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"Wanna Drag, Mister?" The pursuit has never ceased; the sport has never slowed. Engines swelled in size from one to two, to four, six, eight, even to twelve cylinders, and speeds soared. In 1924, California's Peter DePaolo "cracked a ton"—averaging 101.13 m.p.h. at the Indianapolis 500—and Europe's dark genius, Ettore Bugatti, explained why he equipped his fantastically quick and costly cars with fantastically worthless brakes: "Automobiles are meant to go, not to stop."
Racing supremacy became a matter of national pride. First the French, then the Italians dominated the Grand Prix circuit. In the late '30s, the megalomania of Hitler gave the world the most awesome racing cars it has ever known: the Mercedes and Auto Unions. They were great, growling 600-h.p. monsters that could hit 200 m.p.h. on a straight —if they found one straight enough. Two world wars did their share to help, producing generations of youngsters thirsty for thrills. The terror of Thurber's aunt, who tried vainly to conquer a car and wound up pleading, "Somebody take this goddamn thing away from me," gave way to something the psychologists called "locomotor philia": the teen-ager in his chromed and channeled-down hot-rod who leaned out at stop lights and sneered: "Wanna drag, mister?"
Today, auto racing is the third biggest spectator sport in the U.S. (after basketball and horse racing). In 1964, according to the National Hot Rod Association, 284,043 Americans competed in 1,904 drag-racing events, and they were watched by another 3,312,-542 Americans. Illinois' Meadowdale Raceway, which attracted 50,000 paying customers in all of 1962, almost equaled that in one weekend last year; and California's Riverside Raceway, site of the Grand Prix for Sports Cars, reports that attendance this year is running 14% ahead of 1964 (200,500) and that 1964 was 21% over 1963.
The biggest one-day sports attraction in the U.S. is the Indianapolis 500. Estimated attendance last May 31: anywhere from 250,000 to 300,000. By some countries' standards, that's a fair-to-middling crowd. Germany's top sports-car race, the 1,000 kilometers of Nurburgring, regularly attracts more than 300,000 fans, and smaller weekly events at "the Ring" draw 30,000 to 50,000. Japan staged its first-ever "grand prix" race in 1963. Promoters were stunned when no fewer than 360 would-be Jimmy Clarks signed up to compete and 300,000 enthusiastic spectators turned out to cheer them on.
Chores & Concentration. The racing fan is more than a single spectator: he considers himself an active competitor, to one degree or another, in the world's biggest participant sport. Nearly everyone who drives a car thinks, at one time or another, about beating the "hot shoe" in the next lane. Auto companies do their best to enhance the illusion: naming cars "Le Mans," "Monza," "G.T.O.," "Grand Prix"; equipping them with bucket seats, tachometers, four-speed transmissions, and speedometers thoughtfully calibrated up to 160 m.p.h.—85 m.p.h. above the highest legal speed limit in the U.S.