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.      

From mechanic to driver to death

the Ray "Red" Cariens story

All photographs courtesy of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection in the IUPUI University Library Center for Digital Studies 

Raymond Lloyd “Red” Cariens, the third of eight children born to George and Lura Belle Cariens, was born on a farm near the village of Cisne Illinois on December 20, 1899. As a young man, Ray trained as an apprentice mechanic at the Hudson/Essex factory in Detroit, and then he lied about his age enlisted in the United States Army Air Force and worked as an aircraft mechanic at Wilbur Wright Field near Dayton Ohio.  

According to an article in the August 9 1924 edition of the Altoona Mirror newspaper, Cariens first raced as Eddie Pullen’s riding mechanic in the factory Hudson at one of the five American Automobile Association (AAA) races held on the Beverley Hills board track during the 1920 season.  Cariens then reportedly worked in the Duesenberg Motors engine plant in Elizabethtown New Jersey perhaps on the Jimmy Murphy/Tommy Milton Daytona Beach land speed record car before the plant was closed and Duesenberg relocated operations to Indianapolis.

Driver Joe Thomas and "mechanician" R.L. "Red" Cariens

pose in their 1921 Duesenberg entry 

During 1921, the red-headed Cariens rode with in the 1921 Indianapolis ‘500’ with driver Joe Thomas in the factory Duesenberg 183-cubic inch straight eight powered machine which had been qualified by Joe Boyer. 'Red' miraculously escaped injury when the Duesenberg’s  and it crashed after the steering failed during the pair's 25th lap. Thomas and Cariens then finished eighth in the 100-mile AAA ‘Universal Trophy Race’ held June 18 1921 at the Uniontown (Pennsylvania) board track, and a few weeks later on July 4, Cariens also rode along as Joe Thomas captured a third place finish at the 2-mile long wooden Pacific Coast Speedway Tacoma Washington.  

At the start of the 1922 AAA season, Cariens, sometimes called “Big Foot” because of his size 14 feet, now used Los Angeles as his home base, and continued to work as a mechanic for the Duesenberg racing team. While in California he rode with Jerry Wonderlich on April 16 in the ‘Golden State Motor Derby’ at San Carlos and again on Thursday April 27 in the ‘Raisin Day Classic’ on the wooden one-mile Fresno Speedway. The pair finished sixth in both races which were dominated by the Duesenberg team. 

During May 1922 Cariens joined the Cliff Durant-Harry A. Miller factory team, a timely move as the Miller racing cars were soon to become the hottest vehicles in AAA racing. In September 1922 “Red” rode with Bennett Hill at the inaugural race at the Kansas City board track, but is listed in AAA records as “Leslie” Cariens.   The pair started on the pole and finished the tragic 300-mile event marred by the loss of Roscoe Sarles in sixth place.   

For 1923, riding mechanics became optional by AAA championship racing rules, and of course no one used them. Early in the season “Red” Cariens worked as a mechanic on Bennett Hill’s red #3 Miller but when the circuit moved east, he joined the Durant team and primarily worked on Harry Hartz’ second place '500' finisher, but chances are with seven Durant team cars entered at Indianapolis , Cariens worked on every one of the Durant Miller entries at one time or another during the month of May 1923.  Cariens continued to work as a mechanic on Hartz’ trio of Miller race cars throughout 1923 and the early 1924 AAA season.

Fall 1924 was a pivotal season for Ray Cariens, as he transitioned from his role as “the world’s best race car mechanic “(according to the writer for the Altoona Mirror) and became a race car driver.   Cariens debuted in the 200-lap “Fall Classic” held on the 1 ¼ -mile Altoona Pennsylvania high-banked board track, one of the country’s most deadly.  

 

Ira Vail 

Cariens' car owner was driver Ira Vail, who had first raced his new ivory-colored Miller double overhead camshaft (DOHC) 8 cylinders in-line 122 cubic inch engine chassis #2431 at the 1924 season opening race at Beverly Hills. Vail finished eighth in the car at Indianapolis and ninth in the AAA circuit’s first 1924 season visit to Altoona three months earlier. At the previous AAA race in Kansas City, Vail qualified the car but turned it over to rookie driver Lou Wilson for the race.

Ray Cariens started from the pole at Altoona on Labor Day 1924 and then ran into mechanical difficulties but hung on to finish in eighth place, 14 laps behind winner Jimmy Murphy in a race that saw Joe Boyer lose his life.  Two weeks later Murphy himself would lose his life in a crash on the "Moody Mile" at Syracuse New York.   At the end of the 1924 season, Vail sold the Miller and Cariens was out of a ride, and 'Red' closed out the year working as a mechanic for Bennett Hill.

At the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1925, Cariens was nominated to drive the red #3 Miller ‘122’ rear-drive chassis #2403 owned by Bennett Hill, who had great success with the car during 1924 with six top five finishes. Hill won the 1924 AAA season-ending 250-mile race at Culver City Speedway with a startling average speed of over 126 MPH after a supercharger had been added to the Miller engine to compete with the newest Miller ‘122’ race cars.  

In a continuation of a long-running Indianapolis tradition, Bennett Hill gave up his regular ride for one that he felt had a better chance of winning at the Speedway.  At the time of Jimmy Murphy’s death Harry A. Miller Engineering was building two front-drive cars that Murphy had ordered.  The two cars were subsequently known as “Front Drive # 1” for use at Indianapolis and the board tracks, and ‘Front Drive #2” that was designed and built specifically to set land speed records and which used outboard front brakes located inside the disc wheels to reduce the frontal area. After Murphy’s death, Harry A. Miller had completed both cars and entered them himself for the 1925 Indianapolis ‘500.’

Bennett Hill in 1924

Veteran Dave Lewis drove ‘Front Drive #1,” while Hill drove the red #21 “Front Drive #2.” After qualifying, the diminutive Hill was apparently spooked by its handling and Harry Miller withdrew the car from the race on the eve of the ‘500.’ Hill returned to drive his rear-drive Miller ‘122’ which Cariens had qualified for the field in 21st starting position with an average of 104.16 MPH. Ray Cariens was out of the ‘500,’ though he did relieve Hill from lap 57 to lap 68 before the car was retired with a broken rear spring. After his car was eliminated, Hill relieved Dave Lewis and drove the last 26 laps on the way to “Front Drive #1’s” second place finish. 

It is unclear precisely what Ray Cariens did after the 1925 ‘500,’ but presumably he continued to work as a mechanic, probably for Bennett Hill. On October 3, at the Fresno 1-mile board track “Red” drove Tommy Milton’s #14 Miller ‘122’ which earlier had rear wheel brakes and truss rods to stiffen the frame added for Indianapolis. Cariens replaced driver Norm Batten who had been injured in the car in a crash during the Syracuse race weeks earlier.  The Fresno track owned by the Fresno County Board of Supervisors had nearly burned down in September of the previous year, and only by working day and night had a team of 200 carpenters rebuilt the track and grandstand in time for the 1924 ‘San Joaquin Valley Classic.’

The sixth annual “San Joaquin Valley 150-mile Auto Classic’  held on October 3, 1925 featured some of the top drivers of the time – Peter DePaolo, Leon Duray, ‘Doc’ Shattuck, and Bennett Hill and drew a crowd estimated by officials to be 30,000 people.  Cariens started on the front row of the Fresno eight-car field alongside veteran Jerry Wonderlich, with whom he had ridden just three years earlier.  The 150-mile race was completed is less than hour and half, with the victory going to Kansas’ Fred Comer for his first and only career AAA win with Cariens finishing in third place.

After he won the race at the circuit's October 26  stop at Laurel (Baltimore) Maryland, Bob McDonough crashed the Milton Miller at Charlotte on November 11, so Cariens was back in the car for the season-ending race scheduled for Thanksgiving Day at “the fastest track in the West” Culver City Speedway.  The race was re-scheduled to Sunday November 29 at the request of the drivers, and “Red” and Jerry Wonderlich again started side-by side, but this time they made up the third row in the 15-car field, as four drivers had withdrawn before the race for reasons unknown.   

A view of racing at the Culver City Speedway

Pole-sitter Earl Cooper, who had posted a lap of 141 ½ MPH in qualifying around the 1 ¼ mile track, shot into the lead with Ralph Hepburn and Leon Duray in hot pursuit as the leaders averaged 135 MPH over the first ten laps, before fourth place Earl Devore retired on lap 23 with a broken valve. Tragedy struck on the next lap when Wonderlich’s #10 car blew a tire as he raced down the backstretch in front of grandstand ‘B’, and Jerry’s car first careened up the 45-degree banking, then slid nose down towards the five-foot high inner wall.

Cariens who was close behind, swerved the #14 to avoid Wonderlich’s car, brushed Hepburn’s passing machine, spun twice, then the Miller smashed backwards into the inner wall which was backfilled with dirt.  After the impact, Ray’s car overturned and he was thrown onto the track surface. Meantime, Wonderlich’s car, perhaps 100-200 feet behind, crashed nose-first into the inner wall but stayed upright, though Jerry suffered scratches on his face and a stiff neck. The entire crash sequence was captured by photographer Ted Wilson, and the photos can be viewed at   https://revslib.stanford.edu/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=cariens

One of Wilson’s graphic photographs shows the unconscious Ray Cariens lying on the track face down minus his shoes and cloth helmet but still wearing his trademark white gloves while another photograph depicts Cariens’ overturned car facing the wrong way on the track.  While the race continued, eventually won by Frank Elliott at a new world’s record average speed of over 127.87 MPH, Ray was removed to the Angelus Hospital, 10 miles away where he was initially given an “even chance at recovery.”

Newspapers the following day reported that Cariens remained unconscious in “very critical” condition. Ray “Red” Cariens, just days away from celebrating his 26th birthday, passed away just before midnight December 2 with his death attributed to a basal skull fracture and internal injuries.  Cariens’ body was transported to West Branch Iowa where his mother had relocated after his father George’s death in 1919. 

 

Ray rests in the Cariens family plot in the Municipal Cemetery alongside his mother, father, two brothers, and two sisters.  In those days, race cars were durable, and a fatality meant little to car owners; for example, the car that Frank Elliott used to win at Culver City in November 1925 had been the same car in which Jimmy Murphy lost his life.

Tommy Milton sold his Miller ‘122’  after the  damage to the fuel tank, hood, and cowling of the car from Ray’s fatal crash at Culver City was repaired. The car was re-numbered #15 for the 1926 and was driven by owner Peter Kreis for the first four AAA races while his new car was finished, then the Miller '122' was sold to Illinois garage owner Henry Kohlert. 

 

Peter Kreis bought a new Miller 91-cubic inch supercharged and intercooled front-drive machine which was delivered in time for the 1926 Indianapolis 500-mile race and easily qualified for the starting field in 20th position. Peter became ill with the flu days before the race and was replaced by a brash young rookie named Frank Lockhart, who drove Kreis’ car to victory in the rain-shortened 1926 Indianapolis 500-mile race.
 

Kohlert 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.  

Kohlert abd his crew reapired the damage to the Miller, and Henry squeezed into the field on the final day of time trials and finished in 13th place. Kohler then sold the car to a pair of Pittsburgh businessmen who raced it in the 1929 Indianapolis 500. The car disappeared with the dawning of the Rickenbacker “Junk Formula” era, as historian Michael Ferner believes the Milton Miller was cut up to build a two-man chassis.  

Ray "Red" Cariens quickly advanced up the racing ladder as every young man would have dreamed of as he advanced from a mechanic on the sidelines to become a riding mechanic and then ultimately a race driver. Surprisingly, given their hazardous nature ,"Red" was the only driver to die in a board track during the 1925 AAA season.