But in 1953 she had known that she would have to retire, and soon. She was slowing down—and more importantly, so were her reflexes. That was when she had begun searching for a protege, someone she could groom to take her place when she took over the retiring crew-chief’s position.
She had found it in an unlikely place: Hollywood. And in an unlikely person, a teenage heartthrob, a young, hard-living actor. But she had not seen him first on the silver screen; she had seen him racing, behind the wheel of his treasured silver Porsche.
He had been torn by indecision, although he made time for her coaching and logged a fair amount of time in Bugatti racing machines. She and the retiring crew chief worked on design changes to suit his style of driving to help lure him. But it was Hollywood itself that forced his choice.
When a near-fatality on a lonely California highway left his Porsche a wreck, his studio issued an ultimatum. Quit driving, or tear up your contract. We don’t cast corpses.
He tore up his contract, took the exec’s pipe from his mouth, stuffed the scraps in the pipe, slammed it down on the desk and said “Smoke it.” He bought a ticket for Italy the same day.
“Miss Duncan?” Paul broke into her thoughts. “We have company.”
She turned, to see the crew-chiefs of Ferrari, Mercedes, Lola, and a dozen more approaching. Her first thought was—What have we done now?
But it was not what she had done, nor her crew, nor even Jimmy.
It was what Ford had done.
“Isadora,” said Paul LeMond, the Ferrari crew-chief, who had evidently been appointed spokesman, “We need your help.”
Ten years of fighting her way through this man’s world, with no support from anyone except Bugatti and a few of her crew had left her unprepared for such a statement.
She simply stared at them, while they laid out their idea.
This would be the last pit-stop before the finish, and Dora was frankly not certain how Jimmy was going to take this. But she leaned down into the cockpit where she would not be overheard and shouted the unthinkable into his ear over the roar of his engine. How the crews of every other team still on the track were fed up with the performance of the Ford drivers—and well they should be, with ten multi-car wrecks leaving behind ruined vehicles and drivers in hospital. The fact that one of those wrecks had included one of the Ford three-car flying wedges had not been good enough.
“So if Ford is going to play footsie with the rules, so are we,” she shouted. “They think you’re the best driver on the track, Jimmy. The only one good enough to beat cheaters. So every other driver on the track’s been given orders to block for you, or let you pass.”
She couldn’t see Jimmy’s expression behind the faceplate, but she did see the muscles in his jaw tense. “So they’re going to just give me the win?” he shouted back.
That was not how Jimmy wanted his first Grand Prix to end—and she didn’t blame him.
“Jimmy—they decided you’re the best out there! Not only your peers, but mine! Are you going to throw that kind of vote away?” It was the only way she would win this argument, she sensed it. And she sensed as his mood turned to grudging agreement. “All right,” he said finally. “But you tell them this—” She rapped him on the top of the helmet. “No, you listen. They said to tell you that if you get by Ford early enough, they’re going to do the same for Giorgio with the old Ferrari and Peter for Citroen. And as many more as they can squeeze by.”
She sensed his mood lighten again, although he didn’t answer. But by then the crew was done, and she stood back as he roared back out onto the track.
When he took the track, there were ten laps to go—but five went by without anyone being able to force a break for Jimmy, not even when the Ford wedge lapped slower cars. She had to admit that she had seldom seen smoother driving, but it was making her blood boil to watch Jimmy coming up behind them, and being forced to hold his place.
Three laps to go, and there were two more cars wrecked, one of them from Citroen. Two laps. One.
Flag lap.
Suddenly, on the back stretch, an opening, as one of the Ford drivers tired and backed off a little. And Jimmy went straight for it.
Dora was on the top of the fire-wall, without realizing she had jumped up there, screaming at the top of her lungs, with half the crew beside her. Ford tried to close up the wedge, but it was too late.
Now it was just Jimmy and the lead Ford, neck and neck—down the backstretch, through the chicane, then on the home run for the finish line.
Dora heard his engine howling; heard strain that hadn’t been there before. Surely if she heard it, so would he. He should have saved the engine early on—if he pushed it, he’d blow the engine, he had to know that—
He pushed it. She heard him drop a gear, heard the engine scream in protest—
And watched the narrow-bodied, lithe steel Bugatti surge across the finish-line a bare nose ahead of the Ford, engine afire and trailing a stream of flame and smoke that looked for all the world like a victory banner.
Dora was the first to reach him, before he’d even gotten out of the car. While firefighters doused the vehicle with impartial generosity, she reached down and yanked off his helmet.
She seized both his ears and gave him the kind of kiss only the notorious Isadora Duncan, toast of two continents, could have delivered—a kiss with every year of her considerable amatory experience behind it.
“That’s for the win,” she said, as he sat there, breathless, mouth agape and for once completely without any kind of response.
Then she grasped his shoulders and shook him until his teeth rattled.
“And that’s for blowing up my engine, you idiot!” she screamed into his face.
By then, the crowd was on him, hauling him bodily out of the car and hoisting him up on their shoulders to ride to the winner’s circle.
Dora saw to it that young Paul was part of that privileged party, as a reward for his fire-fighting and his listening. And when the trophy had been presented and the pictures were all taken, she made sure he got up to the front.
Jimmy recognized him, as Jimmy would, being the kind of man he was. “Hey!” he said, as the Race Queen hung on his arm and people thrust champagne bottles at him, “You made it!”
Paul grinned, shyly. Dora felt pleased for him, as he shoved the pass and a pen at Jimmy. “Listen, I know it’s awful being asked—”
“Awful? Hell no!” Jimmy grabbed the pen and pass. “Have you made up your mind about what you want to do yet? Acting, or whatever?”
Paul shook his head, and Dora noticed then what she should have noticed earlier—that his bright blue eyes and Jimmy’s were very similar. And if he isn’t a heartbreaker yet, she thought wryly, he will be.
“I still don’t know,” he said.
“Tell you what,” Jimmy said, pausing a moment to kiss another beauty queen for the camera, “you make a pile of money in the movies, then go into racing. Get a good mentor like Dora.”