I have to give my mother credit for she was a step ahead of me. As much as I love motorsports and for as much as I follow motorsports, she found something that had slip by the goalie if you will and found something I didn't even know existed. To be fair, I have to give George Phillips at Oilpressure blog an assist. I don't know exact how my mother got to his site but he set her up for a gift of a lifetime.
The gift is three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Wilbur Shaw's autobiography titled Gentlemen, Start Your Engines. Phillips has a great synopsis of the book on his blog and I encourage all of you to read it. It wasn't a book I dived into immediately. Life got in the way. As a student who reads hundreds of pages of textbooks and course material a week, there isn't a lot of time for personal reading. The book sat idle for a few months before I really got going. After reading a few dozen pages, the book sat idle again for another few months. Working 40-plus hours a week during the summer took it's toll and by the time I would get home each night, all I wanted to do was eat and go to sleep.
As the summer was coming to a close and another semester was approaching I looked at the greatest gift that I have ever been given and set an ultimatum. Read the damn thing by Christmas 2014 so my mother's treasure hunt calling bookstores hundreds of miles away wouldn't be all for naught one year later. I made time for the book, staying up late if I had to and slowly chipping away at 313 pages of Shaw's life. Some days I could only do ten pages, others I would crack out 30 pages in one sitting and return to do fifteen later that night. As I was nearing the end of the book, I found myself wishing for more as I couldn't put it down. An hour of reading would become two and dinner would sometimes have to wait until I could find a good point to stop at.
By the middle of October, I had finished the book with a lot to take away from it. Once again, I encourage you to read George Phillip's synopsis if you want a full run down of what the book covers but I will touch on a few points that stuck with me:
First, what a a roller coaster life Wilbur Shaw lived. Just a few months after finishing fourth on his Indianapolis 500 debut, Shaw lost his first wife and child in childbirth. How fortunate we are to live in an age where deaths in childbirth are rare. I had a niece and nephew born within a year and a half of reading the book and never once worried about my sister or future sister-in-law. Sometimes we take for granted what we have today, especially when getting nostalgic about the past.
On a less serious note, I am amazed in the lifestyle differences. Shaw would remarried and he and his wife would go down to Florida each winter as he would chase the land speed record on the sands of Daytona Beach. When he wasn't producing one world record, he was competing in boat races in Miami and Havana. Could you imagine an active driver being allowed to that? Could you imagine Will Power doing boat racing in Australia? Roger Penske would kill him. Or Ryan Hunter-Reay chasing down a world record? Forget it.
As someone who has always grown up unable to go to Cuba (although that may change in the near future), I am fascinated in what it was like during the late-1920s/early-1930s. Shaw talks about going there as if it was no big deal. During prohibition, Havana sounded like the place to be. My how things can change as I think going to Cuba is a massive opportunity seeing as how it has been cut off to U.S. citizens for over half a century.
Second, on motorsports related topics, the book really illustrates how the emphasize on safety has changed. Take this except:
Ever since the first automobile race on a closed circuit, one of the most important hazards had been slick spots on the track caused by oil leaks. For several years, a few of us had been campaigning for regulations which would eliminate that danger. It wasn't unusual for a car to use fifty or sixty gallons of oil in the Indianapolis event and eighty per cent of it was on the track during the late stages of any race. Every time a car stopped for fuel and tires, it also took on another ten or twenty gallons of oil.Think about NASCAR today where they will throw a caution every four laps for a hot dog wrapper and what the drivers of the early-1930s faced. Like today, drivers did fight for change and by 1933 a rule was passed allow a car to use no more than six and a half gallons of oil and by 1934 a rule was passed limiting the teams to only use 45 gallons of fuel for the Indianapolis 500.
Another difference between the time period is reliability. Shaw recounts the 1933 Indianapolis 500 when Louis Meyer had a four-lap lead over Shaw with two to go and everyone was tense about making it to the finish. If someone had a four-lap lead in next year's Indianapolis 500, we would never hear the end about how it was a terrible race and how it killed the ratings and how IndyCar is doomed. A four-second lead would piss off fans today. It just goes to show how motorsports has changed. Back then, four laps was a good lead but not a given. The drama wasn't over how close the finish was going to be, it was will the leader finish? If not, can second-place hold on to overtake the leader? It is a completely different mindset between a motorsports fan in 1933 and a motorsports fan in 2014. Today, we take it reliability for granted as mechanical failures are so few and far between but they once made racing unpredictable. Mechanical failures can still occur in a race today but they rarely happen and rarely happen to a leader with a ginormous lead.
Shaw talks about the effects of The Great Depression on motorsports and how many promoters had gone out of business. Shaw and nine other drivers (Louis Meyer, Fred Frame and Bill Cummings to name a few) formed Champion Drivers, Inc. to promote their own races and raise their own prize money. If there is one thing those around IndyCar has complained about the most in the last decade is lack of promotion of the series. I don't see any of the current drivers on the grid having the motivation to rally his compatriots on the grid and bring IndyCar to the forefront in a market. Michael Andretti promotes races but he is retired. I can't see the likes of Scott Dixon, James Hinchcliffe, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Justin Wilson coming together to promote an IndyCar race at Michigan and being successful. Hell, the people who are hired in promotional departments at Texas Motor Speedway and Pocono Raceway can't draw people in for IndyCar races, why would we think the drivers could do any better?
It is kind of ironic that Shaw talks in his book about it would be more profitable for him to be an owner-driver than for him just being an independent driver, bouncing from team to team. Seeing how few owner-drivers there are in motorsports (Tony Stewart, Ed Carpenter, Patrick Dempsey. Those are all I can think of) and how much single-car teams struggle to make ends meet, especially in IndyCar, it's just a statement we wouldn't hear today.
I wonder what Shaw would think of motorsports today. Having lost his a day shy of his 52nd birthday in a plane accident on October 30, 1954, Shaw missed out on the rear-engined revolution at the Speedway and the influx of Lotus and the turbines. I think if Shaw had lived into the 1960s and been around when Colin Chapman and Jim Clark were showing up to the Speedway, the Indianapolis 500 might still be on the Formula One schedule. I don't know that for a fact that would have happened but seeing how good of a businessman Shaw was from his book and seeing the interest in the race from European-based teams, I think he would have done more to make the Indianapolis 500 more of an international event. I know there are some of you that will point out that the Indianapolis 500 is an international event today and that there are more foreign-born drivers on the grid than American but I think Shaw could have taken the Indianapolis 500 to heights we can only dream about today.
If you are wondering how to get your own copy of Gentlemen, Start Your Engines, there are two for sale on Amazon at the time of this post. Outside of that, this isn't a book you will find at Barnes & Noble. If you want a copy, it is going to be used and there is no guarantee the condition will be great. My mother was fortunate to find one with no water damage, binding intact and no pages missing. If you do decide to pursue getting this book, I wish you the best.
While reading the book, I wondered how difficult it would be to get the book back into print. I am not talking about a million copies but a couple hundred. I am sure it is something that could be crowdfunded and I would hope fans would see how rare this book is and would support it. I think it would be a big hit during the month of May if it were for sale at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame and Museum. I don't want this book to die. I want this to be something that motorsports fans can read forty years from now.
As I said before, this is greatest gift I have ever received. While Christmas 2014 might be out of the question for this being a gift for you or a race fan you know, this is something you can put on pole position for Christmas 2015.
