[Audio is from original newsreel commentaries]
There are few of them, the Grand Prix drivers. Don't think of them as sportsmen, like jockeys or footballers.
Think of them rather as fighter pilots. Weaving
up pattern with half a tonne of metal. Harnessing forces bent on their destruction.
To defy reason and the law of gravity. To challenge death.
To challenge their own doubts and then to triumph.
It's flat out for Cobb's corner in the heats for the Daily Express International Trophy Race.
Number 1, with his Alfa Romeo, is Argentine crack Juan Fangio
who has just broken the lap record twice. Number 35 is Rich Parnell in his special Ferrari.
Not bothering about records, just yet.
Number 2 is Farina, in another Alfa. And he's smashing Fangio's new records.
The final ought to be a cracker. But first, the production cars race.
Which means cars you can put your name down on the waiting list for.
Here's Winterbottom's Frazer-H chasing Buckley's Bristol.
Jacobs is going well in his MG. Then Salvadori leaves the track.
Ambulance men find Salvadori suffering from a fractured skull and multiple injuries.
His condition is critical.
At the Indianapolis Track, 33 drivers thunder
on the circuit in the 500 mile race. All eyes are on Bill Vukovich, winner 2 years
running and flat out for the hat trick in this great American classic.
But death says no. In a sickening second, cars pile up and Vukovich
smashes them in 150 mph. Twisted wrecked and searing flame end Bill's life
in a series of blazing somersaults. Seven other drivers are injured.
Firemen race to help but they're too late. Bill Vukovich has seen his last checkered flag.
A miracle that no one else was killed in this five-car disaster.
Still there is danger for the track.
All seems to be going smoothly when disaster strikes at 125 mph.
Levegh's Mercedes collides and blows up.
In a few ghastly seconds, death wipes out whole families. Levegh is killed before his wife's eyes and
some 70 spectators with him. Among the bodies, frantic survivors seek their friends.
The Mercedes was made partly of magnesium
alloy, which blazes like a furnace.
Starters in the 1964 race know that 56 men have died here since 1909.
And this year too is marked for disaster. Dave MacDonald hits the wall, bursts into
flames. No time to clear the track before Eddie Sachs
following close on his tail, piles straight into the burning wreckage.
Sachs is killed instantly and MacDonald is fatally burnt.
One by one, five other cars plunge into the flames. Watch the right of the track.
Ronnie Newman's car hitting the inside bank. Newman throws himself into the grass and rolls
over to put out his flaming overalls. For the first time in its history, the Indianapolis
500 grinds to a halt in mid race.
It then started to rain. The track was slippery.
On the second lap, tragedy struck. The blazing car, an experimental Honda,
had gone out of control at a tight, hairpin bend. It had somersaulted, crashed and burst into
flames with almost a full load of fuel on board.
French runner Jo Schlesser was taking part in his third Grand Prix.
It was his last. Ten spectators were injured in the fiery crash
whcih claimed the life of 40-year-old Schlesser, a married man with a 12-year-old daughter.
To seek in every hairpin bend the ultimate. The finite limit beyond which man and machine
cannot survive. It's neither sane or prudent, but it is Glory.
A towering fusion of man and machine. When, for a trembling instant, man is supreme.