Calamity For The Big Men

As a destroyer of racing cars, the course at Sebring, Florida has no equal. Its 5.2 miles of highspeed straightaways and sharp turns torment brakes, gearboxes and engines as no other circuit can.

Still, hardly anyone expected the fearful calamities that befell the most powerful cars and the most gifted drivers in last Saturday's 12-Hour Grand Prix of Endurance for sports cars at Sebring.

The weather held no threat; it was bright and balmy. The 65 cars were a ribbon of color on white concrete under the morning sun as their drivers awaited the Le Mans-type start.

A count-down sent the drivers off on their short foot race across the track to the cars; then a Corvette, one-third of the only all-American entry, got away first, and the pack boiled into the first turn. With traffic sorted out at the end of the first lap, there was this procession: Britain's great Stirling Moss in an Aston Martin leading 10 top 3-liter cars; his countryman Mike Hawthorn in a Ferrari; another Briton, Roy Salvadori, in the Aston's twin; California's Phil Hill, Ferrari; Britain's Archie Scott-Brown, Lister-Jaguar; Belgium's Olivier Gendebien, Ferrari; Illinois' Ed Crawford, Lister-Jaguar; Connecticut's John Fitch, Ferrari; Britain's Ivor Bueb, D Jaguar.

The smaller cars completed an engrossing spectacle, a field to remember, but it began to erode with remarkable speed.

Consider the case of Archie Scott-Brown. His Lister-Jaguar was tooling along on the fourth lap when suddenly there was a wheel alongside his right ear, with a Ferrari attached. Gendebien hadn't meant to drive up onto the Lister. It was just that Scott-Brown had slowed suddenly in front of him when a valve spring in the Jaguar engine broke and the engine sickened, and there was nowhere else to go.

Gendebien backed off and drove on (pitting for minor repairs), but the Jaguar valve spring ailment became epidemic. Soon Crawford retired, after his Lister-Jaguar made "expensive metallic sounds"; then the Ecurie Ecosse D Jaguards, victors in the famed Le Mans race, did likewise; and, finally, the D Jaguar of New Jersey's Walt Hansgen perished similarly.

Recently revised to fit the new 3-liter formula for the world championship, the engines had not been fully tested. In fact, the factory cabled its suspicions of the valve springs the night before.

Moss was driving superbly, gaining a solid lead on the second Aston and the Ferraris of Hawthorn and Hill. On the 31st lap he recorded (unofficially) the fastest round of the day—3 minutes 20.3 second. Not only a fine personal feat for Moss, it demonstrated how much the engineers are capable of improving a racing car when required to work to a maximum engine size.

After two hours, quick Ferrari pit work diminished Moss's big 2½-minute lead in a round of refueling stops. Co-driver Tony Brooks, furthermore, was sorely tried by the onrushing Ferrari of fellow Briton Peter Collins, leader of the polyglot Italian team. When Brooks handed the Aston back to Moss at four hours Collins became the leader; more fast pit work kept the lead for Collins' teammate Hill when he set forth again.