Vuky's Last Ride
Appearing in only five races that counted for the Formula One WC, he qualified on pole once, won two races, set three fastest laps, and led a phenomenal 485 laps of 676 race laps, a higher percentage even than Jim Clark. So who is this driver with a winning percentage record that Fangio and Schumacher would be proud of? Thomas O'Keefe looks at the career of Billy Vukovich, possibly the best driver ever to race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, whose tragic loss 50 years ago foreshadowed a summer of tragedy for motorsport
No one has ever won the Indianapolis 500 three times in a row but 50 years ago last Indy 500 weekend, on May 30, 1955, Billy Vukovich looked very much like the man who would be the first to do it.
Billy Vukovich was born on December 13, 1918, and grew up as a child of the Depression working in the grape fields of San Joaquin Valley. He lived on a hardscrabble family farm near Fresno, California, with his brothers Mike and Eli, his five sisters, his father John and his mother Mildred. The parents were Serbo-Croatians who came from Yugoslavia through Ellis Island in 1909, a classic immigrant story.
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