The Pete Kreis story
Part two - 1926 season
For the 1926 racing season, the AAA (American Automobile Association) Championship cars would lower the displacement limit from 122 cubic inches (two liters) to 91-1/2 cubic inches (1/12 liters) beginning in May at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Albert Jacob “Pete” Kreis sold his supercharged Duesenberg to Ben “the Mississippi Kid” Jones and obtained a 122-cubic inch supercharged rear-drive race car from Harry A Miller from Tommy Milton. The car that Kreis bought had its damaged fuel tank, hood, and cowling repaired from Ray Carrien's fatal crash in November 1925 at the Culver City Speedway and re-numbered #15 for the 1926 season.
Fulford-Miami Auto Speedway in North Miami Beach Florida was
the site of the 1926 American Automobile Association (AAA) season opener. Construction
of the 1-1/4 mile wooden speedway partially funded by Miami Beach developer Carl
Fisher, one of the four founders of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, began in
the fall of 1925.
Fisher had a partner in the Miami track, Merle Tebbetts, a
finance company president and the developer of the Fulford-by-the Sea
subdivision in the area known since 1931 as North Miami Beach. The track built on pilings featured a
boardwalk promenade and a mounded infield with 50 degree banked turns. Years later, the track’s exact location is
undetermined.
Tebbetts and Fisher hired the 1911 International 500-mile
race co-winner Ray Harroun to oversee the track construction by the Prince
Construction Company then manage and promote the facility after its targeted completion
of January 1 1926.
The Fulford-Miami Speedway initially advertised the
inaugural race date as January 30 1926, but there were material delays during
construction and the race date switched with the previous Culver City
California date. When the AAA Contest Board published the 1926 schedule, the inaugural
race at Miami, for the ‘Carl G. Fisher Cup’ date would be held on Washington’s
Birthday February 22nd.
Time trials were scheduled for Wednesday February 17 to be followed
by a gala dance and reception at the Fulford Casino that evening to “give
Miamians an opportunity to meet these men who have become famous because of
their daring exploits on the pine boards across the country.”
Ralph Hepburn in the Boyle Valve Miller won the pole
position with a lap speed of 141.199 miles per hour (MPH), the only car to
break the 140 MPH barrier. Leon Duray qualified second fastest at 138.9 MPH
with Dave Lewis in the former Jimmy Murphy front-drive Miller third fastest and
National Champion Peter DePaolo seventh.
Only the fastest twelve cars in practice qualified on
Wednesday afternoon so Pete Kreis qualified on Thursday afternoon and started
the race from fourteenth in the 18-car starting field in his white #15 Miller.
Local radio station WGBU broadcast live updates on the race scheduled
for 240 laps or 300 miles with a $30,000 purse. Gates opened at 8:30 AM on that
Monday morning for a program that featured bands and daylight fireworks.
Infield General Admission tickets sold for $3.00, while grandstands seats were
$6 or $8 with box seats priced from $10 to $15.
A crowd of 25,000 fans watched as Hepburn led the first
three circuits before he had a tire problem and Dave Lewis took the point until
lap 24. Duray led the next 125 laps while Kreis’ car retired on lap 90 and
placed eleventh. Earl Devore in the shiny #17 ‘Nickel Plate’ Miller took the
lead from Duray on lap 150, and Leon remained in close pursuit until the
magneto on his car failed on lap 180.
On lap 200, Devore pitted to add fuel, which opened the door
for DePaolo in his Duesenberg to take control and Peter led the final 40
circuits. The next four finishers – Harry Hartz, Bob McDonogh, Frank Elliott
and Bennett Hill – all drove supercharged 122-cubic inch Millers, as did Devore
who recovered from his late pit stop to finish fifth. DePaolo ran a conservative pace to save his
Duesenberg but still set a new record of 129.29 MPH as he covered the unusual
race distance of 300 miles in two hours and nineteen seconds.
The AAA racers never visited Fulford-Miami Auto Speedway’s
50-degree banked turns again due to two incidents. The first came in late
August when United States authorities arrested track owner Merle Tebbetts on
mail fraud charges associated with stock sales in the Fulford-by-the Sea
finance company.
Then on September 18, the “Great Miami Hurricane” struck
south Florida and the winds over a caused widespread damage and the new wooden Miami
Speedway was destroyed. Tebbetts never consider rebuilding the track as he
battled the fraud charges in court until in 1930, when he pled guilty and
received a fine of $1,000 and two-year suspended prison sentence.
In California during practice on the re-surfaced Culver City
Speedway, Leon Duray posted a lap of 138 MPH then on March 18 1926 in time
trials, Pete Kreis surprised observers as he qualified second fastest behind Bob
McDonogh’s blindingly fast 143.3 MPH lap, which broke Earl Cooper’s previous record
of 141 MPH. Many “experts” predicted that this record would stand for years,
given the upcoming AAA engine size reduction to 91-1/2 cubic inches. Dave Lewis
in the front-drive Miller qualified third as Bennett Hill and Duray rounded out
the top five starters.
The 40,000 fans on hand for the Culver City race on March 21st
saw a torrid battle among the fastest five cars, and Pete Kreis led his first
laps in AAA championship competition as he headed the field for two laps before
Hill passed Pete and led the final 102 laps to win in a record time of one hour
and 51 minutes at an average speed of 130.59 MPH for the 250 miles. Hill led
DePaolo by 28 seconds at the finish with Hartz in third. Pete Kreis finished 11th,
five laps behind Hill.
The 122-cubic-inch race cars christened the new one-and-a-half
mile long wooden Atlantic City Speedway track on May 1 1926. Alternately known
as Amotal Raceway, due to its location on the site of the World War I
ammunition plant, the track site was roughly equidistant from Atlantic City and
Philadelphia, south of the New Jersey town of Hammonton. Designed by Art Pillsbury and built by Jack
Prince, with the construction largely financed by Charles M. Schwab, the
chairman of Bethlehem Steel and a major investor in Stutz and a member of the
board of directors.
The Prince Construction Company completed construction of
the track on April 17 which featured 1780-foot long straightaways and a
dedicated Pennsylvania Railroad station adjacent to the main grandstand.
Advance reserve grandstand tickets sold for $4.40, $5.50 and $7.70, while box
seat prices ranged from $7.70 to $15.40. General admission to the infield cost
$2.20 with those ducats only available on race day.
A breathless newspaper article in the Philadelphia
Inquirer days before practice opened predicted 100,000 fans and Gordon
Mackay wrote that “they would not be surprised if 300,000 spectators jammed
their way into the wooden amphitheater.”
Atlantic City set the total purse at $30,000 with $12,000 to
the winner with second prize $6,000, and the remaining $12,000 divided and paid
down to the tenth place finisher. Interesting entries came from Ralph DePalma,
the 44-year winner of the 1915 Indianapolis ‘500,’ and two imported Bugatti
race cars entered by Philadelphia’s Charles M. Ward for Russian driver Baron Vladimir
de Rachewsky and French driver Count Jean Richard André de Marguenat.
With 21 cars entered the track opened for practice on April
20, with qualifications set for Wednesday April 28, when cars demonstrated that
they could run the minimum lap speed of 130 MPH. It rained that morning and
Fred Wagner postponed time trials to Thursday April 29th.
Later in the day however skies cleared, the track dried and
AAA officials opened the track for practice with the official timing clocks set
up. Bennett Hill blazed around the Atlantic City oval at 143.6 MPH which was
recognized as having officially eclipsed Bob McDonogh’s Culver City record-setting
lap. The Philadelphia Inquirer article reported that after his record
run, Hill remarked to it observers that “with no wind and the weather
conditions right, we could shoot them along at 150 MPH on this track.”
The following day, April 29th, the top four
qualifiers – Hill, McDonogh, Pete Kreis, and Harry Hartz all reportedly ran
142.9 MPH, with McDonogh awarded the pole position followed by Hartz, Hill, and
Kreis. Cliff Woodbury rounded out the top twelve cars in speed.
The Thursday non-qualifiers included Jerry Wonderlich, who decided
to retire, while Dave Evans, DePalma, Frank Farmer and the pair of mysterious
Bugatti cars were too slow and had to return to run again on Friday to attempt
to set their place in the starting field. The Miller engine in Zeke Meyers’ car
broke a wrist pin and was unlikely to be repaired in time.
Before the race on Saturday, the Stutz passenger car that
carried Charles Schwab, Stutz President Fred Moskowics and four other men on an
official inspection of the track broke through a “defective plank” in the track
and suddenly lurched to a stop. All of the occupants of the Stutz suffered cuts
and bruises, but no serious injuries.
The field of 16 cars that included Ben Jones’ Duesenberg
(formerly owned by Kreis), the Millers of Evans and Norm Batten, and Count de
Rachewsky in Ward’s Bugatti answered Wagner’s flag at 2 PM Saturday for 200
laps or 300 miles. The reported 80,000 fans saw McDonogh dominate the race as
he led the first 165 laps until he experienced tire troubles and had to pit.
Bob’s misfortune handed the lead to DePaolo who led for 28
laps in the Duesenberg until a problem forced DePaolo to momentarily slow. Harry Hartz took the lead on lap 194 and led
the final seven circuits to win the $12,000 purse.
Hartz, who never made a pit stop, finished one second ahead
of DePaolo in two hours and fourteen minutes to establish a new standard for
300 miles of 134.091 MPH, which eclipsed DePaolo’s earlier Miami record by over
four miles per hour. McDonogh finished
third, a lap behind the leaders, 35 seconds ahead of Kreis in fourth. Ralph
Hepburn came home in fifth place, eight minutes behind Kreis.
For the final tune-up before Indianapolis, Kreis drove the first Miller front drive built, originally commissioned by the late Jimmy Murphy, in the May 10th Confederate Memorial Day race on the 1-1/4 mile wooden oval in Charlotte North Carolina. Kreis started and finished in seventh place, 17 laps behind the winner Earl Devore in the ‘Nickel Plate’ Miller as the top eight finishers all drove cars powered by 122-cubic inch Miller engines.
Kreis' Miller '122' was sold to Illinois garage owner Henry Kohlert who entered the former Milton Miller 122 at the “Elgin Piston Pin Special” for Legion Ascot Speedway veteran Fred Lecklider at Indianapolis in 1927, and then crashed the car during the race himself while driving in relief. The following year, Kohlert entered the “Elgin Piston Pin Special” for a young rookie, future 1935 ‘500’ winner Kelly Petillo who crashed the car in practice.
Despite the reported crowd of 40,000 fans, Charlotte officials
announced that this would be the final long-distance race at the track – future
events were to be a series of “sprint” events of 25, 50 or 100 miles each held
on the same day.
Reporting on the race, Kreis’ hometown newspaper, the Knoxville
News-Sentinel, noted that Pete’s finish was “not bad considering that the
16 of the best drivers in the United States started the race.” The article
noted that “Pete has been running close in all the big races,” and opined that “he’ll
come out a winner one of these days.”
Early press reports at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway erroneously
listed Kreis as the driver of a new Miller 91-1/2 cubic inch Miller front-drive
machine, as he had taken delivery of his new white #15 91-1/2 cubic inch
supercharged Miller rear-drive at the brick oval. Pete got in few, if any, practice laps before
he was hospitalized with influenza which set in motion one of the most
astonishing “rookie driver” stories in Speedway history.
Young racer Frank Lockhart had experienced good success as
he drove a Miller 183 to several important dirt track victories, but he had an
embarrassing start to his AAA championship career with his appearance at the
Culver City Speedway board track on the afternoon of February 19 1925.
Lockhart made four warm-up laps on the Culver track’s
concrete apron at approximately 60 MPH, then he tried to move the car (which
Jimmy Murphy drove to his death) up the banking, but lost control spun and hit
the inside railing nose first.
AAA starter Fred Wagner determined that the 21-year old “Boy
Wonder” lacked experience but to save him embarrassment in the press, officials
allowed Lockhart to withdraw. Frank Elliott replaced Lockhart as the driver.
Ironically, the race on February 22nd had to be red-flagged with 25
laps completed after Elliott crashed with Stuart Wilkinson and William Shattuc.
Lockhart returned to terrorize the dirt tracks in a Miller
183-cubic inch powered car until he arrived at Indianapolis in 1926, tabbed as
a relief driver for the Miller factory-supported entries. Mid-way through the
month, Lockhart took a “test hop” in Bennett Hill’s new #16 Miller and amazed
bystanders when he posted lap speeds two MPH faster than Hill.
As the critical time trials approached, Pete Kreis
contracted influenza and had to be hospitalized which left the seat in his brand-new
white #15 Miller open. After consultation with his friend Tommy Milton, Kreis
turned the new Miller over to Frank Lockhart for the race. In time trials on
Thursday May 27th Lockhart was a sensation and broke Peter DePaolo’s
one-lap record with his first lap of 114.752 MPH, then bettered that with his
second lap speed of 115.488 MPH.
Unfortunately, Frank could not complete the four-lap
ten-mile run as a tire failed on the third lap. After repairs, Frank made
another attempt later on Thursday, but a valve broke in the Miller engine and
cut that run short.
Released from Methodist Hospital on Friday, Kreis went to
the Speedway the following day to watch his car qualify. Lockhart, on his third
and final qualifying attempt on Saturday May 29th, posted a safe
four-lap average of 95.78 MPH, good enough to start the 1926 ‘500’ from 20th
starting position.
On race day, May 30, 1926 it took “the Boy Wonder” just 60
laps to work his way through the field and take over the lead from Dave Lewis.
Lockhart led when the race stopped for the first time due to rain with 70 laps
completed. The race, halted for an hour, resumed as AAA officials used the results
on the timing tape to restart the race
with the cars released from a standing start in intervals to have the same relative
positions as when the rains came.
As the race neared the halfway point, dark clouds gathered again
and Harry Hartz pushed past Lockhart into the lead but after just five laps in
the lead, Hartz pitted on lap 98. Lockhart resumed the lead and built up a
two-lap advantage over Hartz when the rains returned with the race stopped for
good with 160 laps completed. A high attrition rate perhaps due to the newness
of the 91-1/2 cubic inch cars, meant only 13 cars finished the 400 miles with
the final finisher driven by Thane Houser, flagged 58 laps behind the rookie
winner.
An interesting side story about the 1926 ‘500’ for racing
historians is that of the Duesenberg that Kreis drove in 1925 and sold to Ben
Jones. Fred Duesenberg fitted the
chassis with an experimental supercharged two-cycle engine but with no time for
development and testing, the ground-breaking two-cycle engine arrived at the
Indianapolis Motor Speedway untried.
Old-timers recalled that the two-cycle Duesenberg engine had
the loudest exhaust on the track, which the Indianapolis News described
as a “pleasing crack”. The team had considerable trouble starting the car each
day, and it was not fast. Jones, a 23-year old rookie, posted a best lap speed of
around 80 MPH before Peter DePaolo took some practice laps in the Duesenberg
two-cycle and edged the speed up to 94 MPH. After veteran Ralph Mulford squeezed
out a 95 MPH lap, Ben Jones qualified on May 28th with a four-lap
average speed of 92.142 MPH to start from the 18th starting
position.
During the race, Jones’ car suddenly swerved and brushed the
wall on lap 54. Subsequent investigation found one axle broken and the engine
locked with one cylinder full of water. The Duesenberg factory in the midst of
designing and developing the Model “J” abandoned further development of the
two-cycle engine
After the bittersweet 500-mile race, as he watched another
driver win the prestigious ‘500’ in his new car, Kreis traveled to Baltimore,
picked up his ill mother from John Hopkins Hospital and returned her home in
Knoxville.
By winning the 1926 International 500-mile Sweepstakes, the
23-year old Lockhart became a famous and wealthy man, as the winner’s share of
the purse with lap prizes totaled $40,000 (equivalent to over half a million
dollars in 2020). Lockhart, Miller and Kreis
worked out a deal for Frank to purchase the ‘500’ winning car for Lockhart to race in the next AAA championship race on the boards, the
‘Flag Day Classic’ at Altoona Pennsylvania on June 12.
Unfortunately the engine in Lockhart’s Indianapolis-winning
machine suffered catastrophic failure in Altoona practice and Frank did not
race. Pete Kreis appeared at the Altoona race with no intention to drive and
the Altoona Tribune reporter described that Kreis appeared “a little
pale despite his six feet in stature.”
Frank Lockhart entered the July 5th ‘Independence
Day Classic’ at Rockingham Park in New Hampshire but controversy erupted when D
H Jefferies the promoter of the AAA dirt track race at the West Texas Fair Speedway in Abilene Texas scheduled the same day stepped forward. Prior to the
Indianapolis ‘500,’ Harry Miller entered Lockhart for the Abilene race in a new
Miller 183 dirt car. “Lockhart’s first taste of fame,” the promoter claimed
“made him forget the dirt track contests.”
Lockhart claimed that he sent a 30-day notice letter of
cancellation to the Abilene promoter, and after considerable back and forth, on
June 27th the AAA Contest Board threatened to suspend Lockhart from
AAA events if he failed to meet his Abilene obligation. Besides Lockhart the
other “foremost racing stars” entered at Abilene included George Souders, Fred
Lecklider, and Texans Elbert ‘Babe’ Stapp and Harry Milburn. Lockhart complied
and a huge crowd of 10,000 fans saw Lockhart in the new Miller easily win both
the Abilene races he entered, the 20- and 30-mile dashes.
Kreis sat out much of the summer of 1926 as Harry Miller
completed Kreis’ new 91-1/2 cubic inch front-drive machine, and thus Kreis missed
the AAA races at Rockingham, Atlantic City and Charlotte. During this time,
Pete regained his strength and took a more active role in his family’s
engineering and construction company.
Kreis’ new cream and red car, the fifth front-drive Miller
built, designated by the Miller factory as ‘2615-Y’ debuted in September at the
Altoona Pennsylvania board track. Pete started 15th in the 18-car
starting field while Lockhart started fifth and moved into the lead at the
50-mile mark of the 250-mile grind and beat Kreis to the finish line by a
minute and 21 seconds for his fourth win of the season, while Pete scored his
best-ever AAA finish.
After middle of the pack finishes in the pair of short
25-mile preliminary “sprint” races on October 12 at the 1-1/4 mile Rockingham
Speedway in New Hampshire, Kreis and his front-drive Miller #15 finished two
laps behind winner Harry Hartz in the 160-lap (200 mile) feature, as he edged
Leon Duray in a similar machine by 3/100 of a second at the finish line.
Hartz dominated the first 100 miles, then inherited the lead
after the leader Frank Lockhart’s Miller engine broke a connecting rod on lap
142. With his win, Hartz clinched the
1926 AAA driver’s championship.
The 1926 AAA season closed on November 11 at Charlotte which
used the preliminary and feature racing format. Kreis finished a distant fourth
place in his 25-mile “heat race,” then in the “semi” Kreis’ day ended early
with a broken supercharger after he started tenth in the 12-car field.
At the end of the 1926 season, after he drove it in just
three races, Kreis sold his front-drive Miller to Tommy Milton, who dissembled
the machine and with the assistance of his friend and engineering partner,
Cornelius Van Ranst, rebuilt it as the ‘Detroit Special’ for the 1927
Indianapolis 500-mile race in a program funded by General Motor heir and race
driver Russell “Cliff” Durant. Van
Ranst, an engine engineering genius had designed winning race cars for the
Frontenac and Duesenberg. The ‘Detroit Special’ built over the winter in a
basement laboratory of the 1-million square foot General Motors Building in
Detroit which gave the car its name.
The ‘Detroit Special’ featured the world’s first two-stage
supercharger invented by Dr. Sanford Moss of General Electric. Gases from the first
stage of the front-mounted supercharger made a long loop, then after the second
stage entered a long pipe that crossed over the hood to cool the charge air
before it entered the intake manifold. The Detroit power plant with 6-to-1
compression and a massive 42 foot pounds of supercharged boost boasted over 300
horsepower.
The car’s other innovation, courtesy of Van Ranst, was the
two-speed inline planetary transmission which transmitted power more smoothly
than the Miller front-drives, and Van Ranst’s design allowed easy changes of
the ring and pinion gears for gearing adjustments. Automaker E L Cord was so impressed by Van
Ranst and Milton’s work on the ‘Detroit Special’ transmission that he hired
them as consultants on the Cord passenger car front-drive system.
Similar to the later ‘NOVI’ race cars, the ‘Detroit Special’
achieved blinding straightaway speed, but despite 60% of the weight on the
front axle experienced high tire wear, and as we shall see, the ‘Detroit
Special’ was star-crossed like the ‘NOVI.’
In a 1926 season shortened by illness and the delays waiting
for the delivery of his new Miller front drive car, Pete Kreis still managed to
finish ninth in the AAA championship with four top five finishes in ten race
appearances. As we shall see in future
installments after 1926, Pete Kreis concentrated on the family business and
began to curtail his number of racing appearances.
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