Adventure THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY NEW YORK on Wheels OF A ROAD RACING CHAMPION John Fitch, with William F. Nolan G. P. Putnam's Sons © 1959 by John Fitch and William F. Nolan Copyright 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956 by John Fitch All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission. Published simultaneously in the Dominion of Canada by Longmans, Green & Company, Toronto. Portions of this book have appeared, in somewhat different form, in True, Esquire, Atlantic Monthly, and Cavalier. Chapters 10 and 17 are used with the permission of Sports Illustrated. Chapter 20 was prepared in collaboration with Charles N. Barnard of True. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 59-11012 MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA VAN REES PRESS • NEW YORK This hook is dedicated to all those for whom automobiles are forever fascinating; for those who see in a turning wheel both the principle of motion and the promise of other horizons. !t is for those who see in a fine automobile an expression of man's will, one form of his art and the evidence of his longing to move with precision and grace. Contents Preface—William F. Nolan 9 Introduction—John Fitch 13 1. In Enemy Hands 19 2. At Racing's Threshold 28 3. Entering the Fray 34 4. With the Cunningham Team 41 5. Moving Toward Mercedes 54 6. A Test On the Ring 59 7. Success Back Home 67 8. With the Three-Pointed Star in Mexico 76 9. Luck, Bad and Good 96 10. Twenty-Four Hours at Speed 112 11. A Crash at Rheims 128 12. Over the Roof of the World 139 13. From Germany to Georgia 156 14. Victory in the Promised Land 171 7 8 CONTENTS 15. A Mixed Season 177 16. With Hollywood on The Racers 182 17. In the Thousand Miles 203 18. Tragedy at Le Mans 224 19. Monza, the Tourist Trophy and the Terrible Targa 236 20. With Corvette at Sebring 251 21. Racing the D-Type and the Super Sport 267 22. Full Circle 280 Illustrations will be found following page 160 Preface I FIRST met John Cooper Filch ill December of 1957, at Nassau, in the British West Indies. We were both there for the same reason: A race was on. I was covering the famous international Bahamas event for a West Coast motoring pub- lication; John was there to drive a fast Italian Maserati. My editor asked me to interview a few of the top drivers attend- ing for subsequent profiles, and I had determined that Fitch would be one of them. I knew that his was one of the most amazing careers in the sport of auto racing. I got my inter- view, wrote the profile, and it was duly printed. But I was not satisfied. Limited as I had been to a few thousand words, I was not able to really tell the action-packed life story of John Fitch as I felt it deserved to be told. Then I discovered that John had assembled some autobiographical material for a book, though he'd bogged down on the project. A col- laboration between us seemed the ideal solution. In August of 1958, I met John again at his new home in Lime Rock, Connecticut, and we further discussed the story. Much was written, but many important gaps remained to be filled and linking passages supplied. Taking the unfinished manuscript—as well as copious notes—back to California with me, I set to work. It was not unlike attempting to put to- gether an immense jigsaw puzzle with several pieces missing. John revised and added to my rough draft, and we arrived at a collaborative final—the result of which is Adventure on Wheels. 9 10 PREFACE Over the past decade—since the rediscovery of the sports car in (his country—John Fitch has successfully competed in dozens of exciting, hard-fought events around the world. In doing so, he has probably handled a greater variety of com- petition automobiles than any other American driver, having raced the Mercedes, Corvette, Cunningham, Ferrari, Mase- rati, Jaguar, MG, Allard, Chrysler, Porsche, Sunbeam-Talbot, HWM, Lagonda, Frazer-Nash, Effyh-Jap, Cooper-Bristol, Lotus, Nash-Healey, Fitch Model В and various Specials. He has officially competed on five prominent factory teams: Mer- cedes, Porsche, Cunningham, Sunbeam-Talbot and Corvette, winning laurels with each. In the case of Mercedes he was the only U. S. driver chosen to join this very exclusive organiza- tion. He is also the only American to win a coveted Alpine Cup in the famous rally across Europe. In road races around the globe he has some three-dozen major "firsts" to his credit, having won at Sebring, in the Mille Miglia, the Tourist Trophy, at Nassau, Buenos Aires, Watkins Glen, Bridgehampton, Elkhart Lake, Thompson, March Field, etc. Within two short years he rocketed to the top of the road racing profession, gaining the SCCA National Championship in 1951—and scoring either a first or second in 13 of the 14 races he entered that season. As team manager for Corvette, he twice led the big blue- and-white cars into combat at Sebring, also serving as a con- sultant for Chevrolet during that period. As recently as 1958, competing with a 2-liter Maserati, he placed third (for Class E-Modified) in SCCA championship ratings—and took a class second at Sebring in '59 driving for Porsche. A family man (with a charming wife and three fine sons), Fitch has been a fighter pilot (in Mustangs during World War II), a technical adviser (on a Fox film, The Racers), a designer and builder of some very potent Specials, a writer (having sold to a dozen top magazines), an inventor (with patents on several ideas), a circuit director (at beautiful Lime Rock Park) and an unofficial ambassador of good will in PREFACE 11 Europe (where the French affectionately call him "Jean Feech"). A lanky, quick-smiling six-footer, with a deliberate, un- ruffled manner of speaking, he is one of the most popular and highly respected drivers in the sport, whose calm, precise style behind the wheel has been a personal trademark for many years. He is smooth, and he is fast. Very, very fast. The John Fitch story is a fabulous one. It forms an integral part of motor racing history over the last decade here and abroad. It is filled with international color and incident, triumph and disaster. And above all else, it is just what the title declares it to be: a full and stirring account of one man's incredible Adventure on Wheels. WILLIAM F. NOLAN Introduction Horse racing has been often called the sport of kings, but what could be more appropriate in this mechanized age than to consider road racing the very timely sport of nations? Seldom is man's sense of natural employment so completely gratified. He has the hunt, the fight and the adventure all rolled into one experience when he sails off in a welter of noise, wind and intense anxiety to balance a slithering ma- chine, gone headstrong with speed, on a dancing ribbon of road. He strains his memory to retain each bump and feature of the surface, to fix each cutoff point; he forces and cajoles his car, stretches his nerve, pushes his skill, spars for position with the straining machines around him—and frightens him- self a dozen times in the course of a single event. But when he has finished, when he has driven well, no matter his final position, he feels that warm glow of fulfill- ment reserved for life's rare moments of achievement. He has made an intense effort, as much of the will as of the muscle, an effort in which he exposed both his strength and his pride, and he has satisfied himself. Road racing is not new in this country, although it lan- guished for many years in the United States after the First World War. Popular in Europe since the invention of the automobile, it was reborn in America in 1948, when the fever struck again on the streets of Watkins Glen, New York. Today there are dozens of major road races and hundreds of minor club events organized and run each year in the United States. 13 14 INTRODUCTION Meets such as those at Sebring in Florida and, more recently, Riverside in California attract the cream of international and Stateside talent each season. And though its rather stern nature precludes any poll winning in the "family-sport" or "togetherness" set, it continues to grow at a phenomenal pace as a spectator sport, firmly based on our nation's almost uni- versal use of the automobile. To race is to expose oneself, it is true, to physical danger, but also to much more. To race is to engage one's physical and mental powers of endurance, restraint, judgment and discipline with an intensity that renders other enterprise pale in comparison. The sheer joy of hurling a high-speed racing machine through a perfectly executed series of obstacles can be under- stood by every skier. Racing, like skiing, seems to embody the sweeping qualities of flight, in which the laboring and wallowing low-speed behavior of a car is completely trans- formed. Man and machine become a single athletic unit, rushing along in a loud disorder of protesting tires and straining engine under an apparent thread of control. Sus- pension, wheels, engine and all the other components of the car become extensions of the driver's senses.