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[h=1]1990 Lola T90/00 Valvoline Indy Car[/h] [h=2]Al Unser Jr. 1990 CART Championship Winner star[/h]

• 1.2k
• 19

• [h=5]Engine[/h]2.65L
• [h=5]Color[/h]Blue/White
• [h=5]Interior[/h]Black
• [h=5]VIN/Serial[/h]SOLD ON BILL OF SALE

[h=3]Estimate[/h] $75,000 - $90,000

[h=3]Highlights[/h]

• Sold on a bill of sale
• Al Unser Jr. won the 1990 CART PPG Indy Car World Series Championship in this car
• Unser won six CART races in 1990 driving the no. 5 Valvoline-sponsored entry for Galles-Kraco Racing
• Documented as authentic Lola Indy Car chassis no. H.U.02
• Verified as one of the two original team cars by former Lola chief engineer and designer Bruce Ashmore
• Rare Ilmor-built Chevrolet 2.65 liter turbocharged V-8 engine
• CART inspection sticker intact
• USAC Indianapolis 500 inspection sticker intact
• Restoration completed in June 2016
• Aircraft hardware used throughout the car during restoration
• Suspension components recently magnafluxed and crack tested
• Fuel cell tested
• Currently needs a fuel pump, spark box and gears to return to running order
• Eligible for select vintage motorsports events such as the SVRA Brickyard Vintage Racing Invitational
• For display purposes only

This 1990 Lola T90/00 Indy Car is the car driven by two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Al Unser Jr. to his first CART PPG Indy Car World Series Championship. Resplendent in its #5 Valvoline livery, this beauty has been documented as Lola chassis #H.U.02 and is powered by a rare Ilmor-built Chevrolet 2.65-liter turbocharged V-8 engine. Further documentation includes the intact CART and USAC Indianapolis 500 inspection stickers as well as verification from former Lola chief engineer and designer Bruce Ashmore that this is one of two original cars used by Galles-Kraco Racing for the 1990 season. That year proved to be a landmark for Unser, as he captured six races on his way to the season title. When the 1990 season began Galles-Kraco Racing was marked as one team to watch because successful team owners Rick Galles and Maurice Kraines decided to merge their operations, pairing the up-and-coming Unser with 1986 Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Rahal. It didn’t take long for Unser to live up to the lofty expectations, as he captured the Long Beach Grand Prix from the pole position in only the second race of the season. After a fourth-place finish in the Indianapolis 500, Unser really went on a tear. He won the first oval race of his career at the venerable Milwaukee Mile and then proceeded to dominate the stout competition with an incredible four-race winning streak at Toronto, Michigan, Denver and Vancouver. The Michigan 500 was an especially sweet victory as Unser dueled wheel-to-wheel with his elder teammate Rahal for lap after lap prior to taking the checkered flag first. The popular Unser would go on to become a two-time CART champion and win an outstanding 34 Indy Car races—including the Indianapolis 500 in both 1992 and 1994—in his brilliant career. A recent restoration of the #5 Valvoline Lola was completed in June of 2016 with aircraft hardware used throughout the car, while the fuel cell was tested and suspension components were magnafluxed and crack tested. Currently this Lola is for display purposes only, but an investment in a new fuel pump, spark box and gears would return it to running order and make it eligible for select vintage motorsports events such as the SVRA Brickyard Vintage Racing Invitational.

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[h=2]Al Unser Sr. named honoree for 2017 Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance Congratulations![/h] Tuesday, 30 August 2016


RACER Staff / Images by LAT

Four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Al Unser Sr. has been named the honoree for the 22nd annual Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance, which will be held March 10-12, 2017.


"The 100th running of the Indy 500 has made us even more nostalgic than usual," said Bill Warner, founder and Chairman of the Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance. "When we started to think about an honoree for 2017 'Big Al' seemed like the perfect choice. Next May is the 30th anniversary of 'Big Al's' fourth '500' victory and the 60th anniversary of his first race win: perfect bookends to an extraordinary career. We were very flattered when he agreed to join us in 2017."
Thre three-time Indy car champion (1970, '83, '85), mastered all forms of motor racing, including four times as a Hoosier Hundred victor and sprints, midgets, Formula 5000 and stock cars; in May, he took to the track in the winner of the first Indy 500, the 1911 Marmon Wasp, as part of the festivities for the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 (pictured). The Hall of Famer was USAC stock car rookie of the year in 1967 and IROC champion in 1978. In his final Indianapolis 500 (1987) win he broke Ralph De Palma's 67-year-old record for most career laps led in the historic race and is the current leader at 644. In 2011 he was voted by fans as second all time to A.J. Foyt in the "Greatest 33" ever to compete in the Indy 500.
In June 2015, SVRA gave Unser the honor of grand marshal for the Brickyard Invitational at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
About the Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance – Now in its third decade, the Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance is among the top automotive events in the world. Always held the second full weekend in March, "Amelia" draws over 250 rare vehicles from collections around the world to The Golf Club of Amelia Island and The Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island for a celebration of the automobile like no other. Since 1996 the show's foundation has donated over $2.75 million to Community Hospice of Northeast Florida, Inc., Spina Bifida of Jacksonville, The Navy Marine Corps Relief Society, Shop with Cops, Micah's Place (for abused women) and other deserving charities. The 21st annual Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance is scheduled for March 11-13, 2016. For more information, visit www.ameliaconcours.org or call 904-636-0027.

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Links tying some racing history together: moved to last post in thread

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Quiz time: Who holds the speed record at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and what is it? That's an easy one: Arie Luyendyk, with the 237.498mph average he posted during qualifying in 1996 (below). How about the closed-course speed record? Harder, but only slightly: Gil de Ferran's 241.428mph at Fontana, Calif., in 2000.

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Dan Wheldon and Brian Herta


[h=2]PRUETT: Herta on Wheldon's legacy, 5 years later[/h] Marshall Pruett / Images by IMS Photo, LAT

Bryan Herta lost his dear friend, driver and teammate Dan Wheldon five years ago this Sunday in a crash at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and like so many I've spoken to this week, the ordeal has felt incredibly distant and recent at the same time.


"Has it been five years already?" Herta said. "Intellectually, I know it's five years, but it's strange. In some ways it seems like it couldn't be five years already, but in other ways, it seems longer."
It's the inevitable outcome when a vivid character like Wheldon is taken from a sport where lively personalities are increasingly hard to find. The distance – five years – is long enough to have normalized Wheldon's absence, but to those who knew the Briton, or grew to root for him from afar, it's more than likely his presence has remained current and fresh.
Whether it's as an ongoing inspiration or some other motivational force, Wheldon continues to play an important role with many of those he touched during his 33 years. Herta's team, the once-little Bryan Herta Autosport, was catapulted into Victory Lane at the 2011 Indy 500 thanks to Danny Boy, and with the team's increasing prosperity, it remains as one of Wheldon's great legacies.
Five years out from that dark day in Las Vegas, the rise of Herta's IndyCar team – one that is now merged with Andretti Autosport and won the 2016 Indy 500 carrying the same car number – stands as a testament to Wheldon's undeniable influence.
"I still think about him a lot," Herta said. "When we won Indy this year, he was the first person that popped into my head. I think because I associate him with that place so much, and he had such a legacy of competing there – a lot of his contemporaries like Scott Dixon, Tony Kanaan, Dario [Franchitti] talk about his performances there – that when the TV cameras came down when we won, I spontaneously said something about Dan right away.
"As we continued to grow as a team, he believed in us before anyone else. He made us better, told us we could win the Indy 500 when on paper we had no business even thinking we could, so I always try and carry that with me. He believed in us, and we try to live up to that every way."
If Wheldon's dramatic last-lap, last-corner Indy 500 win for Herta in 2011 wasn't enough of a thrill ride in the No. 98 Honda, Alexander Rossi continued the tradition by toppling IndyCar's giants last May to capture the 100th Indy 500 in a shocking manner behind the wheel of the newest No. 98 Honda.


"I think he'd be really happy with the success we've had, as long as he wasn't racing against us," Herta said with a laugh. "If he was racing against us, he might not have been as excited, but I know he'd take satisfaction from the role he played in helping us."
Herta has been on an interesting and fulfilling journey since he and Wheldon were teammates at Michael Andretti's team from 2003-06.
He was fired halfway through the 2008 season while driving sports cars for Andretti, moved into team ownership following that event by creating Bryan Herta Autosport and grew BHA to the point where Wheldon, who was out of work after splitting with Panther Racing, placed his faith in Bryan with a one-off drive at the Indy 500.
After their Indy 500 win, and with Danica Patrick set to leave Andretti's team for NASCAR at the end of the year, Wheldon was going to return to drive for Michael and fill her vacant seat in 2012. Taken before it came to fruition, Wheldon was unable to rejoin Andretti, but with changes in his own program, Herta and Andretti were able to put the past behind them and merge for 2016.
In a roundabout way, and in light of Andretti-Herta Autosport's accomplishment at the Indy 500, Herta says there's something comforting in how things have come full circle.
"I guess I didn't really think about it in those terms, but it's true; it started for both of us at Andretti, he was there as a rookie, our relationship started there, and in some ways, it's poetic he was bound for Andretti and we ended up there now and put together another Indy 500 win," he added. "I like the feeling of that, for whatever that's worth. I like how that feels."
Rossi's Indy-winning No. 98 Andretti-Herta Honda is set to join Wheldon's No. 98 BHA Honda in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum in the coming weeks.
With two of his cars being prepared for display, Herta is fond of the idea that future generations will be able to see what Wheldon started five years ago for BHA, and what has continued with Rossi and the Andretti-Herta program.
"It's a tremendous source of pride," he said. "Even as time has gone on, guys that worked with us in 2011 have moved to other teams and we all go visit Dan's car in the museum and spend some time with it. It feels like we're spending time with him, almost.
"And it's nice to know we'll have this winning No. 98 next to it; is even better. We worked hard to achieve that goal, and there's a legacy to it that's unlike winning any other race in the world.
"Our grandkids, and great grandkids, and Dan's family will be able to go to the museum and see what their ancestors achieved."
Dan's wife Susie and their sons are his greatest legacy. It's a distant second, but it's also heartwarming to know that five years out, Wheldon's closest friends and teammates continue to honor his memory the right way in the sport he loved with every fiber.

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[h=2]RETRO: First air show at IMS in 1910[/h] Friday, 30 September 2016


Mark Dill / Images by IMS Photo & First Super Speedway

This weekend the Indianapolis Motor Speedway will host the Red Bull Air Race – but it won't be the first time the storied track has staged an aviation extravaganza. That history was created from June 13-19, 1910. The most anticipated aviation team of the event came from two of the most famous aviators of all, Wilbur and Orville Wright.


The Wright Brothers' planes arrived June 7. Of the 11 entries, the Wrights owned six.
The Speedway had a transformed look from its debut in 1909. In the infield stood an "aerodrome" to house planes. At the track's entrance was a wooden "monorail," a guide with a groove cut in it to launch the planes of the age because they used skid pads instead of wheels.
American flags marked a course in the infield and judges assessed how well pilots stayed within its parameters as they did "laps." Wing-to-wing competition was too dangerous, so competitors started at different points on the circuit and raced to see who closed the gap.
As the first licensed aviation meet in America, the event was historic. This was the first public demonstration of aviation in Indiana – it was still a marvel to see machines fly. Carl Fisher, who could not resist flying with Orville Wright, became one of the earliest passengers in aviation.
An exhilarated but humbled Speedway president confessed to a white-knuckle experience: "I've had enough. If there are no dents in the framework where I had it gripped it is because I couldn't squeeze hard enough."
Romantic accounts of Orville Wright soaring to lofty heights at dusk and peering over the horizon to see the sun after darkness coated the ground below mesmerized Indianapolis. Inexperience among the pilots, called birdmen by the press, reflected the nascent nature of aviation.
Walter Brookins, the Wrights' 21-year-old star, had only taken up flying three months prior. All the more astounding, then, was the daring of young Brookins, who on Monday, June 13, took a 40-foot wingspan plane made of balloon silk stretched over a spruce wood frame to a new world altitude record at 4,384.5 feet.
While Monday was beautiful, the rest of the week offered intermittent rain and turbulence. With planes more temperamental than racecars, Speedway management offered "wind checks" as well as traditional rain checks to insure customers. Pilots found a happy hour late in the day when conditions calmed but they still had light.
First-day attendance disappointed, but news of Brookins' bold moves attracted a respectable crowd of 19,000 by Wednesday. Of interest, too, was a creative promotion done in cooperation with Overland (whose test car is pictured above).
The Indianapolis auto company fashioned a novelty car called a Wind Wagon (pictured). Its engine powered an eight-foot wood propeller at the rear, mounted on a chain-driven shaft and positioned high enough to clear the ground. The car raced airplanes around the brick oval, losing a close finish to Brookins on Thursday.
Later Brookins put on a dazzling display of air acrobatics. Twisting his cloth-winged flyer in mid-air at 82 degrees, the young pilot had fellow aviators in awe. Timed by Orville Wright, Brookins spun the plane a full revolution in 6.4 seconds. Both Wright brothers ran to their student when he touched ground, excitedly shaking his hand.
When asked if Brookins would attempt the daring maneuver again, Wilbur Wright said, "Never again with my consent. I don't think he or anyone could do it again and get away with it."
Friday's big event was the highlight of the week – another world's altitude record by Brookins. In another dusk-time flight, Brookins wasted no time in climbing to high altitude. After ground engineers measured his height at 4,938 feet the plane disappeared from the sight of Speedway onlookers. His engine failed on his descent and he glided the plane at the mercy of the wind, landing some four miles north of the Speedway, unhurt.
Saturday proved anti-climatic with one exception. After the planes of his other pilots were stored in the aerodrome, Orville Wright mounted the skies to close the meet. As Wright pirouetted in the air with exceptional skill the handful of remaining spectators marveled at the spectacle.
The legendary Wright's masterful command of the amazing new aircraft brought a fitting conclusion to an event hosted by the legendary track founded as a technology proving ground. While the crowds approached 20,000 in the closing days, they frequently dwindled to a few hundred as gusty winds hampered the fragile craft. Aviation events became a brief chapter in Speedway lore, never to be repeated – until this year.

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This post will be moved to:
https://www.tamparacing.com/forums/ph...ml#post9382132



Indy's Quantum Leap 1972
by Robin Miller

The Indianapolis 500 had never seen a leap in speed quite like it – and it never would again. Huge wings and massive boosts made the 1972 race a journey into the unknown.

Peter Revson captured the pole position for the 1971 Indianapolis 500 at a record 178.696 miles per hour. Just one year later, Wally Dallenbach qualified at 178.421mph – and missed the show!

In what went down as the most jaw-dropping Month of May in Indianapolis Motor Speedway history, horsepower ran amok, speeds jumped into uncharted territory, and stopwatches were almost rendered obsolete.

Bobby Unser won the pole in Dan Gurney's Eagle at 195.940mph – 17mph faster than Revson's year-old mark – and the average speed for the 33-car field was 183mph – some 12mph quicker than the 1971 lineup.

"Man, that was a fascinating time, because there was so much to learn and ideas were flying around just like the cars," says Mario Andretti, who was part of the Vel's/Parnelli Jones Superteam that year, along with Al Unser and Joe Leonard. "We had huge rear wings, new profiles and the horsepower was huge!"

McLaren had rocked the IMS establishment a year earlier with a new, sleek design by Gordon Coppuck that would qualify first and second with Revson and Mark Donohue, as well as alter the look of an Indy car and send the opposition scurrying for the drawing board.

Even though neither McLaren M16-A had finished in '71 and Al Unser had soldiered past the new wave of English innovation to score his second straight victory in a two-year-old Colt chassis, the Brits had put a scare into Gasoline Alley for the second time in a decade.

So when Indy opened for business in the May of '72, there were four new McLaren M16-Bs – factory entries for Revson and Denny Hulme, who would soon be replaced by Gordon Johncock after suffering burns in practice, and the Penske Racing-run machines of Donohue and Gary Bettenhausen.

The Superteam had the radical new Parnelli VPJ-1 chassis (above) designed by Maurice Phillipe, who'd previously penned the Lotus 72 Formula 1 car and turbine-powered, wedge-shaped Lotus 56 Indy car; A.J. Foyt sported a new Coyote, and there were a pair of new Eagles for Jerry Grant and Unser.

A disparate entry list that also included chassis called Antares, Brabham, Scorpion, Lola, Kingfish, Gerhardt and Colt did have one common denominator: a massive rear wing that stretched to the outside of both rear tires.

"We tested in late 1971 at Phoenix without a wing and then we put one on and it was like night and day," recalls Roger Penske, who was, of course, an original McLaren owner in '71 with Donohue. "It was the beginning of a new era and a new word: downforce."

"It was those giant rear wings and horsepower," says Foyt (pictured below with his '72 Coyote), whose modified Ford/Foyt V8 was massaged by engine guru Howard Gilbert. "But it was mostly horsepower – and I know that we had 1,200 horsepower that month." Sonny Meyer, son of three-time Indy king Louie and one of Indy car racing's most respected motor men for decades, still smiles when he thinks of 1972.

"Oh man, that was a lot of fun because we had unlimited boost (manifold pressure). And it was crazy because the driver also had a boost adjustment in the car, so he could crank it even more after someone like George (Bignotti) turned it up," says Meyer, who was an invaluable part of Pat Patrick's team's Indy wins in 1973 and '82. "We made more than 1,000 horsepower and that's staggering with a four-cylinder engine."

Adds Foyt: "You had to have an educated foot back then, because you could spin the wheels coming off the corner. We had that much power. It was great."

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post #65 has some biography notes on Alexander Rossi 2016

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The Indy Car Wars: The 30-year Fight for Control of American Open-wheel Racing Paperback – October 8, 2015
by Sigur E. Whitaker (Author)

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• The world of Champ Car auto racing was changing in the 1970s. As cars became more sophisticated, the cost of supporting a team had skyrocketed, making things difficult for team owners. In an effort to increase purses paid by racing promoters and win lucrative television contracts, a group of owners formed Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) in 1978. Soon after, CART split from its sanctioning body, the United States Auto Club (USAC). Though Champ Cars ran on numerous tracks, the Indianapolis 500 was the payday that supported most teams through the season. From the beginning, CART had most of the successful teams and popular drivers, and they focused on driving a wedge between the track owners and the USAC. Over the next 30 years, the tension between CART and USAC ebbed and flowed until all parties realized that reunification was needed for the sake of the sport. This book details the fight over control of Champ Car racing before reunification in 2008.
  
  

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INDYCAR Jerry Karl (stays in this thread)