Sam Hanks drove Champ cars, Midget cars and F1 cars and on top of that he was the winner of the 1957 Indianapolis season and a barnstormer. All this made him the American sensation of motorsports in the forties and fifties. Barnstorming, the first of its kind in civil aviation dished out one of its first champions Sam Hanks, who flew over the West Coast and emerged victorious in 1937. In 1940, he won the VFW Motor City Speedway championship and the ‘Night before the 500’ midget car race. He also won the 1950 Pacific Coast stock car race. In 1940, Hanks had already started racing in the Indianapolis 500 and he went on to do so for a good thirteen years. In the initial years, he experienced difficulties in producing desired finishes owing to the fact that it was rather difficult to race cars with oil spills, clutch failures and many of such hurdles that one would see in the more olden days of motorsports. But Hanks bounced back as a winner in his 13th attempt at the race in 1957 driving a Salih with an Offenhauser engine. Incidentally, Indianapolis500 was a part of the Formula One World Championship from 1950 through 1960 and drivers competing at Indy were eligible for World Championship points in that period. So, Hanks’ eight races at Indy from 1950 through 1957 brought him one victory, four podium finishes and twenty Formula One World Championship points. Hanks announced his retirement from racing at Victory Circle in 1957 and drove pace cars at Indianapolis500 till 1963. His racing career however, had turned out fine with a little encounter with F1. -Anup Pareek