The Pete Kreis story Part three 1927 & 1928 The Cooper years

 

The Pete Kreis story

Part three 1927 & 1928  

The Cooper years

Earl Cooper, the three-time American Automobile Association (AAA) national champion in 1913, 1915, and 1917, had a remarkable driving career both before and after World War One. Before the war, as a member of the powerful Stutz Racing Team, Cooper notched sixteen victories mostly on dirt tracks and early road courses before he retired in 1919.

Cooper, a close friend of Barney Oldfield since their early years, raced just once in the 1921 and 1922 season before he returned to full-time driving in 1923 at age 37. Earl proved to be an adept board track racer during the Miller 122-cubic inch era with a string of top five finishes and Cooper finished second in the AAA drivers’ standings in 1924 and fifth in 1925.

During the 1926 AAA season, Cooper drove the Miller supercharged 91-cubic inch front wheel drive chassis number #2605 and eventually bought the car.  Over the winter of 1926-7, funded by Buick Motor Company, Earl Cooper built three cars which were essentially Miller copies, with the full approval and assistance of Harry A. Miller.

The new Cooper cars were each equipped by supercharged 91 cubic-inch eight-cylinder Miller copies which reversed the intake and exhaust manifold locations and breathed through four Miller “Dual Throat Updraft’ carburetors that produced 167 horsepower and powered the front wheels.

The front drive assembly marked the major difference between a Miller and Cooper. Instead of the Miller jewel-like front drive, designed and engineered by Leo Gosssen, Cooper’s cars used patented Ruckstell planetary gearsets with two-speed Ruckstell axles to achieve four forward speeds.  

Left to Right

Eddie Pullen

Joe Thomas 

Glover Ruckstell

circa 1914

Photo courtesy of the IUPUI University Library

Center for Digital Studies

Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Ruckstell components were designed and manufactured by retired pioneer racer Glover Ruckstell, born in San Francisco in 1891 and raised across the Bay in Oakland. After just two years of high school, Ruckstell dropped out of school and by age 20 became a partner in an automobile repair garage in Maricopa California.    

Ruckstell began automobile racing around Bakersfield in 1913 and by the following year became a member of the successful Mercer racing team and recorded two top finishes at Tacoma in July 1914. In 1915, after strong early finishes in races San Diego and Venice, the mighty Mercer team entered Glover for the Indianapolis 500-mile race along with drivers Eddie Pullen and Joe Nikrent.

The new Mercer cars arrived in Indianapolis late and only Ruckstell qualified his #20 Mercer for the 1915 Indianapolis ‘500’ starting field. The team withdrew the car after qualifications, as Mercer Chief Engineer Eric H. Deiling cited the lack of time to prepare for the race.

Later in July 1915, Ruckstell won the 250-mile Montamarathon Trophy Race on the two-mile board track in Tacoma Washington with his Mercer teammate Pullen third. Glover then finished fourth behind winner Pullen the following day in the 200-mile Golden Potlach Trophy Race on the same track.

After a fourth-place finish in the 1916 150-mile Championship Award Sweepstakes at the original one-mile Ascot Speedway in Los Angeles, Glover Ruckstell retired from race driving. In addition to his work with the Ruckstell Sales & Manufacturing Company, Glover became heavily involved in the aviation engine industry before during and after World War One.  

As Cooper built his three new front-drive machines, he appeared in advertising for Buick passenger cars as one of the “nine internationally famous AAA speedway racing stars that demonstrated their approval of the new Buick,” along with Peter DePaolo, Fred Comer, Bennett Hill, Frank Lockhart, Frank Elliott, Dave Lewis, Cliff Woodbury and Bob McDonogh. According to the advertising copy, these drivers “singled it out above all other cars for their personal use and for their families.”

Cooper built homely-looking grilles for his entries that mimicked the 1927 Buick passenger cars, but at the last minute, Buick withdrew its support of Earl Cooper’s program, so the official International 500-mile at Indianapolis entry list released on May 4 1927 contained three new front-drive cars entered by the Cooper Engineering Company. Cooper listed the three drivers as himself, Albert Jacob “Pete” Kreis, and Bob McDonogh, with the Miller entered by Earl Cooper personally with the driver to be named later. 

Cooper’s entries represented four of the eleven front-drive machines entered at Indianapolis in 1927, which included the former Peter Kreis front-drive Miller known as the ‘Detroit Special’ equipped with the two-stage supercharged straight-eight Miller engine for driver Cliff Durant.

McDonogh had the privilege of taking the first lap in one of the new Copper front-drive creations on Tuesday May 17, followed later that day by Peter Kreis and newly-named Cooper teammate Bennett Hill who replaced Cooper. Earl later named Memphis Tennessee’s Julian “Jules” Ellingboe to drive the fourth Cooper entry, the #18 Miller front drive.

Twenty-one cars qualified for the 1927 Indianapolis 500 starting field on Thursday May 26, with the existing track record broken four times, with defending winner Frank Lockhart with the pole position and new track record at over 120.1 miles per hour (MPH) for his ten-mile run. 

The three new Cooper Specials in 1927

Peter Kreis at the right

Photo courtesy of the IUPUI University Library

Center for Digital Studies

Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection 

Pete Kreis found that the Copper handled better than his previous Miller front-drive but the cars were not particularly fast.  All four of Cooper’s cars qualified for the 1927 ‘500,’ led by McDonogh in the #14 Cooper at 113.175 MPH for the seventh position, the inside of the third row. Bennett Hill anchored the outside of the third row in the #4 Cooper front drive with his 112.013 MPH average for four laps.  Peter Kreis qualified the third new Cooper machine at 109.90 MPH, fast enough for the outside of the fourth row. 

After rain postponed time trials on Friday May 27 Ellingboe qualified the yellow and black Miller chassis on Saturday morning May 28 at 113.239 MPH. Originally slotted into 22^nd position, Jules move up to the outside of the seventh row after first day qualifier 1924 ‘500’ co-winner L.L. Corum withdrew his Duesenberg which qualified at just 94 MPH.

 Race Day 1927 at Indianapolis proved to be a disappointment for Earl Cooper and his Cooper Engineering team, as of his four entries, only McDonogh finished the race in sixth place, 24 minutes behind rookie winner George Souders. Ellingboe crashed the yellow and black Miller chassis into the north short chute wall on his 26^th laps. After it hit the wall, the car rolled over and Jules suffered a crushed chest and internal injuries.

Ellingboe, confined to Methodist Hospital until mid-July, retired from racing and died from pneumonia in Oregon in 1948. Cooper sold the badly wrecked Miller front-drive machine to Phil “Red” Shafer who rebuilt it and entered it in the 1928 ‘500’ for Elbert “Babe” Stapp and finished in fifth place. In 1929, Shafer sold the car to the French auto manufacturer Derby and as the “Derby-Miller” it subsequently set many closed course land speed records driven by Gwenda Stewart.   

Almost simultaneous with Ellingboe’s accident on the 1927 race’s 26^th lap, Bennett Hill brought his #4 Cooper to the pits with a broken rear spring shackle mount and retired credited with a 28^th place finish.  Peter Kreis made it to lap 101 before he pitted and Harry Hartz took over. Peter later received treatment at the Speedway infield hospital from Dr. Horace “Frank” Allen for burns on his leg.  Hartz drove the #9 Cooper entry for 22 laps until it retired with a broken front axle, placed 17^th and earned $470 in prize money.

The original nominated driver (and funder of the program) Cliff Durant, did not drive Kreis’ former car, the ‘Detroit Special’ in 1927, as he took ill, and rather than pick a new driver, Milton unretired and drove the car himself.  The 1921 National Champion and 1921 and 1923 “500’ champion’s previous race appearance came in February 1926 at the Fulford board track. In his first qualifying attempt for the 1927 ‘500’ on May 26^th, the “Detroit Special” burnt a piston and failed to complete the ten-mile dash.

Milton qualified on May 28^th at 108.78 MPH to start 25^th, his worse starting position since his rookie year in 1919.  Milton’s final ‘500’ driver appearance proved unremarkable as the ‘Detroit Special’ began to lose power around the 200-mile mark and Milton pitted and handed the car over to his partner Cornelius Van Ranst.

In his third ‘500’ appearance and second as a relief driver, Van Ranst completed 24 laps, and diagnosed the problem as a fuel system leak at speed. Van Ranst pitted and after five minutes of hurried repairs, turned the car over to Ralph Hepburn. The former motorcycle champion drove the “Detroit Special” over the final 93 laps but pitted several items to repair more fuel system leaks and finished eighth, crossing the finish line 45 minutes after winner George Souders.  

Ten days after the 1927 ‘500,’ Kreis and the #9 Cooper front drive appeared in Tyrone, Pennsylvania on the Altoona Speedway 1-1/4 mile board track along with his teammates Bob McDonogh and Bennett Hill.  The entry list at Altoona included 45 cars - 22 championship cars and 23 semi-stock cars that were set for the preliminary 50-mile race.     

McDonogh’s entry burned a piston in practice and did not start the 160-lap 200-mile race. Leon Duray won the pole position with a lap of 136.3 MPH, while Kreis qualified ninth and Hill fourteenth.  Peter completed just 22 laps before the Miller engine in his machine burnt a piston. On the race’s 47^th lap, the machines of Frank Elliott and Ralph Hepburn tangled as they lapped Earl Devore and all three cars were eliminated.

Hill pitted on lap 84 and McDonogh took over the #4 Cooper front drive. On lap 105, Dave Lewis destroyed his car after he drifted high hit the upper guardrail and the Miller somersaulted down the banking. On lap 123, Bob coasted into the pit and retired with a burned piston. Peter DePaolo dominated in his Miller front-drive and won the race by two full laps over Harry Hartz. 

Kreis joined the AAA competitors in Salem New Hampshire at the Rockingham Park Raceway for the July 4^th Independence Day 300-mile race. While DePaolo romped to another victory and averaged 124 MPH, the Cooper Engineering team had another forgettable day. Earl Cooper dropped out on lap 4 and Kreis on lap 22, both with broken valves in their engines, and McDonogh retired on lap 75 with a broken exhaust manifold.

Pete Kreis, Earl Cooper and two of the Cooper Engineering Company machines traveled to Monza Italy to take part in the 1927 Gran Premio d'Italia (Italian Grand Prix), the last race on the Continent for which the 91-1/2 cubic inch (1-1/2 liter) engines would be legal in the Automobile World Championship.

Kreis drew the pole position but a rod broke in the engine and exited the crankcase on the first lap of the 50-lap race held on September 4 in a downpour. Kreis returned to the pits and took over for Earl Cooper and battled back to finish third albeit more than half an hour behind winner Robert Benoist’s Delage.

Kreis and the Cooper team returned to the United States and Rockingham Park Speedway for a scheduled 200-mile race on Columbus Day Wednesday October 12. Throughout the early part of the event, leader Frank Lockhart, who qualified at 144 MPH, battled wheel to wheel with Harry Hartz until lap 51 when Hartz’ car crashed and caught fire.  Harry broke his right leg and received critical burns. Officials stopped the race with 52 laps completed and Kreis in tenth place, four laps behind the leaders. 

AAA referee A.T. Hart ruled the race complete at 65 miles, with a second race of 60 laps (75 miles) set to start after crews cleared the Hartz crash and serviced the remaining cars.  Earl Cooper chose to not start the second race (he never raced again), and Kreis’ Cooper front drive fell out of the second race with a broken valve on lap 15. Lockhart won the second race by a quarter lap over Babe Stapp.    

Harry Hartz remained hospitalized in a Lawrence Massachusetts hospital for months and in February 1928 he announced his retirement from his hospital bed. Hartz’ doctors allowed him a temporary reprieve to attend the 1928 Indianapolis 500-mile race. 

Following the 1927 season, as board track racing began to decline, and under pressure from his family Pete Kreis cut back on racing. Pete became a licensed pilot and devoted himself eleven months of the year to his career with his family’s contracting firm, the John A. Kreis Construction Company. Despite his family’s wishes, Pete he still took off the month of May to race on the big Indianapolis 2-1/2-mile brick oval.    

When the Speedway opened in early May 1928, racers were still coming to grips with the death of Frank Lockhart the 1926 Indianapolis ‘500’ winner and 1927 ‘500’ pole-sitter who led 110 laps in 1927 before a connecting rod broke. Lockhart, known as the “the Boy Wonder” died on April 28 1928 in Daytona Beach Florida in the crash of his Stutz Blackhawk land speed record machine.     

For the 1928 ‘500,’ car owner Earl Cooper had landed hometown Nordyke & Marmon Company   sponsorship for two of his three cars driven by Pete Kreis in #32 (the same number carried by 1911 ‘500’ winning Marmon Wasp) and rookie Johnny Seymour in #33. Marmon’s sponsorship highlighted the manufacturer’s new Model 68, a smaller model powered by a 202-cubic inch straight eight engine.  Instead of the original grille, the new grilles on the Cooper Engineering entries mimicked the Marmon 68 grille design.

Just as the Indianapolis entry list closed for 1928 Cooper Engineering Company entered the unsponsored third car which carried #34, with rookie Russell Snowberger the nominated driver.

Peter Kreis in his 1928 Marmon

Photo courtesy of the IUPUI University Library

Center for Digital Studies

Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection 

All three Cooper-owned cars qualified for the 29-car starting field, with former motorcycle racer Seymour in eleventh at 111.671 MPH, Kreis, the fastest second day qualifier at 112.906 MPH, started nineteenth and rookie Russell Snowberger in 22^nd starting position at 111.618 MPH. Cliff Durant finally got to drive his Detroit Special and qualified 18^th the slowest first day qualifier at 99.99 MPH.

None of the Cooper Front Drives finished the 1928 ‘500-mile race. Snowberger’s car headed to the sidelines on lap four with supercharger failure, then on lap 73 Pete Kreis’ car retired with a failed rod bearing, leaving just Seymour who retired on lap 171 also with supercharger failure. 

Durant’s ‘Detroit Special’ with relief driver Bob McDonogh (Milton’s protégé) at the wheel dropped out four laps later when its two-stage supercharger failed.  Louis Meyer led the final 19 laps and became the third rookie driver in a row to win the Indianapolis ‘500’ in a Miller purchased by Alden Sampson from Phil Shafer just days before time trials. 

With his retirement from the 1928 ‘500,’ Pete Kreis returned to the family business where he worked on a Missouri Pacific railroad tunnel project near Gray Summit Missouri and waited for 1929.

 

    

 

 

 

The Pete Kreis story Part two - 1926 season

 

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 22^nd.

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 21^st 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 11^th, 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 29^th.

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 29^th, 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 10^th 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 22^nd 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 27^th 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 29^th, posted a safe four-lap average of 95.78 MPH, good enough to start the 1926 ‘500’ from 20^th starting position. 

The official 1926 Indianapolis Motor Speedway

qualifying photo of Frank Lockhart in Pete Kreis' Miller

Photo courtesy of the IUPUI University library

Center for Digital Studies

Indianapolis Motor Speedway collection 

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 28^th with a four-lap average speed of 92.142 MPH to start from the 18^th 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 5^th ‘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 27^th 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 15^th 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.   

 

 

   

 

 

 

   

 

     

 

        

 

 

The Pete Kreis story Part one - background and his rookie year- 1925

 

The Pete Kreis story

Part one 

 Background and his rookie year- 1925  

Young Pete Kreis posed in his Duesenberg

Photo courtesy of the IUPUI University Library

Center for Digital Studies

Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection 

Albert Jacob “Pete” Kreis is an intriguing figure to automobile racing historians; described as a “Southern gentleman sportsman” at the time, he competed purely for the love of sport.  After three seasons of board track racing, for the last six years of his career, Pete only drove in one race a year – the Indianapolis 500-mile race. Although he never won a race, Kreis’ career intersected with many of the great names of racing from the mid-nineteen twenties until his death in 1934  

Born into a generationally wealthy and prominent Knoxville Tennessee family on January 19 1900, Kreis grew up as a child of privilege. His grandfather, Harman Kreis, emigrated from Switzerland and fought in the American Civil War as a Union cavalryman since East Tennessee tended to be pro-union. After the war, Harmon worked as a timekeeper at the Knoxville Marble Company before he went into the quarry business for himself.

Harmon Kreis developed several quarries, and with a partner founded the Appalachian Marble Quarry Company which innovated by floating huge blocks of marble from their quarries on rafts down the Tennessee River to the mills in Knoxville known then as “Marble City.” Harmon later served two years as the reformist Sherriff of Knox County and died in 1937 at age 91.

Pete’s father, entrepreneur John Alva Kreis, owned one of the area's biggest dairy farms, the Riverside Dairy and Hatchery grew to become a farm with 215 registered Holsteins, 35 employees and 12 delivery trucks. The Riverside Hatchery housed 600,000 chicks and had an egg capacity of 300,000 per month.  As a young man Pete helped out on the farm; first he drove a horse-drawn delivery wagon, and later the farms’ first delivery truck.   

John Kreis also owned the eponymous national engineering and contracting company which specialized in large railroad, levee and bridge jobs, with customers that included the Southern, L&N and Missouri Pacific railroads. Pete would later work with his father and older brother in construction.   

Pete, who adopted his nickname as young man, attended Central High School in Knoxville and followed in the footsteps of grandfather and father to become a champion skeet shooter and won many tournaments around Knoxville. Some historians suggest that Kreis began racing on dirt tracks at local county fairs but nearly a hundred years later the author found no records of Kreis’ early automobile racing career, but he liked to drive fast.  

On February 22 1924, Pete had an accident while on a test drive which killed his passenger, 23-year old car salesman Carroll McCall. The roadster Kreis drove, reportedly “at a lively clip” according to witnesses, missed a curve and struck a bridge abutment, rolled over and pinned Kreis and McCall in the wreckage. Rescuers found McCall dead and the steering wheel had to be removed to free Kreis who went to the hospital with cuts and a shoulder injury.

Kreis and his father attended the inaugural race at the new wooden Charlotte Speedway oval in October 1924 won by Tommy Milton. Pete’s American Automobile Association (AAA) championship racing debut came at the new Culver City 1-1/4 mile high-banked (50 degrees) board track, a few weeks before Christmas in 1924 as a paying member of the four-car Duesenberg racing team.  In practice runs Bennett Hill and Harry Hartz ran laps at the astonishing speed of 134 miles per hour (MPH) in their supercharged Miller racers. 

While his three Duesenberg teammates – Wade Morton, Peter DePaolo, and Phil Shafer – all started the race, rookie Kreis is listed in AAA records as one of two drivers who did not qualify for the 16-car starting field.  More than 70,000 spectators saw Hill win the 250-mile race over Hartz in just one hour and 58 minutes with the phenomenal average speed of nearly 127 MPH.

Kreis returned to Culver City two months later, again as part of the Duesenberg team, behind the wheel of the #35 supercharged Duesenberg 122-cubic inch eight-cylinder machine. Kreis started at the rear of the twenty-car field and finished in fifth place behind winner Tommy Milton, who shaved 5-1/2 seconds off Hill’s December winning time.

This bizarre event started on February 22 but officials stopped the race after 25 laps due to treacherous oily track conditions created by the three-car crash of Frank Elliott, Dr. William Shattuc and Stuart Wilkinson. Stuart received severe back injuries which caused the end of his short automobile racing career. 

When the AAA officials completely restarted the race on Sunday March 1, drivers Elliott and Shattuc were in the field with their repaired cars, along with Kreis, whose car carried a new crankshaft but Wilkinson still hospitalized did not restart.  Kreis ran as high as fourth place in the race until he stopped on lap 120 for a tire change but Pete recovered to place fifth among the nine finishers due to the high attrition rate,.

Kreis did not appear on the entry list for the April 19 Culver City 25- and 50-mile sprint races which included ten veteran drivers as Harry Hartz established a new speed record for 50 miles of over 135 MPH. Pete skipped the next race on the 1-mile Fresno Speedway board track, and raced next on Monday May 11 on another 1-1/4-mile board track, the Charlotte Speedway in Pineville North Carolina, about ten miles south of the City of Charlotte North Carolina.   

The Charlotte Speedway featured 40-degree baked turns built with an estimated 4 million board feet of lumber by the Prince Construction Company of Oakland California.  Remarkably, the Charlotte Speedway which cost an estimated $450,000, received its charter from the State in May 1924 and hosted its first race AAA championship race in October, less than six months later.   

The promoters of the 1925 Confederate Memorial Day $25,000 250-mile race arranged with the Southern Railroad system to offer promotional Pullman fare packages from Raleigh, Durham and Goldsboro in North Carolina as well as from Selma Alabama and Chattanooga Tennessee. Reserved seats in the two grandstands sold for $3.50 or $5.00 each, while 8-seat boxes sold for $8 each. 

The racers in the Fresno race all arrived via special freight train, which included Bennett Hill, Earl Cooper, Frank Elliott, Harry Hartz, Leon Duray, Peter DePaolo, and last year’s Charlotte winner, Tommy Milton. Those stars were joined by eight others drivers that included Wade Morton, Earl Devore, Phil Shafer and Kreis.

An estimated crowd of 50,000 fans saw Tommy Milton jump into the lead in his Miller and hold on to the lead for the first 100 miles ahead of Cooper and Duray. Over the next 60 miles, the machines of challengers Hill, Elliott and Duray all retired and Harry Hartz moved into third place while Milton led the pack with an average speed of 122.7 MPH. 

As the leaders neared the 200-mile mark, Milton’s Miller engine developed a miss, and Cooper surged into the lead on the 156^th lap. On lap 174, the ignition on Kreis’ Duesenberg failed and he retired to be placed tenth.  Cooper held on to win over Hartz, Milton and Comer, with the highest placed Duesenberg driven by DePaolo in fifth. Cooper banked $10,000 for the win, while Hartz received a check for $5000 and Milton, $2750. The teams packed up to ship their cars by rail to Indianapolis, with the cars expected to arrive in the Hoosier capital by May 15^th. 

The Duesenberg brothers entered three cars and drivers for the 1925 International 500 Mile Sweepstakes at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Pete Kreis drove the #35 with the other cars assigned to Peter DePaolo and LL Corum – the fourth Duesenberg entry did not have a driver assigned initially, but on May 12, Fred Duesenberg named Frenchman Antoine Mourre, who finished ninth in his rookie ‘500’ appearance in 1924 behind the wheel of his own Miller.  

On May 26^th, 1925 Kreis qualified his #35 supercharged Duesenberg ninth fastest with an average speed of 106.338 MPH for his four-lap ten-mile run, while the team leader DePaolo briefly held the track record at 113.083 MPH Leon Duray’s run of 113.196 MPH edged DePaolo off the pole.  Mourre qualified for the middle of the sixth row, but as Decoration Day neared pronounced himself displeased with the handling of the #23 machine, withdrew, replaced by Wade Morton. 

With only a 22-car starting field in 1925, there were a number of driver substitutions before race day, as in addition to Mourre, there were six other drivers that chose to withdraw their original mounts.  Bennett Hill started the confusion when he withdrew his Miller front drive (one of two built for the late Jimmy Murphy) in favor of a conventional rear drive Miller originally qualified by Ray Cariens.

Dave Lewis replaced Cliff Durant, the son of General Motors founder William Crapo Durant as the driver of the second Miller front drive machine while Milton Jones replaced H.J. Skelly after he withdrew from the Frontenac-Ford.  Ira Vail replaced Reginald Johnson in a Miller and L.L. Corum, the 1924 ‘500’ co-winner stepped out the Duesenberg he qualified in favor of Phil “Red” Shafer. 

DePaolo dominated the early and late stages of the 1925 500-race, as he led 115 laps that included the final 27 circuits while Kreis is credited with an eighth place in the third-highest placed Duesenberg. The common denominator between DePaolo and Kreis was the essential driver of the day - Norm Batten.

Augie and Fred Duesenberg tabbed Norm who had debuted the previous season with the Duesenberg team at 31 years old at Syracuse, as the team’s designated relief driver at Indianapolis.   Batten relieved eventual race winner DePaolo for 22 laps mid-race, then jumped into the #35 machine in relief of Kreis on lap 136 and drove to the finish.   

The AAA championship cars and stars traveled next to Altoona Pennsylvania to compete in the 250-mile ‘Spring Classic’ at the fast high-banked board track which had already claimed the lives of two prominent racers – Howdy Wilcox I in the inaugural race in the fall of 1923, and  Joe Boyer the 1924 Indianapolis co-winner the previous fall. Kreis started 12^th in the 18-car field and finished sixth behind winner Peter DePaolo. 

Kreis’ next appearance came on July 11 1925 at the 1-1/8 mile 48 degree banked original ‘Baltimore-Washington Speedway’ board track in Laurel Maryland in the #35 Duesenberg. Another quickly built facility, the track’s parent corporation was formed in February 1925.

During the inaugural July 1925 race at Laurel, Kreis’ car spun on the wooden banking without incident and Pete continued on until something failed in the Duesenberg engine on lap 50.  With his own car eliminated, Kreis relieved Duesenberg teammate Phil Shafer until the #9 machine also experienced engine trouble and retired. 25-year old Bob McDonogh took the checkered flag, 3.68 seconds ahead of DePaolo, but Peter protested the finish. 

A check of the scoring records overnight found that the scorers missed one of DePaolo’s laps and the AAA officials declared Peter DePaolo as the race winner, for his fourth straight win, as he had won a July 4^th non-points race held on the 1-1/4 mile dirt Rockingham Park Speedway in Salem, New Hampshire.

The $600,000 facility, built on 360 acres, only hosted two races before the corporation went bankrupt.

A subsequent track operator staged occasional “outlaw” (non-AAA) races sanctioned by the National Motor Racing Association at the facility through 1926 until filing for bankruptcy the following year. After another failed resuscitation attempt crews dissembled the board track facility in 1928.

A ½-mile paved track built in 1965 in nearby Beltsville Maryland operated for the first year as the ‘Baltimore-Washington Speedway’ and hosted a National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) Grand National late model stock car race won by Ned Jarrett. The following year the operators changed than track name to Beltsville Speedway, and it operated under various sanctions until 1978. 

23-year old Boston investment heir Harold L “Vic” Spooner, who drove several practice laps at the Laurel oval, appeared as the only representative of the Duesenberg team at the 250-mile “Autumn Classic” held September 7th at Altoona Speedway in Tyrone Pennsylvania. 

Bob McDonogh won the Altoona race in Tommy Milton’s Miller which ran non-stop without a caution. After the race, Bob became the godfather of a nine-and-half pound baby boy born in the infield hospital prior to the race.  Spooner drove the car that his family purchased from Wade Morton to an eight place finish 17 laps behind the winner.

Meanwhile the regular Duesenberg AAA team drivers – Peter DePaolo, Tommy Milton and Kreis - were in Monza Italy for the 1925 Italian Grand Prix.  Milton and Kreis were teammates in 122 cubic inch Duesenbergs while DePaolo drove an Alfa Romeo P2.

In Italy, the officials set the starting field by car numbers, and all three of the American drivers started in the middle of the 25-car starting field that included 1913 Indianapolis 500-mile race winner Jules Goux.  

Kreis recorded the race’s fastest lap of 3 minutes 38 seconds on the opening 6.2–mile long lap but crashed on the second lap and placed last. Milton finished fourth in the marathon five and a half-hour long 496-mile race, and edged out DePaolo by a minute and a half at the finish.

The 1925 AAA championship cars and stars returned to action at the newly-built Rockingham Park Speedway board track in Salem New Hampshire in early October.  During practice runs on the 1-1/4 mile bowl on October 12, held in conjunction with the track’s grand opening, Peter DePaolo ran a lap at 128 MPH, a speed which other drivers including Spooner then took to the track to beat.  Due to the informal nature of the practice session, a group of race car mechanics gathered close to the track surface in a “dugout” to observe the action.

As Spooner’s car ran on the high side of the banking, above the machine of William “Doc” Shattuc, a steering knuckle pin broke on the Duesenberg’s front axle. The car wobbled then shot down the track as Dan Shaw, the car’s mechanic, inexplicably ran from the “dugout” towards the track. Spooner’s out of control Duesenberg pounded the inside rail and flipped high into the air.

The Duesenberg catapulted through the air with Spooner thrown out, and the careening car struck Shaw before it came to rest in flames which spread to the track surface. Officials pronounced the 24-year old Shaw dead at the scene while Spooner suffered a fractured skull. The young Bostonian survived but never raced again.

In Rockingham practice on October 14^th, Harry Hartz ran a lap timed at 135 MPH, then in qualifying on October 15^th DePaolo smashed all previous speed records as he circled the 1-1/4 board track in 32 3/5 seconds, for an astonishing lap speed of 138 MPH. Remarkable since it would be 26 years before a car reached such a lap speed at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Milton, in his Duesenberg, timed in seventh fastest while Kreis qualified in thirteenth place. 

Rain initially postponed the inaugural Rockingham board track race scheduled for Saturday October 17^th until Monday the 19^th, but on Monday rain won again and organizers set the make-up date for October 31^st, as the AAA had a race already scheduled in Laurel Maryland on October 26^th.  

In the second race held during the 1925 season at the Baltimore-Washington Speedway, Kreis’ Duesenberg fell out with unspecified mechanical troubles after just 31 of the 222 laps as McDonogh won his second straight race, this time behind the wheel of Tommy Milton’s second Miller numbered 14 but not without trouble. Bob held a two-lap lead with twenty-five laps to go when the engine began to sour.  The Miller engine sputtered and backfired through the final laps as DePaolo closed but Bob held on and won the race by 24 seconds.

Back in Salem New Hampshire on October 31st, pole-sitter DePaolo raced into lead and led for the first ten laps until fellow front-row starter Bennett Hill surged into the lead which he held for the next 87 laps, until the clutch in his Miller failed. Hill’s retirement handed the lead to Earl Cooper.

Cooper’s Miller ‘Junior 8’ held the point for twenty laps, before DePaolo recaptured the lead and Peter led the remaining 83 laps and won by a lap over Ralph Hepburn, the pilot of the Miller owned by Cooper.  Earl Cooper finished a lap behind his own car in third place, and Pete Kreis’ Duesenberg in 11^th, the last car running, flagged with 160 laps completed.  

On November 11, Tommy Milton won the AAA championship circuit’s second visit to the Charlotte board track as engine failure eliminated front-runners DePaolo and Hill. Kreis closed out his 1925 season as he qualified twelfth and finished tenth, with 160 of the 200 laps completed.

With eight race appearances and a single top five finish scored in his first race at Culver City, Pete Kreis finished 14^th in the 1925 AAA driver standings, behind fellow rookies Ralph Hepburn in ninth and Norm Batten who finished eleventh overall in AAA points with just three 1925 race appearances.

In our next chapter, we will look at Pete Kreis’ 1926 AAA racing season.      

The forgotten ‘500’ champion- L.L. Corum

Part three

1924 Indianapolis ‘500’ race co-winner LL “Slim” Corum qualified the #17 supercharged Duesenberg straight-eight  for the 1928 ‘500’ on Monday May 28 at 86.172 miles per hour (MPH). Scheduled to start near the rear of the field, Corum crashed the car in practice on Memorial Day morning and was forced to withdraw from the race.

In 1929 Corum was not entered for the 17th annual International 500-miles Sweepstakes but served as a relief driver for the Duesenberg team and drove just four laps in place of fifth-place finisher Freddy Winnai during the middle of the race.      

The 1930 Indianapolis 500-mile race ushered in the era of the so-called “Junk Formula” rules package pushed through the AAA Contest Board by Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Eddie Rickenbacker in 1928. 

Backed by a group of Detroit investors, Rickenbacker bought the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in November 1927, but the lack of entries and poor attendance at the 1928 International 500-mile Sweepstakes led to Rickenbacker’s demand for rule changes. 

Based on the success of the 1927 AAA stock car races, Rickenbacker believed the semi-stock formula would lead to larger ‘500’ starting fields and more paying spectators at the Speedway.

The new AAA rules package published in January 1929 allowed competitors to race with stripped down “semi-stock” passenger cars was designed to encourage more participation by automobile manufacturers but effectively killed  the nascent rebirth of stock car racing.  There were an increased number of entries received for the 1930 ‘500’ and all 38 entries made the starting field.  

LL “Slim” Corum was entered as the driver of a “semi-stock” Stutz owned by Milton Jones of Cleveland Ohio. Jones purchased the Stutz Vertical Eight Torpedo Speedster from Cleveland dealer Walter Weidley on March 15 1930 and it was prepared at the Stutz factory by vice-president of production and former racer Bert Dingley. 

The car powered by a 322-cubic inch straight eight engine was fitted with Firestone balloon racing tires, stiffer springs and a 42-gallon fuel tank with its windshield, top, fenders, and headlights removed for the race.

Corum and the riding mechanic, his car owner Milton Jones, qualified 27th for the 38-car starting field and finished the 500-mile grind in tenth place and made just one pit stop at the 250-mile point to add 30 gallons of gasoline. The “Jones Stutz Special” averaged 85.34 miles per hour (MPH) over the race distance with a reported average fuel consumption of 8.8 miles per gallon and won $1,400. 

On April 23 1931 Corum was named the driver of the Stutz Bearcat roadster entered for the ‘500’ by the Stutz Motor Car Company of America. Stutz President Edgar S. Gorrell stated in an interview published in the Circleville Herald newspaper that “we don’t expect to win the race, it is not reasonable with a stock car. We believe the public will appreciate the fact that if Stutz makes a good appearance in the race it can be attributed to the soundness of our engineering and construction principles.”

The car was powered by the new eight-cylinder 322 cubic inch Stutz DV-32 with four valves per hemispherical cylinder and double overhead camshafts. Gorrell added that the new engine construction “has resulted in increased horsepower which is reflected in higher speed with consequent acceleration in the touring ranges.”        

Despite the build-up, the semi-stock Stutz Bearcat while fast in a straight line, handled poorly and failed to make the 40-car starting field as Corum could only average 98.38 MPH for the ten-mile time trial run. Although his average was faster than the slowest car in the field, the Cummins Diesel Special driven by Dave Evans, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway had issued a special exemption that guaranteed that a diesel-powered car would start the race provided it averaged over 80 MPH.

The Cummins entry, the first car to post a qualifying time posted an average of 96.871 MPH, fast enough to “lock” it into the field. Corum’s qualifying speed was insufficient to “crowd out” the second-slowest qualifier Harry Butcher, whose Butcher Brothers Buick semi-stock entry qualified at 99.343 MPH.  Stung by the failure, 1931 marked the final entry of a factory Stutz race car at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

L.L “Slim” Corum was entered for the 1932 Indianapolis 500-mile race as the driver of a car powered by a Duesenberg Model ‘A’ engine fitted in a chassis and body built by Herman Ringling but failed to qualify for the 40-car starting field. With over 70 entries received for the race, three years into the “Junk Formula” and Eddie Rickenbacker was beginning to see the results of his rule change.

In 1933 Corum was a member of the five-car Studebaker racing team, along with Tony Gulotta, Zeke Meyer, Luther Johnson and Cliff Bergere. All his teammates returned from the 1932 Studebaker effort, and Corum replaced Peter Kreis, who left the team to drive Fred Frame’s Miller marine-powered entry in the 1933 ‘500.’

One of the 1933 streamlined Studebakers

Photo courtesy of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway collection

IUPUI University Library Center for Digital Studies

Mechanically the Studebakers were the same as the year before, but Studebaker hired Herman Ringling to build new streamlined bodies with higher cowls and enclosed cockpits for four of the five machines. 

In general the streamlining increased the Studebaker’s lap speeds during qualifying by two miles per hour, but turned the cockpits into ovens during the race. The Studebaker crews doused driver and mechanic with water on pit stops and eventually used a borrowed hatchet to chop holes in the aluminum bodies to allow the entry of cooling air.

 Tony Gulotta’s car which was unmodified from 1932 finished the 500-mile grind in seventh, 15 minutes behind winner Louis Meyer while the other four factory Studebaker entries finished in order from ninth through twelfth positions. 

Corum and his riding mechanic, hometown boy James “Jimmy” Lowden, soldiered on through the race and brought the #47 Studebaker home in 12th, just seven seconds behind teammate Cliff Bergere, who had received relief mid-race. Based on his 1924 experience, one can believe that it would have taken a tire iron to persuade Corum to allow a relief driver in his car.

In 1937 the final year that riding mechanics were required at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Jimmy Lowden had a close brush with death in a practice crash on Friday May 28. Driver Overton “Bunny” Phillips with Lowden alongside piloted the “Mannix Special” entered by James Kemp and James L Mannix at full speed down the front straightaway when the crankshaft broke in catastrophic fashion and punctured the car’s gasoline tank. Fully engulfed in flames, the Mannix Duesenberg careened out of control and crashed into the ‘Ray 8” Studebaker parked in the pit area and receiving service. Both cars burned and were destroyed.

The horrific aftermath of the Phillips 1937 crash

Photo courtesy of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway collection

IUPUI University Library Center for Digital Studies

The crash fatally injured one man, George Warford, who was pinned against the pit wall and severely burned, and Phillips, Lowden and three others - Otto C. Rohde, Anthony Caccia, and Walter King were seriously injured.  Rohde a vice-president and the chief engineer for the Champion Spark Plug Company, who was changing the spark plugs in the engine of the “Ray 8” received critical injuries when he was thrown over the pit wall.  

Warford, 42, was pronounced dead upon arrival at City Hospital, and Rohde, 60,  one of the originators of the Champion 100 MPH Club, died of his injuries at City Hospital six days later on June 2

King, a Cornell University medical student initially erroneously identified as Phillips’ riding mechanic, and Caccia, the brother of the late driver Joe Caccia were spectators seated on the pit wall next to Warford a former Indianapolis fireman who reportedly sought a mechanic’s job with the Ray Brady team when the accident unfolded.  

Practice was suspended for four hours while the injured men and the wreckage of the two destroyed cars were removed. When the track reopened for time trials Frank McGurk in Murrel Belanger’s straight eight Miller powered machine crashed and rolled over. McGurk was injured but his his experienced riding mechanic Albert Opalko died of his injuries.

On June 4 Caccia filed a a personal injury lawsuit against the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Corporation in Marion County Superior Court #2 which asked for $100,000 ($1.7 million today) in damages. On June 8 Warford’s widow Adeline filed a $10,000 suit in the same court, which was withdrawn after she settled for an undisclosed amount on June 24 1937.  In November 1938, Caccia who suffered a broken pelvis and left leg accepted a $3,000 pre-trial settlement from the Speedway after a jury was seated.

The others injured apparently recovered from their injuries, though Jimmy Lowden never appeared at the Speedway again. Phillips entered a Bugatti chassis powered by a Miller engine which failed to qualify for the 1940 ‘500’ but was successful in 1941 and finished thirteenth. Phillips later became an expert restorer and acknowledged expert on Bugatti cars before he passed away in Southern California in 1999.  

 LL "Slim" Corum made a final appearance at the Speedway as a late addition to the hastily-assembled 10-car Miller-Ford team in 1935 which used Harry Miller-built front drive chassis powered by a reversed 220-cubic-inch Flathead Ford V-8 engine. The lack of preparation or testing severely hampered the Ford factory effort, the cars arrived late and only nine of the Miller-Fords were actually ready to run during the month of May 1935.

By the time Corum took his first laps behind the wheel of a Miller-Ford on May 24, two of the team’s original “big name” drivers, Peter DePaolo and Cliff Bergere had already quit the team due to the myriad of problems.  With the struggles with sorting out the handling of the 4-wheel independent suspension and a lack of horsepower, only four Miller-Fords made the 33-car starting field, while the qualifying runs of two cars – those of Billy Winn and Dave Evans were too slow. Three cars - rookie Johnny Rae in #47, Wesley Crawford in the cream-colored #48 and Corum in the blue-and-white #49 never attempted to qualify before the track closed for time trials.  

As bad as qualifying had been, Memorial Day turned into a public relations disaster for the Ford Motor Company.  As the red 1935 Ford V-8 Convertible Sedan led the field to the green flag, one of the Miller-Fords driven by George Bailey still sat in the pit area, though Bailey joined the race after the first lap was completed.  On the 47th lap Bob Sall retired his gold-colored #46 car followed on lap 65 by George Bailey. 

Seymour’s blue and silver #42 entry with relief driver George Barringer behind the wheel was out on lap 71 then finally Ted Horn’s black and white #43 dropped out on lap 123 after several long pit stops. All the Miller-Fords were eliminated in 1935 by frozen steering gears, because of a design flaw which placed the aluminum steering box too close to the flathead Ford engine exhaust manifold. 

L.L. Corum disappeared from the public eye for three years but resurfaced at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in April 1938 “on the comeback” working for Harry A. Miller as a mechanic on Miller’s entry for Billy Winn. The construction of the pair of radical machines originally started by Miller for former driver Ira Vail was taken over by the Gulf Research Development Company in Harmarville Pennsylvania when Miller went to work for Gulf a longtime supplier of 80-octane No-Nox fuel and Gulfpride lubricants for race cars in February 1937.

These two radical front engine-rear wheel drive cars featured new “aviation style” Miller 255-cubic inch double overhead camshaft 4-cylinder engines designed to produce 235 horsepower connected to a four-speed transaxles that used Cord 810 gear sets.  The engines used Coffman cartridge style starters typical on aircraft with an exploding blank shell which drove a piston that engaged a screw thread to turn over the engine   

The 95-inch wheelbase chassis was a wonder of engineering with features that included streamlined four-wheel independent suspension, driver-adjustable hydraulic shock absorbers, and 360-degree (not spot) hydraulic disc brakes. When shown to the press in April 1937, Miller predicted lap speeds of 126 MPH more than two miles per hour faster than the standing Speedway one-lap track record.

The most striking features of the cars drafted by Everett Stevenson were visible at a glance; instead of a radiator, the cars featured a series of externally mounted chrome plated copper tubes wrapped around the nose and the car carried mid-mounted shaped “pontoon” fuel tanks shaped like inverted wings. 

In early tests conducted at Langhorne Speedway the engines overheated then the brittle tubing broke, so when the cars arrived at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the tubing had been replaced by small square conventional radiators mounted on either side of the car mounted parallel to the wind stream.    

The Associated Press’ Harold Harrison in an article written during mid-April testing wrote that “Slim doesn’t look much a race driver anymore,” as his brown hair had “thinned considerably” and he wore horn-rimmed glasses.  Described as the “forgotten race winner,” Corum told Harrison “maybe I’ll drive again. I’m not so old, only 39, and it’s possible I can pick up where I left off. Racing has changed a lot since my best days but I’d like to drive the 500 miles again –just once.”

Corum recounted his version of his career after the 1924 ‘500’ win to sportswriter Bill Braucher of the Central Press Association wire service “I cracked up at Indianapolis in 1925 and never could do much after that. I joined up with the engineering department of an automotive firm (Stutz) and tried a comeback in 1933 but got no better than twelfth place.”  Stutz Motor Car Company was declared insolvent on April 3 1937, but as Corum described it “last November, the slump hit the mechanical end of the automotive business and I hooked up with Harry Miller to speed up the new cars he’s building.” 

During early Speedway tests, Billy Winn barely escaped injury on April 21 when he stopped the car in the pit area after the engine caught fire. Winn leaped out and mechanics put out the fire with extinguishers. Early in May, Winn, described as a “dirt track demon,” was listed as an early favorite to win the Indianapolis ‘500’ along with Wilbur Shaw, Louis Meyer and Bill Cummings.

Winn tried both of the Miller entries and made two qualifying attempts on the last day of time trials in the #24 Miller, but abandoned both of the ten-lap runs due to the lack of speed. Tragically, Winn who always raced in red shirt lost his life three months later in a crash during the “Governor’s Sweepstakes” at the Illinois State Fairgrounds in Springfield.

While the Vail cars were indeed radical Gulf and Miller launched another program in early 1938 to design and construct cars which would be suitable for both Grand Prix and Indianapolis competition. This car, with design features years ahead of its time, was powered by a 180-cubic inch six-cylinder, supercharged engine mounted in the middle of the car behind the driver in a chassis that used both four-wheel-drive and four-wheel independent suspension. The extremely complex car was rushed to completion arrived late at Indianapolis, and Ralph Hepburn was on track warming up the rear-engine Miller when the 4 PM deadline came on May 28 1938.

Gulf press photo of the re-worked 1939 Gulf/Vail cars

The Gulf/Vail Miller cars remain among the least documented of all the Millers built perhaps since they were overshadowed by the mid-engine Miller creations. After failing to qualify for the 1938 ‘500’ both cars were extensively reworked. The pontoon-style gasoline tanks were removed and replaced with a single spherical gas tank mounted high in the tail of the car. The noses of the cars were rebuilt with conventional radiators but after testing at the Altoona Pennsylvania dirt track the cars did not appear for the 1939 Indianapolis 500.

Later Gulf sold the “Vail” cars, which never raced, to Preston Tucker who removed the engines for their use in a failed high-speed landing craft project. Years later the rolling chassis were reportedly found in a Chicago basement and after multiple sales and trades, one of the cars was rebuilt with a Miller ML-510 engine a development of the original 255 cubic inch engine.

The Miller mid-engine four-wheel drive cars although ground-breaking technologically, were also failures. Three Gulf-Miller cars appeared at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1939 but only one, driven by George Bailey, made the race and retired after just 47 laps. Bailey died in a fiery practice crash at the Speedway in May 1939 and the other two Gulf entries were withdrawn.

The two much-revised mid-engine cars returned for the 1941 Indianapolis ‘500’ and both qualified, but the car qualified by George Barringer was destroyed in the Race Day morning garage fire, and the remaining car, driven by Al Miller, was out after 22 laps. In 1946 and 1947 the remaining car now known as the “Tucker Torpedo Special” dropped out early each year and failed to qualify in 1948.

LL Corum worked for the Studebaker Corporation during 1939, but his later history remains unknown. Lora of course was too old for service in World War Two, but his son Robert enlisted in the US Army and rose to become a Sargent in the 147^th Combat Engineers Brigade. Unfortunately, while stationed in England he contracted rheumatic fever and was hospitalized in February 1944.

Robert returned stateside in May 1944 and remained hospitalized at Billings General Hospital on the grounds of Fort Benjamin Harrison northeast of Indianapolis. It was there that Robert passed away on March 23 1945 at age 21, and he was interred at Memorial Park Cemetery on Indianapolis’ east side. 

Lora was despondent over the death of his son, and frequently left home for days at a time. On Monday March 7, 1949 his mother Margaret found Lora hanging in the garage behind the family home at 33 North Keeling Avenue. Marion County Deputy Coroner Joseph Hewett determined that Lora had likely hung himself on Friday night while his parents and wife were away. Lora was buried in the family plot near his son and was later joined there by his father who passed away in 1950 and his wife and mother, who both died in 1973.     

LL “Slim” Corum never received the credit he was properly due for his accomplishments at the Indianapolis Speedway; he qualified for nine starting fields but he only started six, and in those six races Corum has an enviable record as he went the full distance three times unassisted. 

Corum drove the first 111 laps of the 1925 ‘500’ and was running in third place when he was relieved. In the history of auto racing at Indianapolis there is only one other driver who accomplishments sadly remain as overlooked as those of LL Corum- the 1941 ‘500’ co-winner Floyd Davis.