Ancient Hixtory

The 1904 Race

State of the Art

In 1904, breakdowns were to be expected. The automobiles of the era were not reliable, and driving them long distances over rough roads at high speed made things worse. Thus, a race car had to carry a "mechanician."

The Ford Motor Company was one year old, and the Model T still four years in the future, but other automakers were on the scene. Only a few of those who supplied cars for the Vanderbilt Cup Race exist today: FIAT, Renault, and Mercedes (no Benz yet). The cars were not standard models; each had unique quirks. This uniqueness made the men in the passenger seats indispensable. As they rode, they were vigilant, listening and watching for any hint of problems. They had stocked their toolboxes beforehand, trying to be ready for anything they might need as the hundreds of miles sped by.

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 2, 1904

The vehicles were fast, heavy, and clumsy, with high centers of gravity. Little was known about designing suspensions that could keep them upright and controllable. Ruts in dirt roads, excessive cornering speed, or blown tires could cause roll-overs that threw or crushed the men in the cars to their deaths. Even if nothing went wrong with a car, its mechanician might be momentarily distracted by a problem, relax his grip on the car, and get bounced headfirst to the ground.

Spectators fared as poorly. Despite frequent newspaper reports of cars' striking onlookers at races, the public refused to believe that standing at the edge of - or even on - the course, as close as possible to the trajectory of an approaching car, was a bad idea. What could go wrong? Anything. More than once, a punctured tire diverted a ton of speeding steel towards a cluster of spectators.

The Course

Nassau County was chosen for the first races in the series. This is not surprising, given the Vanderbilts' ties to Long Island, the rural countryside which still prevailed in Nassau, and the ready access to the Port of New York which it offered European participants.

The race consisted of 10 clockwise laps around a 30.24 mile course, almost triangular in shape. The points of the triangle were Jericho, Plainedge, and Queens Village. Starting at Westbury, cars went east to Jericho, south through Hicksville to Plainedge at the "Massapequa Corner" (reportedly the most dangerous turn), west to Queens Village, briefly north, then finally east, regaining the road to Westbury and Jericho. The cars were started at two-minute intervals, and a scoreboard at the Westbury grandstand was constantly updated to show each car's cumulative elapsed time on the course.

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 11, 1904

There were railroad crossings. At Hempstead and Hicksville, competitors slowed for "controls," areas at which they stopped for mandatory inspection. When ready, they were escorted slowly through the grade crossing area by officials on bicycles, who first ascertained that the route would be clear of rail traffic.

The newspaper story excerpted below relates how an LIRR train was cleared to proceed through a crossing during the race, and promptly almost hit a speeding auto that failed to stop for inspection. This was not a matter of recklessness; the car's brake lines had failed as it approached the control. So as not to collide with the train, the driver sped in front of the moving locomotive, with a very few feet to spare. Once safely beyond the crossing, he slowed and coasted to a stop, his race finished.

New York Press, October 9, 1904

A Fatality

During the second lap of the race, the Mercedes of driver George Arendt blew a tire at high speed near Elmont. The bare wheel rim caught in streetcar tracks, and caused the car to roll, crushing to death the mechanician, Carl Mensel.

Top Finishers

After about five and one-half hours, the contest ended very abruptly (see notes below). French cars held the two highest spots, followed by an American car. The winning driver was described by the press as "an American millionaire."

*To calculate average speed, one must exclude both the time spent not racing in the controls, and the distance driven in the controls. The speeds above were calculated from the published times and an adjusted race length of 284.4 miles.

**When Heath's Panhard finished his last lap, no car still racing could possibly beat his time except one - the Clement-Bayard. As soon as Clement's final time was posted, the spectators saw that Heath had won, and they ran down from the grandstand, flooding the track. With the remaining contestants still racing towards the finish, Willie K desperately ran amongst the people, urging them to clear the course for their own safety. Quick-thinking officials telephoned others stationed around the track, stopping the race immediately. The standings from third place down were assigned according to where cars stood at that time.

Albert Clement's time made his the closest second-place finish of any international road race to date, but Heath's approach to the race had kept Clement closer than he might have been. Heath tried to balance his pace against the limits of his Panhard's endurance, driving only as fast as required to maintain first place. This strategy proved wise; another Panhard driver went all-out from the start. He recorded the fastest lap of the race - but during the fourth lap, his car's clutch failed, and his race was over.

Some highlights of the race can be viewed on several YouTube postings, including this one.

***

Beyond 1904

The race over, it was time for Vanderbilt to revise his plans, for there had been many problems.

The track record (no pun intended) of European road racing was rife with serious injuries and fatalities, with respect both to spectators and participants. Casualties seemed to be unavoidable. A number of people feared that the Vanderbilt Races had brought the same problem to the U.S.

New York Times Editorial, October 9, 1904

Furthermore, closing public roads for such an event had been met with legal challenges. Some were based on individual cases (i.e., people whose businesses or lives had been impacted by road closures). Others were based on more abstract issues, e.g. should taxpayer-funded public roads ever be closed so that wealthy non-residents could race?

There also had been ugly, unspoken objections. The night before the race, nails had been sprinkled on the track near the starting area, causing numerous tire punctures. Worse, a rifle had been fired blindly into a barn used as headquarters for one of the racing teams; no one was injured, and the car was not significantly affected. Apparently, people in the "good old days" were not always innocent and kind.

Willie K realized that the differences between America and Europe ran deep indeed.

That was true in another way, too. American country roads, although newer by millennia than their European counterparts, were often unsuitable for ordinary driving, let alone for racing. Hoping to stir public support for road improvements, Vanderbilt undertook construction of the Long Island Motor Parkway, relics of which survive today. Some of it was used later in the Cup Race series, as a safer alternative to public roads along the southern leg of the courses.