Los Angeles herald., 1909-08-15
OLD WAR HORSE
TODRlVE STEARNS
BEGAN RACING CAREER EIGHT
YEARS AGO
Says Fast Racing Drivers Have Mo
Nerve When Making Time on
Track-LivIngstone Is
Mechanlcian

Perhaps no professional automobile
racing driver is better known and
more popular all over the country than
Soules, who will today drive the big
Stearns car in the $4,000 race between
it and the big Locomobile entered by
r. ]. Leavitt.
c. p. Soules, better known among his
intimate friends as "old war horse" is
now 80 years of age, rather slenderly
built, extremely quiet in manner. and
would be the last person one would
take to be a racing driver, although
his cold, steel blue eyes indicate that
fear is unknown to their owner.
Soules has been driving racing cars
for the past eight years, his first eXpe-
rience being when he drove a Pope
Toledo car in a race at Long Island
City, part of which is today embodied
in the Vanderbilt race course. In this
performance he was the chief engineer
of a 12-horSepower machine, and car
ried off the first prize, making the ter
rife record of fifteen miles an hour
When on the back end of the course
the wind was so strong during this
race that the ear was almost brought
Tis next race was plotting another
Pope Toledo-this time a gasoline car
an 1S-hofsepoWer car, and again he
won. making thirty-tive miles an hour.
He remained with the Pope people
until 1907, when he accepted position
as racing driver with the De Luxe
people, and remained with them year
Being offered better terms with the
Stearns company, he has been with
them since. As their principal driver
he has participated in most of the
great events of the east, where terrific
speed has been made, among these the
Vanderbilt, Phoenix. San Francisco
road races and Seattle road race.
The fastest mile he has ever driven
was So 3-5 seconds, on a circular half
mile track, the worlds record being
| 1;1115, and in all the record breaking
races he has driven he has never been
! injured while he dryly confesses to
| having been in the ditch several times.
Asked if he entertained any fear
while making a mile a minute on a
steady grind of two or three hundred
miles, he replied thai he had not bit
of fear, that it never occurred to him
that he would be killed.
The remark was made to Soules that
at must take nerve to face the curves
of a circular track with the big, pow
erful car plunging along a sixty to
seventy-mile gait"
Great mistake" quietly said Soules
"The man driving one of those cars
going at sixty to seventy miles an
hour has absolutely no nerves at all.
His nerves are dead. He drives me-
chanically, his mind on the wheel and
the singing of the engine of his car. He
has no nerve left in him, and if have
to leave the track, or see that I am
about to run through fence, 1 prefer
to do it, and would open her up to the
fastest gait to run through it, as tear
ing through everything is broken to
splinters and probably escape unhurt." !"
All Livingstone will ride with Soules
as his mechanician in the race today.
Livingstone, a husky machinist, rode
with Soules in the Locomobile in the
Santa Monica road race, and has been
working on the Stearns in its prepara-
ton for today's event.