ABOVE:  The official pre-qualifying photo of A. J. Shepherd in Ernest Ruiz's Travelon Trailer, Watson Offy #73 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1961 – Indianapolis Motor Speedway photo

LEFT:  A. J. Shepherd had started 14th in the race and was running in 11^th place by the 50th lap of the 200-lap event.  He had made his first pit stop and was running faster than the leaders when he caught up with the third place running car driven by Jack Turner.  Shepherd decided to save his car and just follow Turner as all of the cars ahead of Shepherd still needed to make their first pit stop and that would have left Shepherd in the lead of the race.  Just as Turner and Shepherd prepared to lap the car driven by Don Davis on the front straight-away, Davis lost control of his car and spun it.  Turner and Shepherd both swerved to miss the spinning Davis with Shepherd's car striking the outside retaining wall.  Shepherd is shown here still sitting in his car (second from left) after that accident.  He was not injured but the damage done to the car put him out of the race and he was credited with having finished in 26th place – newspaper photo from the A. J. Shepherd collection