New book chronicles "the strangest death in all racing history"

• 

Press release

Austin, Texas. March 2023. New from the motor racing stable of award-winning book publisher Octane Press, The Last Lap is a gripping inquest into the fast life and mysterious death of racing driver 

Pete Kreis, killed in practice at the 1934 Indianapolis 500. In a fast-paced narrative that reads like a novel, author and historian William Walker’s lifelong obsession with his cousin’s mysterious death has created a rich storyline that takes readers back to the glamorous and dangerous times that marked the beginning of automotive competition.

From his early days of racing on back-country dirt roads of his native  Knoxville, Tennessee, to the glory days of piloting cutting-edge Duesenbergs and Millers on world-famous tracks, Kreis led a colorful life. But he was driven to win the biggest race in the world: the Indy 500. Written by William Walker, historian, automobile enthusiast, and notably Kreis’s own cousin, this fascinating book examines the way in which fate and free will clashed to end the life of one of the most admired drivers of America’s glamorous jazz age.

Over the past century, the world of motor racing has witnessed many mysterious deaths, but none is as puzzling as the crash that killed the promising young driver. Son of a wealthy contractor, Pete Kreis started racing on the Indy circuit in 1925 and blazed a brilliant career on American tracks and at Monza, Italy, in Grand Prix competition. Known as a master of front-drive Miller cars, he met his demise at the 1934 Indianapolis 500. Piloting a front-drive race car in practice, Kreis crashed into Turn One, rode along the top of the retaining wall for seventy-five feet, and careened down an embankment at the south end of the oval. As the car smashed into a tree in the backyard of a nearby house, both he and his mechanic were killed.

A year later, an informal coroner’s jury of Indy drivers, Speedway officials, and racing experts examined the Kreis accident in detail. They determined that he was traveling at a relatively slow speed, that his car had no mechanical defects, that there were no impediments on the track, and that Kreis himself had taken no evasive action to indicate that he tried to avoid his fate. The jury noted that he “was apparently in the best of health and spirits” but could not explain the circumstances. They were forced to conclude that his demise was “the strangest death in all racing history.” The exact cause of his crash has been a mystery to the racing world ever since.

Years later, author William Walker, a devoted fan of the Indy 500, was inspired by a 1935 newspaper clipping detailing the circumstances of the unsolved mystery to determine the cause of his cousin’s death. For more than sixty years he interviewed Pete’s racing colleagues and many members of the family who grew up with the mercurial driver, visiting all the tracks that Kreis had raced, consulting numerous archives, and re-examining hundreds of eye-witness accounts of Kreis’s racing exploits and death. Walker was finally able to reach his own compelling and tragic conclusion. Written with all the authority of the best historic racing narratives and with the added edge of a period thriller, The Last Lap will appeal to fans of motor racing and suspense fiction alike.

With an official release date that coincides with the 2023 running of the Indy 500 on May 28th, the book is available for pre-order now from Octane Press, or wherever books are sold. Please contact Jo Snyder at [email protected] or 1.512.507.7867 with interview requests or for media review copies, images, excerpts for publication, and any additional information.

A Note from The Author

This book is about racing, but it is about much, much more. It’s the story of the disintegration of a rich, powerful family led by a father who resembles Joseph P. Kennedy. Pushed by their patriarch, the three Kreis sons all died early in self-destructive ways. At the age of four, I first saw Pete Kreis’s tombstone in our family cemetery in Knoxville, Tennessee. I’ve been obsessed with his story ever since. That huge stone is not only an expression of his father’s grief, but also of his pride and vanity in his son’s achievement. It’s a central element in the myth-making effort that the Kreis father and his friends undertook to ensure that Pete’s memory would outlast the destruction that life inflicts on life. As they hoped, that stone still endures and tempts viewers to consider the ultimate fate all our endeavors face.

Racing and death have a long, intimate relationship, and many fans and writers have speculated about the reasons some individuals are attracted to the dangerous sport. I believe that the compulsion many drivers evidence can be traced to their determination to demonstrate the strength of free will to overcome even the most chaotic, intimidating forces life can throw at you, like those that confront drivers of the track.

Plaats een reactie, stel een vraag, geef uw mening, deel aanvullende informatie of start een discussie door de onderstaande velden in te vullen