sachs

In an effort to enliven its image, Ford had begun building racing engines. Seven of the race cars in the '64 500 were powered by Ford engines, including the cars driven by Eddie Sachs and Dave MacDonald.

A half century later, one of the darkest days in Indianapolis 500 history is revisited in Art Garner's book about the race that claimed the lives of Eddie Sachs and Dave MacDonald. Phillip B. Wilson / The Star

Sachs, 37, was a veteran racer and a hammy crowd favorite. Round-faced and quick to smile, he was known as "the clown prince of racing." Sachs was said to have wept with emotion in the moments before each of his eight Indy 500 starts, the race meant that much to him.

"I was warned by the other photographers not to make friends with any of the drivers," said Bob Daugherty, the Associated Press photographer whose image of the crash would horrify newspaper readers worldwide the next morning. "But friends find you. Eddie Sachs was just an awfully nice guy. It's hard not to be friendly with someone like that. I liked him very much."

MacDonald, a 27-year old rookie from California, was talented but not widely known. On the second lap, in Turn Four, MacDonald lost control of his car. The car slammed into the inside wall, exploded, then slid across the track in a ball of smoke and flame. Sachs' car then slammed into MacDonald's, causing a second explosion.

"I'd seen bad crashes," said Mike Ahern, who was one of the reporters broadcasting the race on the radio, "but this one was different, this was shocking."

"Wheels were flying, flaming tires flying into the crowd," said Daugherty. "The track was an inferno."

A brisk southeast wind blew the smoke into the Turn Four grandstand, and spectators there lit out. "My uncle, he's deceased but he was sitting right there," said George Ebaugh, Crawfordsville, "and he told me people were getting away as quick as they could because of the heat." All escaped injury. Ebaugh, who has attended every 500 since 1961, was nearly a mile away in Turn One but even from that distance, he said, "you could tell something very tragic was happening."

Ebaugh recalls the spectators going quiet. Old photos show them all doing the same thing: standing, looking towards the conflagration, craning their necks, straining to see the action. Race fans have been said to have a too-keen fascination with calamity. A YouTube video of the 1964 Sachs-MacDonald crash has attracted nearly two million views, a million fewer than Dan Weldon's 2011 fatal crash.

Carroll Shelby tried to talk Dave out of driving this car, told him he would build him a Lotus and have Shelby American crew for him. Dave could not break his promise to drive for Mickey Thompson. The unstable machine would cost him his life.

From left: Jim Clark, Dave MacDonald and Dan Gurney

"Crashing is a part of racing," said Eddie Sachs III, who was two-years-old when his father was killed. "It can be a form of entertainment. I don't think people hope for a crash. If there's going to be a crash, people want to see it. Everybody stands up. Something has gone wrong, and people like to see it. But they don't want people hurt."

Davidson arrived at the scene of the wreck to find the flames extinguished and a phalanx of track workers and racing team members standing by the two cars. "You'd at first think they were curiosity seekers," Davidson said, "but they seemed to be there to protect the crowd from seeing (the horror), or maybe to protect (the deceased drivers') dignity, to an extent. It seemed to be an unwritten, unchoreographed ritual. They were standing three or four deep by the cars, and they did not move."

After a delay of one hour and 40 minutes, the 1964 Indy 500 resumed. "I couldn't imagine them wanting to have a race after that," said Daugherty, the photographer, "but it had to happen. There was a tradition that had to live on. And they...cranked it up. I got back into my spot and finished shooting the race. I have no idea who won."

The winner was A.J. Foyt, who appeared less than jubilant in Victory Lane, Victory Lane, holding up a copy of a hot-off-the-presses newspaper with the banner headline: "FOYT WINNER IN 500/SACHS, MACDONALD DIE."

Despite the public outcry, the Indy 500 was not banned.

In 1965, it was televised nationally for the first time.

Learn more about the 1964 race in "Black Noon: The Year They Stopped the Indy 500," by former automotive PR man Art Garner.