Sport: Rolling Road

Automobile racing on roads, once a major sport in the U. S., is now impractical because of heavy traffic. Last week in Manhattan entries closed for a unique event which its promoters hope will restore road racing to its onetime prestige: a .400-mile Columbus Day race for a new Vanderbilt Cup, on Roosevelt Raceway at Westbury, L. I. A field of 63 drivers, representing England, Italy, France. Germany and Australia as well as the U. S., will start qualifying trials this week.

Major difference between the races for the cup put up by William K. Vanderbilt in 1904, which was the major event of U. S. auto racing before the War, and next month’s race, for which the trophy was donated by his 22-year-old cousin George (brother of Turfman Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt) will be the road. The original Vanderbilt Cup racecourse was over Long Island’s oiled dirt roads. Roosevelt Raceway is an extraordinary establishment conceived by the first U. S. winner (1908) of the old Vanderbilt Cup race. Major George Robertson. After the War Major Robertson admired Italy’s Monza course near Milan, thought a similar course near New York City might be a profitable venture. Three years ago he found a suitable spot—old Roosevelt Field, named for Roosevelt Fs aviator son Quentin, killed in the War, the field whence Lindbergh. Byrd. Chamberlin ct til. took off for Europe.

The group of financiers who back Major Robertson is headed by Washington’s famed Laundryman George (“Long Live Linen”) Marshall, whose other sporting venture is the Boston Redskins (football). To construct the track in record time they hired Engineer Mark Linenthal, who built Boston’s Suffolk Downs horse-race track, physically perhaps the best in the U. S., in less than 60 clays. Last week Engineer Linenthal’s job, started in June, was practically finished.

Object of Roosevelt Raceway, like the Monza course, is to combine the advantages of road-racing (tests for automobile motors, excitement for spectators) with the advantages of track-racing (high speed, visibility for crowds). Roosevelt Raceway’s four-mile track has a three-quarter mile straightaway thanked by grandstands. The other three and a quarter miles, lying just beyond the straightaway, are coiled into three major loops, shaped like the profile of a Parker House roll. The track winds through 16 turns all within clear view of the grandstand crowd. Most elaborate plant of its kind in the world, the Raceway cost $1,000,000, which its first race may pay back. An enormous public address system will inform the crowd what is happening as cars roll around the rolls. Stands and infield will hold 160,000 spectators, which Roosevelt Raceway hopes to draw twice a year hereafter, on Independence and Columbus Days.

In next month’s race, U. S. professionals like Lou Meyer, Ted Horn, ”Wild Bill” Cummings, accustomed to high speeds on oval tracks with banked turns, will have their first chance to compete with the best European road drivers, of whom many are socialites like Italy’s Count Antonio Brivio, England’s Hon. Brian Lewis and Francis Richard Henry Penn Curzon, 5th Earl Howe. Only U. S. amateur driver entered is Joel Thorne, onetime outboard motorboat champion and grandson of the late Banker Samuel Thorne, who has seven cars in the race, plans to drive one himself. First prize in the Columbus Day race, in addition to the new Vanderbilt Cup, will be $20,000, plus accessory and lap prizes.