Jimmy Murphy (racing driver)

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Jimmy Murphy 1920 (right)
Jimmy Murphy at the wheel of a 1920 Duesenberg at Tacoma Speedway
Jimmy Murphy after winning the 1921 French Grand Prix
During his victory in Tacoma in 1922

James Anthony "Jimmy" Murphy (born September 12, 1894 in San Francisco , † September 15, 1924 in Syracuse ) was an American racing car driver .

family

Jimmy Murphy was born in September 1894 in an immigrant neighborhood of San Francisco. His parents had emigrated from Ireland to California and ran a post and horse station with an attached feed trade. His mother Margret Murphy, b. Moran , died when he was two years old. Because his father James was overwhelmed with the upbringing, he came to the family of his cousins. His father no longer cared about the boy and more or less disappeared from his life. He died in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake . Jimmy Murphy lived with Thomas Murphy , his wife Chaterine and their five biological children in the Hayes Valley, which was largely spared from the earthquake . Thomas Murphy was chief of the San Francisco City Fire Department from 1910 until his death in 1929 . Jimmy Murphy's father also worked as a firefighter.

In 1907 he moved to Vernon in southern California to live with his mother's brother-in-law . Martin O'Donnell was a judge in Vernon , overseeing the education of young Jimmy Murphy, who attended Huntington Park High School . Before he finished school, O'Donnell gave him a motorcycle that shaped his future career. Together with a friend, he opened a repair shop, where he became a self-taught mechanic for motorcycles and automobiles in the Los Angeles area .

Co-driving mechanic at Duesenberg

In the mid-1910s he had made such a good name for himself as a mechanic that in 1915 the racing driver Eddie O'Donnell offered him the opportunity to become his mechanic at the car races. Eddie O'Donnell was a works driver at Duesenberg at the time and had started his career as a co-driver himself. Murphy agreed and drove with all the well-known Duesenberg pilots in the following years. With O'Donnell he won the Corona Road Race in 1916 and drove with him the Indianapolis 500-mile race . He was a sought-after mechanic whose services were also secured by Ralph DePalma , Harry Hartz , Eddie Rickenbacker , Peter DePaolo and Tommy Milton .

Racing career

In 1920 the co-driver became the racing driver Jimmy Murphy, who rose to one of the top American drivers of the 1920s in a career that lasted only five years. Murphy quickly succeeded the powerful Duesenberg- seaters on the wood - Oval courses to master. His second outing, a race on Beverly Hills Speedway , ended with a win. At the Indianapolis 500 1920 he was fourth behind Gaston Chevrolet , René Thomas and his teammate Tommy Milton. Tommy Milton was his mentor, who was able to convince the Duesenberg brothers of Murphy's driving talent and thus paved the way for his career.

He achieved his two biggest racing victories at Le Mans and Indianapolis . In 1921 Duesenberg registered five 3-liter Grand Prix cars for the French Grand Prix . One of the drivers was Jimmy Murphy, who despite a training accident achieved the first victory of an American in a Grand Prix race . A few days before the race, Murphy had an accident with Louis Inghilbert as co-driver on a test drive. While Inghilbert's injuries prevented a race start, Murphy won despite severe pain with a 15-minute lead over his compatriot Ralph DePalma, who drove a ballot . Until Dan Gurney's victory in the Eagle T1G at the Belgian Grand Prix in 1967 , Murphy's success was the only Grand Prix win by a US driver in a US racing car for 46 years.

In 1922 the triumvirate Tommy Milton, Fred Duesenberg and Jimmy Murphy disintegrated . Murphy had a Miller engine installed in the winning car of the French Grand Prix , which Duesenberg found a serious affront. The fact that Murphy won the Indianapolis 500 mile race with the car didn't make matters any better. After winning the national championship , he moved to Harold Arminius Miller's team before the start of the 1923 season . Some racing starts in Europe, where he had to skip championship races, prevented a successful title defense. He finished the season behind Eddie Hearne in the championship runner-up and in Europe in the Miller 122 was third at the Italian Grand Prix .

Death in Syracuse

In 1924 he was superior in the championship when he had a fatal accident on September 15 at the race on the Dirt Track of Syracuse. Murphy, who had won his last race at Altoona Speedway two weeks earlier , touched the inner wooden barrier while overtaking Phil Shafer , and it broke. The car began to spin, struck the barrier again, and broke through it. Jimmy Murphy died of a broken neck caused by a large splinter of wood from the barrier. Due to his large lead in the championship, he won it posthumously at the end of the year . His death was reported in the national media. His funeral in Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles took place with great public sympathy. Almost all well-known racing drivers, racing team owners, racing organizers and mechanics of the time were present.

literature

  • Rick Popely, L. Spencer Riggs: Indianapolis 500 Chronicle. Publications International Ltd., Lincolnwood IL 1998, ISBN 0-7853-2798-3 .

Web links

Commons : Jimmy Murphy  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ About Tommy Murphy (English)
  2. ↑ About the young Jimmy Murphy
  3. ↑ About the Corona Road Race
  4. ↑ Indianapolis 500 1920
  5. ↑ Indianapolis 500 1922
personal data
SURNAME Murphy, Jimmy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Murphy, James Anthony
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American racing car driver
DATE OF BIRTH September 12, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH San Francisco
DATE OF DEATH September 15, 1924
Place of death Syracuse