History Lesson 
The World's Fastest Automobile Race
Mike Hiss says that 220 mph isn't really that fast. Don't you believe him.
IT WAS COLD AND DREARY and raining in College Station on the eve of the Texas Twin 200's at the Texas World Speedway. It didn't look like racing weather and it didn't feel like racing weather, but everyone was very determined and hopeful that the races could be run. The promoters had been beating the gong for months, publicizing the event. This was to be the first ever U.S. Automobile Club (USAC) Championship race with its Indianapolis-type cars in Texas. The track was being billed as the world's fastest and, indeed, some of the cars had been turning laps over 200 miles per hour in practice.
The greatest drivers in USAC racing were there: drivers like Mario Andretti, A.J. Foyt, the Unsers, Roger McCluskey and Lloyd Ruby. The real bigshots. Of course this didn't come as any surprise to anyone who knew anything about racing. There are only eleven races on the Championship tour and the drivers can be pretty well counted on to show up. For some reason they are not like pro golfers who get tired and have to take off a week every month or so. Perhaps golf is more demanding.
Texas World Speedway is fast because it's so highly banked. It's four degrees higher than the Michigan track, formerly the highest banked track on the circuit. The drivers don't like it at all. They won't always say this to be printed in the newspapers, but that's what they think. Mainly, they don't think it's a fit track for Champ cars. They believe the high banking makes it more suitable for stock cars. And the look of the track does give the impression that it's a poorly disguised compromise between the glamour draw of the occasional Champ car race and the bread and butter stocks that can be run almost any time. Before sanctioning, the USAC officials called it a course for stock cars. Afterwards, however, they began laboriously to paint a different picture, the main blue-sky being that it was the "fastest in the world." But, then, the officials didn't have to do any of the driving.
The day before a race there's not much to do. The qualifying had been the day before and the cars had been locked up, not to be started again until the day of the race. The rain and general dreary conditions only seemed to emphasize this restless lassitude. The drivers mostly stayed in their rooms with their wives or girlfriends. A few could be seen during the day in the hotel coffee shops and restaurants, where they studied the weather with great interest. The drivers had a lot on the line—the need to get in a race car and drive it just as fast as it would go. The reason for this need is something they could know, perhaps, but certainly wouldn't, or couldn't, articulate. But the race at Phoenix the previous week had been rained out and they were all very hungry to get the season started and to get a car out on the track in competition.
They had a shrimp boil and beer bust that night at the National Guard Armory for the drivers and the press. Very seldom do all the big name drivers come to these functions. Generally they pass the duty around among themselves. This night Bobby Unser had drawn the black bean and he was there, very friendly, very willing to talk to anyone who had anything to ask him. But it was a press occasion and he had on his public face and attitude. He answered, patiently and willingly, all the stock questions with the stock responses: yes, he was glad to be in Texas; yes, he liked the track; yes, it was fast; yes, his car was ready; no, he wasn't taking anything for granted and he'd be watching for Andretti and Foyt and the others. Occasionally, though, you'd catch him glancing at his watch with a drawn, anxious look on his face as if he couldn't wait to get away and get by himself and think about the race to come. He'd won the pole position by virtue of a qualifying speed of 212.766 mph, three miles faster than Gary Bettenhausen who was on the outside of the first row.
All during that evening a Western string band cranked out the standard country hits, barely overriding the noise level from the conversation at the long tables piled with strongly aromatic shrimp. Mike Hiss, the USAC rookie-of-the-year for 1972, was at one of the tables with his wife and a few friends who had flown in with him from California. In a way, Hiss seemed out of place. He does not look like most of the drivers, the majority of whom have come out of garages and pit crews. Hiss didn't come up the small track, dirt track route. He'd been a road racer, driving the kind of cars associated with Graham Hill and Jackie Clark and other gentlemen of the track. Hiss is tall and thin with slim hands and a long-nosed, aristocratic face. He just misses being handsome. The USAC officials like to refer to him as the "glamour boy" of the circuit, mainly because he'd been a centerfold in Playgirl Magazine. He doesn't like to talk about that, however, and you quickly get the impression that he wishes he hadn't done it.
Hiss, at first, seems gentle and quiet, nothing like a man who runs those thunderbolts 200 miles per hour. But then you start talking racing and he erupts. "Like it? Like racing? Damn right I do. I love it. That's all I want to do. I mean, what else is there?"
I have asked a lot of drivers if they are scared, if they race in fear. None of them has ever said he was. With most of them I never believed it; but when Hiss said he wasn't scared, I believed him.
"Even over 200 miles per hour? That's awfully fast."
He just shrugged. "It doesn't seem that much faster, not when everyone is running about the same."
In the week before the race A. J. Foyt had been talking in the newspapers about the speeds becoming unsafe. All you can do, he'd said, is point the car and pray. USAC is going to have to do something, maybe change the rules. We're going too fast, he'd said.
But Hiss wasn't buying any of that. "That's Foyt," he'd commented. "Trying to psyche everyone out. He hopes everyone else will slow down. But you watch the race and see if he does. No, we're not having any of Mister Foyt's moves."
Hiss would be starting in last place. He'd been turning laps at 198 during practice, sufficient to move him well up in the starting grid. But, on his second qualifying lap, his car had jumped out of gear. When that happens the engine over revs and blows. So that was where he was, out of the race, until mechanical attrition began knocking other cars out. Finally they'd had to draw for a spot and Hiss had won it. That very night his crew had worked straight through putting in a new engine. Now he was happy, very happy, that he could run. "I'll suck those babies up" he said. "It'll be hard, but I'll pass four cars in the first lap."
It had stopped raining late that night when I ran into a young man I'd been looking for for two years. It was Tom Sneva, whom I'd met at the Phoenix race track when he was getting his first Champ car ride. He'd been a sprint car champion on the West Coast, but Champ car rides are hard to come by. Rollo Volstedt had given him his spare car to see if he could qualify it. Sneva had tried desperately, but the car was a sled and just wouldn't run up to speed. In the next season I'd watched eagerly for him in the newspapers, but there hadn't been a word. Now here he was, sitting tiredly over a glass of milk and a piece of pie at the Castle Lorna motel. For some reason I'd overlooked his name in the starting lineup. He'd qualified well, starting 17th in the field of 26. He was just now in his second Champ car. It was something of a coincidence that I'd been present, at such divergent points and times, both times he was running.
He said he'd been getting along all right. When no one would give him another chance, he'd gone back to the sprint cars. Finally, with time running out, a group in his home town of Sprague, Washington, had formed a syndicate and bought him a car. But it was still a very poor-boy operation. Sneva, his father and two other men had trailered the car down from Washington. He was not only the driver, he was also one of the mechanics, in contrast to the sponsored teams which had crews of 12 and more for each car. He was tired because they'd been working 24 hours straight trying to correct some oil leaks in the engine. "It's a real ratty engine," he said. "There's drivers out here wouldn't even use it for a practice engine."
But he was in the field, and he'd be running.
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