When Robin Miller discovered Formula Ford

And I’ll never forget my mom saying to my dad: “Oh my god, Bob. He’s bought an Indy car! He’ll kill himself.”




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By: Robin Miller | 8 hours ago


Although his old buddy Paul Page will be the keynote speaker, RACER Magazine’s Robin Miller won’t be at Road America for the Formula Ford 50th Anniversary event Sept. 11-15, perhaps because the prospect of 240 FFs tearing up one of his favorite road courses would put too much stress on his heart. And he’s saving that muscle for the IndyCar finale at Weathertech Raceway Laguna Seca the following weekend.

However, Formula Ford played a part in the much-loved broadcaster and sportswriter’s midwest upbringing, as Robin remembers …


In June 1972, I announced to my pal Art Pollard that, after all the years of watching races, I had decided I wanted to be a driver. He laughed and said: “OK, kid. Sell your sports car (a Lotus Europa), buy a van, and I’ll help you get a car.”

Pollard, still on crutches after breaking his leg at Indy during practice when a hub snapped going into Turn 3 in Andy Granatelli’s Lola, knew there were a couple of little “mini Indy” cars up in Andy’s shop in Chicago.

They were Formula Fords given to Granatelli by Francis McNamara, who’d designed the turd Mario Andretti had driven for Mr. STP in the 1970 Indianapolis 500.

Pollard told me to come up with $5,000 (not an easy task since I was making $158 a week as a sportswriter at The Indianapolis Star) and we’d meet at Granatelli’s shop. So I borrowed money from a banker buddy, telling him it was for a new Ford (kinda was) and we headed for Illinois.

Upon entering the massive garage, it was love at first sight. There were a couple of Novis under plastic tarps and right next to them was a DayGlo orange Formula Ford, painted just like my hero Jim Hurtubise’s Novi in 1963.

Pollard gave Vince Granatelli $3,000 (stuffing two grand back in my pocket), and that little beauty was all mine. I’d rented a U-Haul trailer to take my car home, but, unfortunately, it was three feet wide and nine feet long so we had to take the wheels off my FF and load it with a fork lift. (An early indication, perhaps, that I had no business owning a race car?)

For the McNamara’s maiden voyage, I borrowed a trailer from Paul Page (kneeling at left in photo above), a FF racer before he was the voice of the Indy 500, and headed out to Indianapolis Raceway Park with Pollard in tow. Just before we fired the engine, he leaned in and asked if I’d remembered to check the oil and water? Naturally I replied no, assuming that my brand new race cars came with those amenities.

Art had to drive over Gasoline Alley and get some Valvoline.

My first drivers school was at Nelson Ledges, Ohio, and it was fairly uneventful; but my second stop was Watkins Glen. I’d watched the movie Grand Prix four nights in a row when it came out, and I know exactly what to do when I rolled into upstate New York just as the sun came up: I had to walk the track.

Miller (No. 40) on the attack at IRP, the car rebuilt following its drivers school near-destruction.


Not sure what everybody else’s SCCA drivers school was like, but our instructor showed us the line and we ran behind him on Saturday. Then we had some kind of all-skate qualifying session — except nobody knew their times.

As my lone mechanic, Mad Dog Mike Roth, and I pushed our car toward the grid on Sunday morning, we asked, “Where do we line up?”

My car was No. 40 CD (for CenDiv), and the SCCA worker replied, “You’re on the pole.”

“Of the race?” (I tried to act like that’s what I expected, but it was a surprise to say the least.)

Then again, maybe it shouldn’t have been: They’d put all the Formula Fords in with the Formula A-B-C cars, and they were all behind me! Let’s just say that even though everybody was new, the talent level left something to be desired.

As per protocol, we were told there would be a practice start in which we would take the green and race up the esses until we saw a yellow flag; then we’d slow, pack up, and come around to do the real race.

On our practice start, I got it right and, by the time we got to that flagman, I was a couple hundred yards ahead of second place. My first thought was that I had to be a natural and I’d likely be in Formula 1 within two years.

Then came reality. I had been in second gear for my first flying start, but, for some unknown reason, I slipped it into third for the real thing. Obviously, my 1600cc Cortina engine bogged badly and I was fourth or fifth by the time I got to Turn 1 whereupon a Formula A car drilled me, spun me into the Armco, and tore my car in half.

As the fluids ran down the track, I clambered out and sat down next to the remains of my car in shock. I’d gone from F1 to out of business in less than two minutes.

Later, the chief steward called me up to the tower and said the accident wasn’t my fault and I’d still be granted my regional license. As we talked, I looked down and saw a bunch of people running toward the vicinity of my wrecked car. Mad Dog Roth had taken a wheel hammer and was beating a hole in the nose of the Formula A car that had speared me.

Bless his heart.

McNamara FFs were sturdy and attractive; the same cannot be said for their IndyCar.


In 1973, my car rebuilt by Jack Brandt, I started out in regionals and ran decently, but it was my first National at Mid-Ohio that opened my eyes. Gordon Smiley pulled in with a double-deck trailer and a spare car, and, in qualifying and the race, he, B.J. Swanson and former Formula Vee National Champion Dave Weitzenhof were in a class by themselves.

Formula Ford was just starting to hit its stride in 1974, but I sold my McNamara and bought a midget from Gary Bettenhausen. Eating lunch every day with Johnny Parsons, Bill Vukovich, Jimmy Caruthers and Bettenhausen, I was lectured constantly that if I really wanted to learn how to race, I’d go run USAC in a midget or a sprinter.

They were right, and I’d never trade my eight years experience in USAC.

But to this day I can still remember the night I brought that bitchin’-bright-orange FF home and unloaded in my parents’ garage at midnight.

And I’ll never forget my mom saying to my dad: “Oh my god, Bob. He’s bought an Indy car! He’ll kill himself.”

 

MILLER: Which driver era was IndyCar's best ever?

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By: Robin Miller 7 hours ago


Will Power is beyond flattered to find himself sandwiched between the Unser brothers on IndyCar’s all-time list of winners, but the 2018 Indianapolis 500 winner believes his generation of drivers ranks right up there.

Power also thinks people will look back on these past few years as probably “the most competitive era ever”, and when 20 cars are separated by one second on a road course with 14 turns, it’s tough to argue.

In terms of competition, IndyCar has never been closer or had more depth, and with spec cars and very comparable engines, it’s not all that surprising. But that gives the driver, engineer, strategist and pit crews the ability to make a difference, and today’s line-up sports 14 IndyCar winners and a few more on the on-deck circle.

Of course some old-timers were up in arms because they thought the 38-year-old Aussie was saying it was the greatest lineup of talent ever, but that’s not what he meant. His statement: “You’ve got to look at this generation as one of those generations when you had A.J., Mario, the Unsers as with Dixon and I’m sure [Alexander] Rossi and [Josef] Newgarden – these guys are going to be around for a long time.”

But Willy P.’s declaration got me to thinking: what was the greatest group of racers in IndyCar’s modern history?

It’s a tough call, because the modern IndyCar driver only runs pavement, and as diverse as the NTT series is, it still takes a back seat to the days of mile dirt tracks spliced in with ovals, and road courses, and even Pikes Peak.

So as we head to Laguna Seca for the 2019 finale, let’s take a subjective look at the best fields of each decade of the past 60 years. And for argument’s sake I only counted the victory total once for each driver.

Rodger Ward posted some big numbers, and had to beat some deep fields in order to do so. Image via Robin Miller Collection


In 1955, the last year of Triple A, you had five men destined to pull into Victory Lane at Indy – Bob Sweikert, Pat Flaherty, Jimmy Bryan, Jim Rathmann and Rodger Ward – mixing it up with the likes of Pat O’Connor, Jack McGrath, Tony Bettenhausen, Johnny Thomson, Duane Carter, Jimmy Davies, Jimmy Reece, George Amick, Andy Linden and two-time Indy king Bill Vukovich. Ward was two years away from his initial Champ Car win, but would take Indy twice and roll up 26 victories.

Bettenhausen racked up 22 IndyCar wins and was a two-time national champion, while Thomson scored seven IndyCar victories and a USAC sprint title, Sweikert and McGrath won four IndyCar races apiece, Amick earned a trio of IndyCar triumphs, Davies was a three-time USAC midget king and youngest IndyCar winner at that time (20 years old). Vuky died while comfortably leading what would have been his third Indy win in a row. As a group, they totaled 67 Indy Car wins – including eight Indy 500s – and eight IndyCar titles.

In 1961 it was an onslaught of fresh, fast faces mixed with a few wise old owls. A.J. Foyt won the first of his four Indy 500s and also captured his second straight USAC championship as we were introduced to Parnelli Jones, Bobby Marshman and Roger McCluskey a year after Jim Hurtubise and Lloyd Ruby stormed onto the scene. Jones won everything on four wheels in USAC midgets, sprints and Champ Car, but had to settle for only one Indy win in what could have easily been three or four.

The likes of A.J. Foyt and Parnelli Jones were a handful in 1961, regardless of the track surface. Image by Gene Crucean


Marshman was on the fast-track to stardom before losing his life in a test at Phoenix in 1964, while Ward was a year away from his second Indy win and fighting furiously to hold off the brash kid from Houston. It was a lineup loaded with exceptional talent that would adapt quickly from roadsters to rear-engine cars in the coming years, and were just as fierce on the dirt as they were on the pavement. The career victories of Foyt (67), Eddie Sachs (, Ruby (7), Don Branson (6), Jones (6), McCluskey (5), McElreath (5), Hurtubise (4), Len Sutton (3) and Marshman (1) total 112 plus 10 IndyCar championships and five Indy 500s.

In 1971 the USAC landscape was changing as Roger Penske and Team McLaren became players, while NASCAR stars began looking north and Mario Andretti was mixing Formula 1 with the Hoosier Hundred. Al Unser and George Bignotti made it back-to-back at Indy, and Penske introduced Mark Donohue to the USAC wars. Peter Revson was McLaren’s chosen son and showed he was up to the task, just like fellow sports car grad Donohue. Cale Yarborough quit stock cars to be Rube’s teammate, and Lee Roy Yarbrough had nearly won the California 500 the year before and was back for more – soon to be followed by the Allison brothers.

We saw the grit of Gary Bettenhausen as he impressed The Captain, while pal Bill Vukovich and the underrated Mike Mosley were gaining speed and attention. Art Pollard was still fast at 44, Dan Gurney’s protege Swede Savage looked like a star in the making and Johnny Rutherford was two years away from making it big with McLaren. Bobby Unser was in between Indy wins and a May away from taming 1,000 horsepower with Gurney’s latest Eagle. Gordon Johncock and Wally Dallenbach were set to go to the front with Pat Patrick’s team.

The Class of ’71 had F1 winners, Can-Am and Trans-Am stars, NASCAR biggies, a flat-track motorcycle god and some of USAC’s finest. Their career win total of 204 wins (we already counted A.J.’s 67 in 1961) – Mario (52), Al Unser (39), Uncle Bobby (34), Rutherford (27), Johncock (25) Joe Leonard (6), Dallenbach (5), Gary B. (4), Mosley (4), Donohue (3), Pollard (2), Vukovich (1), Savage (1) and Revson (1) – isn’t likely to ever be touched, and throw in their 20 national championships and it’s hard to comprehend. And when you consider the prowess of A.J., Mario, Big Al, J.R. and Bettenhausen on the dirt, coupled with Cale’s 83 NASCAR wins and Yarborough’s 14, plus Andretti’s dozen F1 victories and 1978 world title, it’s hard not to label this as most decorated and diverse group of all time.

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IndyCar, Insights & Analysis

 

Which driver era was IndyCar's best ever?

MILLER: Which driver era was IndyCar's best ever?

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By: Robin Miller | 7 hours ago


Will Power is beyond flattered to find himself sandwiched between the Unser brothers on IndyCar’s all-time list of winners, but the 2018 Indianapolis 500 winner believes his generation of drivers ranks right up there.

Power also thinks people will look back on these past few years as probably “the most competitive era ever”, and when 20 cars are separated by one second on a road course with 14 turns, it’s tough to argue.

In terms of competition, IndyCar has never been closer or had more depth, and with spec cars and very comparable engines, it’s not all that surprising. But that gives the driver, engineer, strategist and pit crews the ability to make a difference, and today’s line-up sports 14 IndyCar winners and a few more on the on-deck circle.

Of course some old-timers were up in arms because they thought the 38-year-old Aussie was saying it was the greatest lineup of talent ever, but that’s not what he meant. His statement: “You’ve got to look at this generation as one of those generations when you had A.J., Mario, the Unsers as with Dixon and I’m sure [Alexander] Rossi and [Josef] Newgarden – these guys are going to be around for a long time.”

But Willy P.’s declaration got me to thinking: what was the greatest group of racers in IndyCar’s modern history?

It’s a tough call, because the modern IndyCar driver only runs pavement, and as diverse as the NTT series is, it still takes a back seat to the days of mile dirt tracks spliced in with ovals, and road courses, and even Pikes Peak.

So as we head to Laguna Seca for the 2019 finale, let’s take a subjective look at the best fields of each decade of the past 60 years. And for argument’s sake I only counted the victory total once for each driver.

Rodger Ward posted some big numbers, and had to beat some deep fields in order to do so. Image via Robin Miller Collection


In 1955, the last year of Triple A, you had five men destined to pull into Victory Lane at Indy – Bob Sweikert, Pat Flaherty, Jimmy Bryan, Jim Rathmann and Rodger Ward – mixing it up with the likes of Pat O’Connor, Jack McGrath, Tony Bettenhausen, Johnny Thomson, Duane Carter, Jimmy Davies, Jimmy Reece, George Amick, Andy Linden and two-time Indy king Bill Vukovich. Ward was two years away from his initial Champ Car win, but would take Indy twice and roll up 26 victories.

Bettenhausen racked up 22 IndyCar wins and was a two-time national champion, while Thomson scored seven IndyCar victories and a USAC sprint title, Sweikert and McGrath won four IndyCar races apiece, Amick earned a trio of IndyCar triumphs, Davies was a three-time USAC midget king and youngest IndyCar winner at that time (20 years old). Vuky died while comfortably leading what would have been his third Indy win in a row. As a group, they totaled 67 Indy Car wins – including eight Indy 500s – and eight IndyCar titles.

In 1961 it was an onslaught of fresh, fast faces mixed with a few wise old owls. A.J. Foyt won the first of his four Indy 500s and also captured his second straight USAC championship as we were introduced to Parnelli Jones, Bobby Marshman and Roger McCluskey a year after Jim Hurtubise and Lloyd Ruby stormed onto the scene. Jones won everything on four wheels in USAC midgets, sprints and Champ Car, but had to settle for only one Indy win in what could have easily been three or four.

The likes of A.J. Foyt and Parnelli Jones were a handful in 1961, regardless of the track surface. Image by Gene Crucean


Marshman was on the fast-track to stardom before losing his life in a test at Phoenix in 1964, while Ward was a year away from his second Indy win and fighting furiously to hold off the brash kid from Houston. It was a lineup loaded with exceptional talent that would adapt quickly from roadsters to rear-engine cars in the coming years, and were just as fierce on the dirt as they were on the pavement. The career victories of Foyt (67), Eddie Sachs (, Ruby (7), Don Branson (6), Jones (6), McCluskey (5), McElreath (5), Hurtubise (4), Len Sutton (3) and Marshman (1) total 112 plus 10 IndyCar championships and five Indy 500s.

In 1971 the USAC landscape was changing as Roger Penske and Team McLaren became players, while NASCAR stars began looking north and Mario Andretti was mixing Formula 1 with the Hoosier Hundred. Al Unser and George Bignotti made it back-to-back at Indy, and Penske introduced Mark Donohue to the USAC wars. Peter Revson was McLaren’s chosen son and showed he was up to the task, just like fellow sports car grad Donohue. Cale Yarborough quit stock cars to be Rube’s teammate, and Lee Roy Yarbrough had nearly won the California 500 the year before and was back for more – soon to be followed by the Allison brothers.

We saw the grit of Gary Bettenhausen as he impressed The Captain, while pal Bill Vukovich and the underrated Mike Mosley were gaining speed and attention. Art Pollard was still fast at 44, Dan Gurney’s protege Swede Savage looked like a star in the making and Johnny Rutherford was two years away from making it big with McLaren. Bobby Unser was in between Indy wins and a May away from taming 1,000 horsepower with Gurney’s latest Eagle. Gordon Johncock and Wally Dallenbach were set to go to the front with Pat Patrick’s team.

The Class of ’71 had F1 winners, Can-Am and Trans-Am stars, NASCAR biggies, a flat-track motorcycle god and some of USAC’s finest. Their career win total of 204 wins (we already counted A.J.’s 67 in 1961) – Mario (52), Al Unser (39), Uncle Bobby (34), Rutherford (27), Johncock (25) Joe Leonard (6), Dallenbach (5), Gary B. (4), Mosley (4), Donohue (3), Pollard (2), Vukovich (1), Savage (1) and Revson (1) – isn’t likely to ever be touched, and throw in their 20 national championships and it’s hard to comprehend. And when you consider the prowess of A.J., Mario, Big Al, J.R. and Bettenhausen on the dirt, coupled with Cale’s 83 NASCAR wins and Yarborough’s 14, plus Andretti’s dozen F1 victories and 1978 world title, it’s hard not to label this as most decorated and diverse group of all time.

IndyCar, Insights & Analysis

 

Part 2

MILLER: Which driver era was IndyCar's best ever?

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By: Robin Miller 7 hours ago


By 1985 we had ground effect, engineers, street races, a wave of second-generation peddlers and Championship Auto Racing Teams had displaced USAC. Michael Andretti, Al Unser Jr., Pancho Carter, Johnny Parsons Jr. and Geoff Brabham were following their father’s footsteps, while F1 escapees Emerson Fittipaldi and Roberto Guerrero were launching new careers in the States. Mario was coming off a championship, J.R. was slowing down and A.J. was done winning, but Al Unser had just scored an unlikely championship as a backup for Rick Mears.

The new sheriff in Gasoline Alley, Mears was a fast, smooth and calculating desert racer that made Roger Penske look even smarter – instantly. The Rocket already had two of his four Indy wins and three titles in six years before pulverizing his feet in an uncharacteristic crash in Canada that realistically cost him a couple of years at his peak.

Danny Sullivan executed the spin-and-win at IMS and launched his fine five-year run with Penske, while Bobby Rahal had blossomed into a tough customer that the championship eventually had to come through. Tom Sneva was still a master of The Miles, Kevin Cogan was always fast yet somewhat cursed, and Arie Luyendyk had not yet hit his groove. Combined, they amassed 191 IndyCar victories – Michael (42), Little Al (34), Mears (29), Rahal (24), Fittipaldi (22), Sullivan (17), Sneva (13), Luyendyk (7), Guerrero (2), Cogan (1) – by the time they were finished, in addition to 13 trips to Victory Lane at Indy 500 and 13 IndyCar championships.

The late 1990s featured the exciting styles of Alex Zanardi and Juan Pablo Montoya, but it’s tough not to give ’93 the nod. Nigel Mansell had bolted to CART after winning the 1992 F1 title, and Bernie Ecclestone was having trouble breathing. Nige took to the ovals like Bobby Unser at a fried chicken buffet, and scored five wins and the championship in a season that saw massive crowds at every track. Fittipaldi chased Mansell to the finish (losing by eight points), and his Penske teammate Paul Tracy matched Mansell’s win total and was third in the standings.

By the 1990s, winning meant beating the likes of Juan Pablo Montoya and Jimmy Vasser. Image by Levitt/LAT


Stefan Johansson, Raul Boesel and Eddie Cheever left F1 for Indy cars to join Teo Fabi, while two-time world champ Nelson Piquet gave Indy a shot but was badly injured during practice. Robby Gordon, Scott Pruett and Jimmy Vasser led the new wave of Americans, while Scott Goodyear, Adrian Fernandez, Buddy Lazier and Willy T. Ribbs all played a part in open-wheel history. As a unit they totaled 84 wins (Tracy 31), Fernandez (11), Vasser (10), Lazier (, Mansell (5), Goodyear (5), Fabi (5), Cheever (5), Gordon (2), Pruett (2) in their careers.

The Split voids 2000-2007 so we’ll go with 2009 – the second year everyone was back under one roof. Dario Franchitti’s trip to NASCAR was short and not very sweet, but he was back in IndyCar as teammates with Scott Dixon at Chip Ganassi Racing. They each won five times as the Scot edged the Kiwi by 11 points for the second of his four crowns, but there were also strong performances by Ryan Briscoe and Helio Castroneves, while Justin Wilson and Will Power introduced themselves to a broader audience and the youth movement was led by Graham Rahal and Marco Andretti. Tony Kanaan and Dan Wheldon were plenty quick but didn’t make it to the winner’s circle, and Danica Patrick finished fifth in the point standings (and third at Indy) to shush some of her critics.

There was plenty of talent in the immediate post-unification era. Image by LAT


Ed Carpenter started his own team and would soon become a threat on every oval. Dixon currently has 46 wins and counting, Power stands at 37 and counting, while Franchitti finished with 31, Castroneves 30, Kanaan has 17 and counting, Wheldon won 16 times, Briscoe 7, Carpenter 3 and counting so that’s 187 plus 10 Indy triumphs and 11 championships.

This year’s lineup is an impressive mix of brains, bravado and babies. Josef Newgarden is trying to hold off teammate Simon Pagenaud and Alexander Rossi after Dixon got kicked in the guts with back-to-back mechanical gremlins. The top three have all looked dominant at times in 2019, but 19-year-old Colton Herta, 20-year-old Pato O’Ward (before he signed a junior deal with Red Bull and left the U.S.) and 21-year-old Santino Ferrucci grabbed everyone’s attention with their wise-beyond-their years driving.

Throw in former champs like Ryan Hunter-Reay and Power, revitalized Takuma Sato, newcomer Felix Rosenvquist, super-sub Conor Daly and usual front-runners like James Hinchcliffe and Graham Rahal and it’s a mixed bag of veterans and kids (aka babies) that keep things interesting. The strokes and posers have been weeded out, and Willy P. may be right – the Newgarden-Rossi-Herta era could be poised to take its place in history.



IndyCar, Insights & Analysis

 

Indy legend Sonny Meyer

Images courtesy Robin Miller


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By: Robin Miller | November 9, 2019 1:19 PM


He was a master engine builder, innovator, chief mechanic and behind-the-scenes wizard at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for more than five decades. But Louis “Sonny” Meyer, Jr. (at left in photo above, with constructor David “Quin” Epperly), never bragged about his many accomplishments and was always content to blend in with the scenery and let the results speak for themself.

It’s estimated that Meyer was directly involved in preparing the winning engine at Indianapolis a total of 15 times.

“Sonny was a damn smart mechanic, excellent engine man and good guy,” said A.J. Foyt, who worked with Meyer on Ford engines in the 1960s. “They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.”

The son of Indy’s first three-time winner, Louis Sr. (“Louie”), young Meyer got an early start in motorsports when his father purchased the Offenhauser engine business in 1946. Learning everything there was to know about the Offy, Sonny showed a great mechanical aptitude and became coveted in Gasoline Alley.

Father and son introduced the supercharged midget engine to Indy in 1949-’50 with Tony Bettenhausen, and Sonny worked on Bill Vukovich’s crew in the early 1950s before becoming a chief mechanic for Bettenhausen in 1958. That was also the year Meyer introduced pneumatic air jacks to Indy cars.

A fabled combo: Tony Bettenhausen (left) and Sonny Meyer at DuQuoin, 1951.


He was crew chief at Indy in 1962 when Troy Ruttman charged from 30th to second; helped Joe Huffaker with the MG Liquid Suspension cars; then dove into the Ford program when his dad purchased it in 1964. Ford powered Foyt to his third Indy win in 1967.

The Meyer-Drake engine became a major player in the 1970s as Sonny set up shop at Patrick Racing and cranked out big horsepower in between fighting daily with chief mechanic George Bignotti.

“We tolerated each other and it wasn’t always easy; but we managed to survive,” recalled Meyer with a smile a few years ago.

In 1973, Gordon Johncock captured Indy for Patrick in a car and engine built in-house off West 38th Street. Sonny fueled the Wildcat on pit stops after putting together the winning engine.

“I was lucky enough to work on the same team with Sonny, and if you were around him for five minutes and kept your mouth shut you were going to increase your racing knowledge ten-fold,” said Tim Coffeen, who worked with Patrick, Machinists Union and Newman-Haas during his 30 years in IndyCar.

“He was brilliant and just a humble, wonderful man.”

Following his tenure at Patrick, Meyer went to Vince Granatelli and then John Menard to develop the V-6 Buick.

He was inducted into the IMS Hall of Fame in 2013.

Sonny is survived by wife Sue, daughter Pam, son Butch and stepson Scott Balch.


Sonny Meyer, IndyCar, Vintage Motorsport / Historic

 

John Martin, 1939-2019

by Cyndi Paceley Share
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EmailIndianapolis, IN — John Martin, a veteran of five Indianapolis 500 starts and the eighth-place finisher in the rain-shortened 1973 event.



A gifted mechanic and engineer who performed much of the work on cars he drove, Martin was active in racing until his death. His most recent role was working near the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at Billy Throckmorton’s Grant King racing shop, restoring and preparing a variety of racing engines for vintage car meets, including normally-aspirated Offenhausers, turbocharged Drake Offys, Volkswagen midget car engines and an abundance of vintage sprint car powerplants.

Last summer, he drove in the Vintage Race of Champions Charity Pro-Am race during the SVRA Brickyard Vintage Racing Invitational at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a race he competed in every year since the inaugural in 2014.

The Cushing, Oklahoma-born Martin, who lived in Missouri, Wisconsin, California and in the Indianapolis area, made a total of 52 starts in the United States Auto Club National Championship series and under the Championship Auto Racing Teams banner, placing within the top 10 on 17 occasions in Indy car events. His highest showing was a pair of fifth-place finishes, scored in the Ontario 500-mile races of 1973 and 1975.

He attempted to qualify for every Indianapolis 500 between 1971 and 1982 and was successful for five consecutive events between 1972 and 1976. Driving an ex-Peter Revson McLaren that he fielded himself, Martin placed eighth in 1973, when the car was called the Unsponsored Special, and 11th in 1974 when it ran as the delightfully named Sea Snack Shrimp Cocktail Special.

Long after he was no longer racing competitively, Martin continued to work on teams in a variety of capacities, including engineer, fabricator and spotter. Far into the night prior to an event, Martin could be seen dressed in an apron and engrossed in a mechanical exercise of some kind. Watch RACER colleague Robin Miller’s from Miller’s Tough Guys video series.

His early days of driving were as an amateur road racer with the Sports Car Club of America. While living in Wisconsin, he converted a 1963 Corvette Stingray into an A-production racer and won a national title with it in 1965. He also took part in several United States Auto Club stock car races between 1966 and 1969, and contested SCCA’s Trans-Am series in 1968 with an AMC Javelin. In 1970, he drove a Surtees in the SCCA Continental series for stock block-powered Formula 5000 cars and placed within the top 10 in eight out of 11 starts.

 

RETRO: The Sounds of IndyCar, 1992 Phoenix test

Image by Marshall Pruett
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emailBy: Marshall Pruett | 7 hours ago

Something to speed up those holiday drives…

Step back to 1992 and pre-season testing for CART IndyCar Series teams at the one-mile Phoenix International Raceway oval where the glorious 2.65-liter turbocharged V8 engines rage, and cars from the Toyota Atlantic Championship and Indy Lights take turns lapping the daunting bullring in a retro ambient audio feature.

 

Racer and safety pioneer Bill Simpson

Images courtesy of Steve ShunckBy: Robin Miller | 4 hours ago

He made safety part of the racing vernacular, but lived his life on the edge. He started in drag racing and spread his knowledge to IndyCar, NASCAR and Formula 1. He pissed people off hourly, yet shared a drink with them before the sun went down.

He set himself on fire to prove a point, and saved countless lives with his innovations. He took a sucker punch from NASCAR, and retaliated with a haymaker in court. He drove in the Indianapolis 500, yet was much more successful out of the car. He was an orphan that embraced fatherhood, although he wasn’t that great of a husband.

E.J. “Bill” Simpson was a pioneer in motorsports safety, a self-made millionaire and a stubborn character that answered to no-one.

Simpson did a little bit of everything during his 79 years. He drove dragsters and Indy cars, started a safety business in his garage that grew into an empire, and helped reduce the death rate in all forms of racing.

“Not a lot of people know this but Bill was an orphan that had nothing, and turned his life into something special,” said Don “The Snake” Prudhomme, the drag racing legend who was one of Simpson’s best and oldest friends. “He did so much, and saved so many lives with his innovations.

“He was the original rags-to-riches story, but he had a big heart and cared about people. Of course he wasn’t real tactful, and we had our differences over the years, but I loved the guy.”

Born in Hermosa Beach, Ca., Simpson started drag racing in the late 1950s and broke both arms when he was 18 years old. That led to his initial safety idea of mounting a parachute behind the car to slow it down, and soon enough it was adopted by the NHRA. But his big breakthrough came in the 1960s, when astronaut Pete Conrad introduced him to a fire-retardant material called Nomex. Those were the days when IndyCar, NASCAR and F1 drivers lost their lives to fire at an alarming rate because they either drove in a T-shirt or a uniform that was dipped in a chemical to give minimal protection. Simpson began cranking out Nomex suits, and by 1967, 30 of the 33 starters at Indy were wearing them.

“We never, ever thought about safety, and I didn’t chase Bill Simpson, but thankfully he chased us and made us think,” said Bobby Unser, whose career began in the lethal ‘60s. “Nobody paid any attention to him at first, but then we had to take a serious look at him because he was so smart.

“The things he was doing changed racing, and he was the best in the world. He did more for racing safety than anyone. He was the man.”

Adds Prudhomme: “We were wearing Levis and leather jackets, and he saved my ass a time or two with his Nomex suit.

He showed up at Indianapolis in 1970 with long hair, a fu manchu moustache and an old car, but finally made the show in 1974. He was public enemy No.1 with USAC because of his combative attitude, and drew its ire when he set himself on fire in Turn 1 once to prove the effectiveness of his latest suit. He also kept the USAC charter plane waiting for over an hour in Argentina because he was trying to sweet talk a young lady into flying home with him. They eventually got married.

Still, as much as he enjoyed driving, the safety side of racing was his passion. From suits, Simpson branched out into gloves, shoes, seat belts and helmets. Simpson Safety Products were used worldwide, and his reputation grew alongside his bank account. His equipment was on display all over the world, and he was constantly upgrading it. But in 2001, his pal Dale Earnhardt was killed in a crash at Daytona that changed the course of Simpson’s life.

Despite the fact Earnhardt used a seat that was anything but safe and was notorious for loosening his seat belts during a race, NASCAR blamed Simpson seat belts for the death of NASCAR’s biggest star. His life was threatened by fans, and he resigned from his company. “The Earnhardt thing broke his heart, took him down to his knees,” recalled Prudhomme.

But it didn’t deter his will to prove NASCAR was merely looking for a scapegoat, so he sued the sanctioning body for defamation of character in 2003. “Those people declared war on me but they didn’t know what kind of a fight they were in for,” he said in a 2004 interview. “Everyone who has ever dealt with NASCAR has acquiesced to them because they think they’re bulletproof and nobody will stand up to them. They brought me my knees like nobody else has ever done. But I’m a pretty mean son of a bitch, and they f%^&$% with the wrong guy.”

The $9 million suit was settled out of court, and while terms were never divulged, Simpson always smiled when asked how he did.

Another thing that always made him smile was the mere mention of Rick Mears. Simpson took him out of desert racing and into an Indy car in 1976, and then watched the kid from Bakersfield, Ca. blossom into one of Indy’s greatest champions. He kindly sold Rick’s contract to Roger Penske.

“I didn’t know anything about Indy back then and I didn’t realize what a leader Bill was in the safety industry,” said the four-time Indy winner. “I didn’t know his history, but as time went on I could see what he did to forward its progress. Obviously, I’ll always be thankful for what he did for my career, but I grew to appreciate what he’d done for the sport as time went on. He was the leader in safety, and the guy everyone looked up to in safety. He was big on safety, but didn’t mind taking risks on how to improve things.”

Simpson was married three times and loved picking fights in bars, but fathered two sons, Jeff and David, and enjoyed sailing on his boat in Mexico almost as much as whiskey.

Unser recalls almost getting into a fight in Gasoline Alley with Simpson while The Snake spent many nights with the “wild man” trying to keep him out of bar fights.

“Bill was a hippie when I met him and a cranky old guy most of his life, but he went from a nobody to the top of the heap,” said the three-time Indy winner. “He worked hard and had a good mind – it didn’t go where the normal mind went. Now, he was a hard-head and I’d get mad at him, but then he would do something really good, which was often, and we’d like him again. He’d piss people off one day and save a bunch of lives the next. That was Bill Simpson.”

Bill Simpson, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Indy 500, Industry, IndyCar

 

Tying some racing history together
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See it before it goes away.

 

Dan's Magic Bullet

Illustration by Ricardo Santos
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emailBy: Marshall Pruett | September 26, 2018 10:11 AM

For the birth of the Gurney Flap, we owe a debt of gratitude to agitation and frustration. If only there had been cameras on hand to capture the manic emotions at play in Phoenix back in 1972 as development of All American Racer’s new Eagle 7200 Indy car was stuck in an unsatisfying rut around the rugged one-mile oval.

Bobby Unser, Indy car’s speed king, was also the long-established prince of testing Dan Gurney’s patience. As raw pace continued to elude AAR’s new open-wheel challenger ahead of the season opener in the desert, the first call in Uncle Bobby’s playbook was to badger the Big Eagle for a cure.

“We’d been there driving for three days in Phoenix, and we were not doing competitive times,” Gurney told Dave Despain in a 2014 interview. “Bobby comes up to me and says, ‘Boss, you’re supposed to be able come up with things all the time – can’t you come up with anything, for crying out loud?’”



Post-feisty exchange between two titans, Gurney thought back to sports cars he’d raced – Can-Am McLarens and Ford GT40s – that used vertical spoilers attached to the rear bodywork. Before wings entered motor racing, the bolt-on items, used to spoil the air’s path as it departed the car, were a crude but effective device to make downforce. In the age of wings, spoilers had been largely forgotten outside of NASCAR, where they still remain in place today.

“I wondered if that would work on a wing – a spoiler on the wing, not on the body,” Gurney added. Nearby, Unser’s bundle of nerves was waiting to be soothed by Dan’s curiosity.

“I said, ‘I’ve lost my speed,’ and so Gurney comes over to me,” three-time Indy 500 winner Unser says. “I can tell he’s upset, but I am too. It’s my test, but I can’t go as fast as I’d been going, and he says, ‘I’ve got something I’d like to try.’ I say, ‘Anything you want! How are we going to make it? When are we going to make it? What are we going to do?’ I’m getting a bit testy. He says, ‘Well, you just carry on with what you’re doing,’ and he took off.”
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Still out lapping while Gurney drew up his L-shaped experiment in his mind, Unser worked himself into a lather under the low evening sun.

“My head’s going a million miles an hour,” Unser continues. “That friggin’ thing just won’t go fast, and it’s not the engine. It’s just not sticking good. I run it and I come back in. We’re all trying to think of things, and pretty soon Dan comes over and says, ‘When would be a good time to try my deal?’ I say, ‘Right now!’ and of course I’m getting testier.

“He’s straight over to the trailer and he’s got some vice grips and a hammer going over there. I don’t know what the hell he’s doing. Pretty soon he’s back with a long, bent piece of aluminum. Nothing else, just a 90-degree strip of aluminum, and I just look at it and I’m about to lose it.”

AAR chief mechanic Wayne Leary must have wondered if boxing gloves would be needed.