Dark Day

George Robson's car, Lakewood 1946. Photo courtesy Eddie Samples

On the day he died, Barringer did not drive this Bonneville car at Lakewood.  Wilbur Shaw, three-time winner of the Indy 500 and later general manager of IMS, originally built the car that Barringer drove that day at Lakewood in 1946.  Shaw finished seventh at Indy in 1936 in the car’s inaugural outing.  The next year, 1937, Shaw won the Indy 500 with the car, and ran second in the 500 with it in 1938.  The car ran at Indy four more times by other drivers with little success.

Shaw had sold the car before the war and in 1946, Ervin Wolfe owned the Offy powered machine.  Those aren’t bad statistics for a ride Barringer had never driven before.  But Wolfe never ran the car again after Barringer died that day.

Workers lift George Barringer out of his wrecked machine. Photo courtesy Eddie Samples

Indy driver Cliff Bergere owned George Robson’s car.  It was the same car Floyd Roberts won the 1938 Indy 500 with.  It was also the same one Roberts died in at Indy the next year, 1939, after hitting a spinning car.  When the wreckage of Robson’s car was returned from the Lakewood accident, Bergere was so distraught that he took out his acetylene torch and cut it to pieces.

“Two of my best friends have been killed in this thing, and that’s two too many.”

Cars that had won three Indy 500s brought no magic to Atlanta that day in 1946.  But for two drivers, they died doing what they loved.

As you spend your Labor Day holiday, remember the racers who lost their lives pursuing the sport we to love so much.  And if you are ever at Atlanta’s Lakewood Amphitheater for a music concert, you may very well park your car within feet of where Mr. Robson and Mr. Barringer left their cars and their lives.