The Oldtimer

One morning next week, at the drop of the starter's green flag, some 80 crash-helmeted drivers will break into a dash across the concrete runway of an abandoned airfield and pile into their sports cars. The whining racket of racing engines will shatter the Sabbath, and the little (pop. 5,000) town of Sebring, Fla. will come alive to the excitement of the fifth annual Florida International Twelve-Hour Grand Prix of Endurance.

No other auto race in the U.S. quite compares to the Sebring grind. It is the only American competition that counts toward the World Sports Car Championship. Sebring's 5.2 miles of brief straightaways, wicked switchbacks and unbanked turns are as trying for men as they are on machines. Points scored at Sebring are so prized by the racing fraternity that the world's best drivers compete there, although the race is without cash prizes.

Never Far Away. It is the kind of race that has an insidious fascination for the oldtimers--the veterans, nominally retired, who spend most of the year telling themselves that they are through with the hot smell of lubricating oil, the screech of skidding tires, the grab of brakes fighting for control. This year is no exception: among the entrants is Rene Dreyfus, 49, onetime champion of France, a driver who dropped out of regular competition 15 years ago and settled down to a more prosaic profession: running Le Chanteclair, a raidtown Manhattan restaurant.

Even in his restaurant, Rene has never been far from the track. Drivers are forever dropping by for advice, old friends come to reminisce about the races in which he made his reputation: Le Mans, the Grand Prix of Monaco, Indianapolis, Targa Florio in Sicily, the "Million-Franc Race" at Montlhery. When Chicago Industrialist S. H. ("Wacky") Arnolt decided to enter three of his Arnolt-Bristol sports cars in this year's Grand Prix at Sebring, it was not surprising that he turned to Rene Dreyfus when he needed a team captain. And it was not surprising that Rene needed little convincing.

No Speed Demon. The sleek little (96 1/4-in. wheelbase) Arnolt-Bristol is no roaring speed demon; its 1,971-cc., six-cylinder engine kicks it along at a conservative 115 m.p.h. maximum. But in a race such as this, Rene argues, the driver means almost as much as the car. "Any taxi driver can win on a straightaway like Daytona Beach," says he. "At Sebring, the drivers who nurse their cars carefully through the long grind stand a chance of scoring simply because they have finished." With Wacky Arnolt himself, John Panks, general manager of Rootes Motors, Inc., and Bob Grier, president of the Motor Sports Club of America, to fill out his team, Rene has high hopes that all his Arnolt-Bristols will finish.

No man to underrate his competition, Dreyfus worries most about 1) a British-built, 3,442-cc. Jaguar entered by Briggs Cunningham, who owned last year's winning Osca, 2) a 2,999-cc. Ferrari to be driven by Italy's aging (48) Piero Taruffi and America's Harry Schell and 3) a 2,660-cc. Austin-Healey, handled by British Champion Stirling Moss and Co-Driver Lance Macklin.

Sunday night at 10:00 o'clock, when the checkered flag drops, the car that has covered the most laps will take the grand prize. Each class will have its own winners, and there will be a performance award for which each car will get a handicap based on its engine displacement. If his luck holds out, Oldtimer Rene Dreyfus figures that his Arnolt-Bristols will be up among the victors.

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