He gave a few directions to the drivers, as the eighteen cars in the race were brought to a stop inside the line. He told them they were to go once around the track, with a big car which stood a few yards in front of them as a pacer. They were not to pass the pacer. When they came around they could take a flying start for the real race as he dropped his flag.
Away went the cars! Even the preliminary rush around the bowl was at nearly a hundred miles an hour. As they came around again, the starter shouted “Go!”—which could not be heard—and dropped his red flag.
The race was on!
A great roar arose from the fifty or sixty thousand people about the track as the cars tore around the oval. Every car was at its best just then, and the first lap of two miles was made at the rate of ninety-five miles an hour, even by the last one.
The next two miles were covered at more than a hundred, and the drivers warmed up, going higher and higher as each circuit of the great wooden bowl was completed.
The cars were scattered by this time. The whole track was dotted with them.
The Thunderbolt and Columbiad were in the ruck, neither conspicuously in the forefront, nor far behind. Both Stanley Downs and Victor Burnham were holding their cars in, contented to be safe for the present, without trying for a lead.
Time would come when some of the contestants would drop out. There were three hundred and fifty miles to go, altogether. Plenty of time for the vicious struggle that must come when victory lay just among a few of the survivors.
Stanley Downs, his goggles firmly adjusted and his eyes gazing straight ahead, knew he had his car well under control. He could feel it leaping forward in response to every light touch on the throttle, while it obeyed the least turn of the wheel over which he could just see the yellow-brown pine flooring ahead.
“She’s going all right, Stan?” shouted Varron in his ear.