Zak Keefer

zak.keefer@indystar.com

Two laps in, and he found himself scurrying toward the black, billowing smoke, the screams of horror and the ashen faces, wondering if it was all over. No, not just this race. The race. Was this the end of the Indianapolis 500?

Donald Davidson had waited all his life for this day. He’d seen two measly laps.

“Is this it?” he remembers asking himself. “Is the government going to shut this thing down?”

It was May 1964. Davidson was 21. He’d saved up for six years, toiling as a film projectionist in Salisbury, England, dreaming of one day making the 4,000-mile trek to Speedway, Ind. — his Mecca — to see it with his own eyes. He bought the most expensive ticket the track offered ($30) and showed up not knowing a soul.

What followed was an impossible three weeks: He was profiled in the local paper; he toured Gasoline Alley, awing driver after driver with his encyclopedic knowledge of their careers; he was offered a job working in the pits on race day (not knowing how to change a tire, he wisely declined). He swept the racing establishment off its collective feet, this wunderkind Englishman with the pointy-toed shoes and the skinny suits and the boy-band hair who’d grown so enamored with the Indianapolis 500 that he arrived knowing more about it than anyone else alive.

And then — just two measly laps? Was Donald Davidson’s first Indy 500 going to be the last Indy 500? While he bolted toward the smoke, he had his doubts. It was among the most gruesome crashes in race history. Eddie Sachs burned to death in his race car that afternoon. Dave McDonald died a few hours later at Methodist Hospital. The race was delayed nearly two hours. Winner A.J. Foyt solemnly held up a newspaper in victory lane. “FOYT WINNER IN 500. SACHS, McDONALD DIE,” the headline blared.

But the 500 rode on, that year and every year since. Cars changed. Speeds climbed. Drivers came, drivers went. Fans came, fans went. Donald Davidson stayed.

Nearly 10,400 race laps have been completed since the moment that 21-year-old Brit darted down the straightaway on the second lap of the 1964 Indianapolis 500, worried the race he’d become obsessed with would soon be buried once and for all.

Davidson has been there for every single one of them.

'Truly a treasure'

If they’d closed Indianapolis Motor Speedway for good that day — as some prominent newspapers and congressmen called for them to do — Davidson would’ve had to find a different career. The 500 became his life, his life’s work, his identity. He returned for an encore in 1965 and made Speedway his home. His 53rd consecutive race is Sunday.

What was your dream when you were 15? Davidson’s was to come see the Indianapolis 500. So he did. And he never wanted to leave. So he hasn’t.

Except for the man who built the place (Carl Fisher), the man who saved the place (Tony Hulman) and the men who wrote their legends at the place (the drivers), there might be no person more closely associated with the Speedway than Davidson. He is many things: the first and only full-time historian of a motor sports facility in the world, the longtime host of his revered radio program “The Talk of Gasoline Alley,” the professor of a popular course in Indy 500 history at IUPUI, the longtime United States Auto Club statistician, and last but certainly not least, the guy who can tell you off the top of his head who took 17th place in the 1933 Indianapolis 500 — and his car’s sponsor (Joe Russo in the Wonder Bread Special, of course).

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Or just about any other finisher, in any other race, in the Speedway’s 107-year history. The man’s mind is a marvel.

Because above all, Davidson is this: The biggest fan of the Indianapolis 500 there ever was. He’s the kid who never had to grow up and get a real job.

“Truly a treasure,” IMS President Doug Boles calls him.

Davidson remembers getting race cars in his Christmas stockings. As a youngster in England, he’d pore over the sports pages of the local newspapers, memorizing race results. By his early teens, he was writing letters to the Speedway itself and devouring Indianapolis 500 yearbooks.

“Those really stoked the fire,” he says all these years later. “I couldn’t get enough of them.”

By age 15, he’d decided: It was Indianapolis or bust. He had to see it. To feel it. He saved his money for six years, working as a film projectionist in Leicester Square in London. He bought a ticket to the 1964 race and, figuring it’d be his only shot at seeing the 500 in person, ponied up for the most expensive seat the Speedway had. He showed up at the IMS ticket offices the Friday before qualifications, oblivious to the fact that he’d never really leave.

From there the storybook unfolded. On day one, the ladies at the ticket counter, enchanted by all the letters he’d written, did him one better — they gave him a credential. On day two, he bumped into Sid Collins, the iconic voice of the IMS Radio Network. Collins gave him a pit pass. “It was like heaven,” Davidson remembers. On day three, he was told that Bob Collins, the popular IndyStar columnist, wanted to interview him.

“Who is the hero of the race drivers? Well he just turned up here the other day,” Collins wrote in the May 18, 1964, edition of IndyStar. “He is an Englishman named Donald Davidson. And people around here still don’t believe he is real. The man is a walking encyclopedia, a human computer of racing knowledge. … Nobody yet has been able to stump him. Old heroes like Mauri Rose and Sam Hanks stood in bug-eyed amazement as he recited their entire racing careers to them year-by-year.

"It’s hard to impress people around this place,” Collins continued. “But Davidson has looked at more slack jaws in two days than a dentist sees in a lifetime.”

By the end of the week, Davidson found himself not only meeting one of his idols — car builder A.J. Watson — but being offered a job by Watson. They were in the garages making small talk one afternoon. So impressed with Davidson’s aptitude, Watson asked him to come work for him in the pits on race day. “You’re asking me to be on a crew? You just met me 10 minutes ago!” Davidson quipped.

He declined, figuring he probably should at least watch a race first.

'It's never gone away'

He never left, because there was no reason to leave. The dream has lasted 53 years. After the chaos of the 1964 race, Davidson returned a year later and went to work for USAC, the race's governing body. His job? Catalogue records of drivers and cars. “I was like, ‘This is a job? Are you serious? You get paid money for this?’ ” he says now, smiling. He was there 32 years. He's worked for the Speedway ever since.

He traveled the state this spring, speaking in more than 70 counties across Indiana as IMS worked to build momentum for the race’s 100th running.

He is an everyman’s genius, humble and unassuming and self-deprecating. The man who knows more about the history of the Indianapolis 500 than anyone else alive drives a Chevy Malibu. He and his wife, Sherry, have been married 49 years. They raised four children in the Speedway area. He guards his age like the Speedway guards its attendance figures. (He was 21 when he arrived here in 1964; you can do the math.)

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“The guy’s got a memory wayyyy beyond belief,” says three-time 500 champ Bobby Unser. “He’s one of only a few human beings on the planet who can do what he does. If he ever left, they’d never be able to replace him. Never.”

He can tell you there have been 758 drivers to start an Indianapolis 500. He can tell you that 282 are still living.

“Get this,” Davidson says, casually dropping his favorite piece of 500 trivia. “Of the 758 drivers who’ve started the race since 1911, there has never been one with the last name Smith.”

Only Donald.

He’s watched Andretti and Foyt and Unser and Rutherford and Mears and Luyendyk and Castroneves and Franchitti cross the yard of bricks in victory. He’s traveled the world to visit drivers in their homes. He’s given eulogies at their funerals. He’s updated his encyclopedia along the way. The most recent years give him a bit of pause, but the first few decades of the race? He can recall the driver, the year, the place and the sponsor the way most people recall the PIN number for their debit card.

“Carved in granite,” he says confidently.

He has become an institution, a constant amid decades of innovation, turmoil, triumph. He arrived as the know-it-all from England 52 years ago, the kid who had to see, to feel the Indianapolis 500 in person. He never left. Why would he? He was having too much fun.

“It’s been my life. It’s never gone away,” he says. “Since I’ve been a young adult, it’s the only life I’ve ever known.”

Say this much for the man: Donald Davidson gets it. Why grow up and get a real job if you don’t have to?

Call IndyStar reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134. Follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.