Just when you thought your favorite driver is the biggest, baddest ever….

[Krooser]

You find out that your Grandfather had bigger balls than anyone today… Ted Horn #1 and Hal Robinson #26 @ DuQuoin 1948.

[CIRF]

You find out that your Grandfather had bigger balls than anyone today… Ted Horn #1 and Hal Robinson #26 @ DuQuoin 1948.

No roll cage, no shoulder harness and sometimes no lap belts, no personal fire protection, tires that could blow and come apart as often as not, no system to impede fuel tank rupture among a host of other things lacking in today's safety systems.

These guys joyously and without hesitation jumped in these cars with no regard to life or limb. Sadly, losing a driver was just about a monthly occurrence. Smokey Yunick relates in his autobiography of drivers who drove for him would not wear gloves so as to get a better feel for what the car and tires were doing through the steering wheel. Smokey wrote that some of his drivers would routinely get out of the racecar with palms and fingers bleeding from the vibration and difficulty of navigating the cars through the turns, etc.

Very few drivers came through that era unscathed which makes the career's of guys like A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti, among others, so remarkable. So many others like Ted Horn, Don Branson, Tony Bettenhausen, Jud Larson, Di ck Atkins, Bob Sweikert, Bill Vukovich, Jimmy Bryan, Ed Elisian and Eddie Sacks, among many, many more didn't survive that era. We'll never know what those fallen drivers would have accomplished behind the wheel of a racecar, but there were some great, great drivers who had their career and lives cut short from driving cars just like the ones posted above.

[zyoung25]

Those guys were beasts no doubt about it. They literally took a chance of dying every time they got in the car.

[t3r3e3]

Zoom in a little bit....old Hal spent a lot of time at the gun show.

[Mudweiser]

Now that is bad a$$! Much like the old saying, they site don't make em like they used to..

[Krooser]

Yep… and he was a Limey! Born in England.

http://www.champcarstats.com/drivers/RobsonHal.htm

[IZZOJR16]

stuff should have been outlawed, crazy to race like that. doing something dangerous is one thing and doing something half suicide is another. can't believe people back then dragged their feet when it came to safety, it took a lot of tragedies before people smartened up and made safety a priority.

[CIRF]

Zoom in a little bit....old Hal spent a lot of time at the gun show.

I downloaded the pic and zoomed in but I still don't see what you're talking about!

[plunks7]

I downloaded the pic and zoomed in but I still don't see what you're talking about!

His arms. The gun show.

[CIRF]

His arms. The gun show.

Got it. Thanks plunks7.

[Crashmagnet]

I don't want to take anything away from AJ (who I consider as the greatest driver to ever live) or Mario or Al Unser or John(not a nice word)(not a nice word)(not a nice word)(not a nice word), but all these guys lived. To touch on CIRF's post, there were tons of great racers back at this time that never got to win as many races as the guys that are commonly thought of as the greats, simply because they were cut down early in their careers

[Crashmagnet]

Ted Horn for example never finished outside the top 4 at Indy from 1936-1948, but never tasted the milk as he lost his life there at DuQoin in 48.

[ride height]

You got to remember most of those guys just came back from WWII. Compared to that, bare arm no rollcage racing was a picnic.

[Krooser]

CM…. this was DuQuion September '48. Horn died in the October race from what I read.

[CIRF]

You are right Krooser. It was October of '48. As a personal side note, I have a very close friend who is 92 years old and was in the grandstands at Du Quoin the day that Ted Horn was killed. He says he remembers the accident well.

Horn was a very superstitious man. He believed it was bad luck for his wife to watch the race. She was there that day. He refused to have his picture taken before a race. There is a picture of him just before he went out on the track. He had a lucky coin he put in his shoe during races. The lucky coin was not in his shoe and was found later at his home or in the hauler. He was fanatical about changing front spindles in preparation for every race. He didn't put new spindles on for the race at Du Quoin and the right front broke on the second lap. There were a lot of contradictions in his raceday protocol and prior preparation for the in which he died.

Horn had the championship wrapped up in '48 at the time of his death and didn't really want to run the race at Du Quoin and wouldn't have but he had promised the promoter he would be there to help bolster the crowd. This was only the second race at Du Quoin following its construction and the promoter wanted to get off to a good start and Ted Horn assured a bigger crowd.

Horn was adept in poetry, art and music and did some fairly extensive studying of the fine arts while attending a private school in Ohio. Ted horn was an acute exception to the racer stereotype of that era and really kind of downplayed his classical training during his racing years. He really wasn't your racing type.

Ted Horn gets grossly overlooked in racing history and lore but Horn was as good as there ever was and that includes Foyt, Andretti and the Unsers. It's one of those deals where if they didn't do it in our lifetime they can't be as good as those that did.

[Crashmagnet]

Great post and thanks for the info CIRF, honestly until recently I had never heard of Ted Horn. But I came across his career stats and was shocked, this cat was the man. There are others besides him as well. Also a good point made by ride height about WWII. The men of this era just seem absolutely fearless to me.

[CIRF]

Your welcome Crashmagnet. I had to go back to an old issue of Open Wheel Magazine from about 20 years ago to retrieve some bits and pieces of the info contained in my previous post. I used to remember a lot of that stuff but time kinda' dims the details.

As far as the WWII generation is concerned, there is no doubt those people were absolutely duty and honor driven to do whatever it took to get through The Great Depression and WWII. It's no wonder the guys and women that survived that conflict returned home unafraid of most anything. They'd already seen the worst of the worst.

If we were confronted with the same imminent danger to our way of life the loss of WWII would have presented I'm not sure we'd have enough service age men and women to effectively thwart that sort of evil. I think too many would feel defending our way of life isn't in their plans and wouldn't want to be bothered.