Indy 500 Trackside Recap: Carb Day

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emailBy RACER Staff | 8 hours ago

Join RACER’s Marshall Pruett and Robin Miller as they recap the action from Friday’s Carb Day practice, and the final preparations for the 104th Indianapolis 500, with special guest Mark Miles, President and Chief Executive Officer of Penske Entertainment Corp.

 

RETRO: Unser's first taste of the milk. I poured beer between the trophy chick's tits and stuck my face in there just like the college guys do and they wanted to throw me out of the place!

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emailBy Robin Miller | 15 hours ago

In one of the most distinctive cars and one of the most dominating drives, Al Unser began his legendary status at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway exactly 50 years ago.

The first of his four Indy 500 wins was the easiest as he led 190 of the 200 laps in the Johnny Lightning PJ Colt/Ford and gave co-owner Parnelli Jones his second trip to Victory Lane.

Big Al was never one to give away secrets or share a lot of information, but after drinking the milk he made what was then a startling confession. “I thought I drove a conservative pace,” said the then 31-year-old after joining brother Bobby on the Borg-Warner Trophy. “I could have gone harder if needed, but my car just performed beautiful all day and I never had to extend myself. I was pretty confident going into this race.”

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As he should have been with George Bignotti turning the wrenches, Charlie Tabucchi building the engines and Topper Toys giving Vel’s/Parnelli Jones Racing one of the first big-time sponsors in IndyCar. After a five-win season in 1969 with a Lola, Bignotti and bodyman Joe Fukashima re-engineered Eric Broadley’s creation and it became the Colt chassis. After one test at Phoenix, Unser knew he had something special.

“We broke the track record and it handled like nothing else I’d ever driven there,” said Unser.

The season opener at Phoenix in March was a preview of May, as Unser waxed the field and lapped everyone but his brother. He captured the pole position at Indianapolis by a fraction of a second over Johnny Rutherford, and J.R. actually took the lead going into Turn 1 at the start of the race.

“I let him go because I didn’t want to see him get stuck up high and maybe cause a wreck, but then I passed him on the backstretch and nobody got near me the rest of the day,” recalled Unser, who received a $30,000 bonus from Topper Toys and beat runner-up Mark Donohue by 32 seconds.

Unser went on to 10 victories in 1970 and won the last true USAC championship (dirt and pavement) by almost 3,000 points. But his Indy win was not only a defining moment in his career, it was also a glimpse of his smarts and race craft for the next 20 years. When he had a winning car, he won. When he had a third place car, he finished third.

“Al was a smart, patient driver and I wish I had been more like him, I could have probably won Indy a couple more times,” said Jones. “That year was just magic with that car, our Ford engine, a good sponsor and Al’s driving.”

That Johnny Lightning paint scheme helped sell the toy car version and allowed Topper Toys to challenge Mattel and today that car remains one of the most beloved in IndyCar history.

“I got a model on my desk and see it every day,” said Jones. “I never get tired of looking at it.”

IndyCar

 

New Book Details Early Indy 500 Cars, Drivers

by Cyndi Paceley Inkom, ID — David Story is an inspiring example of pursuing your passions — no matter how long it takes.



After setting aside a childhood love of the Indy 500 and later, his degreed artistic talent, in favor of starting and running a successful 25-year homebuilding business, Story returned to those interests in retirement. He’s found an outlet for both with his first book, “The First 30 Years of the Indianapolis 500,” featuring his illustrations and writing about the iconic race’s formative history.

The 70-page, 12” x 9” format showcases the depth of his realistic illustrations while the accompanying text offers new insight into the colorful personalities and real dangers involved in the Indianapolis motorsports scene. Story also includes details on many of the famous Indy traditions — including the winner drinking milk in Victory Lane — and how they came about. (FYI, it was Louis Meyer who was the first to guzzle milk after claiming his second Indy win in 1933.)

Story credits Mark Dill and his First Super Speedway website for reigniting his interest in the 500.

“After discovering the website many years ago, I started a conversation with Mark,” Story said. “One thing led to another and I started submitting sketches for the site. When I started work on the book, Mark offered to review it and to suggest corrections. In researching this great race and its history, I’ve been amazed at the amount of misinformation out there. Mark has kept me on the straight and true.”

Among his discoveries was finding out the number of drivers who died soon after winning the 500.

It’s somewhat ironic — when highlighting the design and mechanics of early 20th century race cars — that Story creates his illustrations with electronic means. He uses an Apple iPad tablet for the drawings, then imports them into Adobe Photoshop software to edit and fine-tune.

“It has been an interesting process to move from paper and pen to digital,” he said. “I still use canvas and oil for paintings, but all my sketching is now done digitally.”

He found that some of the sketches came easily, and that he labored over others.



“For example, the 1919 Peugeot just worked and I may have spent only 3 or 4 hours on it,” he added. “On the other hand, I worked a week on the 1930 winning car and I am still not happy with it.”

Even so, Story doesn’t claim to have a favorite car. He hopes that his appreciation for the era and what it represented for the burgeoning field of cars and motorsports is what comes through.

“Many of these cars were literally built in backyard garages and taken to the track in an effort to qualify for the race,” he said. “I love that. If I have a personal favorite, it would be Wilbur Shaw because of what he did as a race car driver and later for saving the Speedway.”

 

Sato outlasts Dixon for second Indy 500 win

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emailBy Mark Glendenning | 23 hours ago

Takuma Sato became a two-time Indianapolis 500 winner at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday, although the prospect of his tight battle with Scott Dixon ending with a duel to the finish was lost when a late crash resulted in the race finishing under yellows.

Dixon had established himself as the driver to beat right from the green flag, and controlled the lead for the majority of the afternoon. Sato, who’d been in the top five all day, took the lead right after the final round of stops with almost 30 laps still to go, and at that point, Dixon was content to sit behind him and save fuel for a final push.

That call came with 19 laps remaining, team manager Mike Hull calculating that Dixon could lean as hard on his fuel as he needed to without having to worry about making the finish, and the New Zealander responded immediately – what had been a 1.0s+ advantage to Sato largely vaporized within a single lap. From Sato’s seat, the looming Ganassi car in his mirrors added to an existing list of concerns. His own fuel situation was less comfortable than Dixon’s, and he also had three lapped cars in front of him that were racing for position and had little incentive to make his life easy.

Sato cleared the first of them, Tony Kanaan’s Foyt entry, with six laps to go. Dixon passed the Brazilian a couple of corners later, and just moments after that the yellows came out in response to a nasty crash by Sato’s RLL teammate Spencer Pigot, who spun into the wall on the exit of Turn 4 and then rebounded across the track into a heavy broadside hit on the end of the pit road attenuator. While the safety crews tended to the shaken Pigot, the rest of the field slowly wound the final five laps down under caution.

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“I think we had the best car,” Sato said. “Only we were a lap short from Dixie in terms of the fuel strategy, and it was a little tight. I couldn’t use max power to switch back and forth. And Dixon kept coming through T4 and I was just able to hold him off. This is unbelievable. Everyone did a hell of a job.”

For Dixon, who led 111 of the 200 laps, the disappointment was palpable.

“Definitely a hard one to swallow,” he admitted. “We had such a great day with fuel mileage… I don’t see how they [Sato] were going to make it. First time I’ve seen them (race control) let it run out like that (under yellows); I thought they were going to throw a red flag and it would have made an interesting last five laps. But massive congrats to Sato. Nice to gather some points, but it’s hard when it slips away light that. We had the mindset, and I think the fuel, to get to the end. But you hesitate, and that’s what happens.”
The epic finish that wasn’t: Dixon and Rahal follow Sato across the line under yellow.
He stretched his tires as much as he could, but could not make the car longer.Gavin Baker/Motorsports Images

Graham Rahal rounded out a memorable day for RLL’s full-timers by shadowing Dixon across the line to claim third ahead of Dale Coyne Racing’s Santino Ferrucci. The latter delivered some of the race’s best highlight reel moments with some exuberant passes, and had climbed from his starting position of 19th up to seventh before the race was even a quarter over. His cause was helped by a raft of cars going off-strategy in the first part of the race, but once he’d found his way into the top 10, he stayed there for the rest of the afternoon.

Behind him was reigning series champion Josef Newgarden, who worked the No. 1 Team Penske car methodically through the field to cross the line as the first of the Chevrolet-powered entries, with Arrow McLaren SP’s Pato O’Ward behind him. Jmes Hinchcliffe, Colton Herta, Jack Harvey and Ryan Hunter-Reay rounded out the top 10.

Earlier, the entire complexion of the race had looked very different. At the halfway mark, Dixon and Alexander Rossi held command and were working together in an effort to shake of the rest of the pack after a lap 100 restart. They weren’t having a lot of luck – O’Ward and then Sato stubbornly kept them well within range – but it became irrelevant just minutes later when Alex Palou’s accident brought out the yellows again, and pitlane suddenly became very busy.

Rossi was released from his stop straight into the path of Sato, who was already battling for space on a heavily-congested pit road with O’Ward. The Andretti car bounced off its RLL counterpart, and a short time later Rossi was sent to the back of the field before the next restart by way of punishment. That conjured memories of last May, when a bad pit stop sent the No. 27 on a red mist-fueled charge back up the order. This one started the same way – Rossi passed six cars in the two laps after the restart, including four in a single move – but then he got loose and pounded the wall at Turn 2.


“We never planned on being that far back,” Rossi said. “We just lost it. A lot of dirty air back there, although Turn 2 was tough all day. I thought we had the car to win. I don’t even want to talk about the penalty right now, I have to have a long conversation with someone about that. There are two sides to every story.”

Rossi’s misery was the most painful sting in a generally frustrating day across the Andretti Autosport camp, which went home with little to show for the pace that it had demonstrated over the previous two weeks, and in stages during the race itself. Marco Andretti was passed off the start by Dixon and drifted back into the pack as the race went on, and neither Herta nor Hunter-Reay were able to set down roots among the top five.

From a strategy standpoint, the race broadly split itself into two camps early on when a large pack of the cars that cars that qualified in the back half of the grid took advantage of a Lap 6 caution (prompted by James Davison’s spontaneously combusting right-front wheel) to make an early stop. At times, the off-sequence cars were nearly 20 laps apart from the main group in terms of pit strategy, but the timing of the yellows over the latter part of the race gradually brought everyone back onto more or less the same schedule.

The mishaps that prompted those yellows came thick and fast: Ed Carpenter didn’t even get to complete a lap before having to return to the pits for repairs after a hip-check into the wall from Zach Veach. He rejoined the race 13 laps down.

Davison’s bizarre exit was followed by an altogether more conventional one 19 laps later when CGR’s Marcus Ericsson got loose and pancaked the wall at Turn 2. Foyt rookie Dalton Kellett found the barriers on Lap 85, and the flag was just waving for the restart after that mess was swept up when Conor Daly lost it in Turn 4, prompting Oliver Askew – who’d earlier led, albeit while out of sequence – to take evasive action and spin hard into the inside barrier as well.

Shortly after that came Palou’s turn; the Spaniard drifting up into the wall at Turn 2 and bringing a premature end to what had been an immensely impressive display from the only driver in the field with no prior experience at the Speedway. Rossi and Pigot were the only other two drivers not to make it to the finish.

 

Indy 500 Trackside Recap: The 2020 Indianapolis 500

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emailBy RACER Staff | 20 hours ago

The 104th Running of the Indianapolis 500 had carved itself a unique place in Indy 500 history before the cars had even turned a wheel, and there’s plenty more to take stock of now that the race is in the books. Join RACER’s Marshall Pruett and Robin Miller as they recap an eventful day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and a deserved win for Takuma Sato.

 

Joie Chitwood Sr. Gets Set Behind The Wheel

Before NASCAR became an official governing body, stock car racing was like the Wild West. This picture, taken in the 1930s, shows Joie Chitwood Sr. in one of his sprint cars. Over the next two decades, he raced in the Indy 500 seven times.
ISC Archives via Getty ImagesAfter retiring from racing, Chitwood Sr. developed his own automotive show. The Joie Chitwood Thrill Show, putting stunt drivers on display for fans to enjoy. After intentionally crashing more than 3,000 vehicles for his show, Chitwood became a car safety consultant

 

Behind the scenes of Marco Andretti's Indy 500 pole run

Michael Levitt/Motorsport Images
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emailBy IndyCar | August 23, 2020 4:45 AM

Before the green flag drops on the 104th Indianapolis 500, take a candid look behind-the-scenes at Marco Andretti’s pole-winning laps.

Andretti became just the second member of the famed racing family to capture the pole position at the Indy 500, and the first Andretti in 33 years. Mario Andretti, the only other family member to claim pole at Indy, started from the first position in 1966, ’67 and ’87, the latest coming when Marco was just two-months old.

 

MILLER: The 'Andretti Curse'

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emailBy Robin Miller | August 22, 2020 2:48 PM

The Andretti Curse has its own page on Wikipedia, but nobody can say exactly when it became part of IndyCar’s lexicon or who started it or if it’s got some black magic attached to it.

“I always thought Tom Carnegie started it,” said Mario Andretti, asked about it a couple of days after grandson Marco captured the pole position for the 104th Indianapolis 500.

Broadcaster Carnegie did perfect the phrase, “Mario is slowing down!” heard through all the decades of disappointment for the ’69 winner; but the original story is that it was a product of an angry woman.
A special team – for a time: Granatelli, Mario and Brawner. Image via Robin Miller

Clint Brawner was Mario’s chief mechanic and guiding light from 1964-1969, and his Hawk chassis carried the legend to his lone Indy 500 win in 1969. Al Dean, the owner of the fabled Dean Van Lines Specials (who gave A.J. Foyt and Mario their big car starts) passed away in 1967, but the team stayed on track thanks to Firestone and then sponsorship from STP and Andy Granatelli.

Following Andretti’s Indy triumph (pictured, top), the team – technically owned by Mario – was sold to Granatelli. And the first thing he did was get rid of Brawner.

“I didn’t want to own a team and have that responsibility, but I didn’t want any changes either; I wanted to keep our team (Jim McGee, Brawner) together,” said Andretti. “But Andy wanted to do something different and get some fresh air. We’d all been together for so long.”

When the 1970 season dawned, Brawner was no longer with Andretti. McGee, Granatelli and, as the story goes, Brawner’s wife Kay, took it personally. Supposedly, she visited some kind of voodoo princess/soothsayer/fortune teller in the Arizona desert and requested a curse that nobody named Andretti would ever win the Indy 500 again.

“I’ve heard that story but I didn’t try to ace Brawner out of anything,” states the 1978 Formula 1 champion. “I’m not sure but Andy might have had an issue with Clint.”

Adds McGee: “I heard about a curse years later but I never paid much attention to it. Mario and Clint never got along that well but they certainly respected each other.”
The ‘Curse’ at its peak? In 1982, Mario qualified on the second row for the 500, but was taken out on the pace lap by a spinning Kevin Cogan. Motorsport Images

Whether you believe in curses or voodoo is irrelevant but it does give you pause when you look at the stats: Mario led 555 laps and scored one win; son Michael led 441 laps yet never made it to Victory Lane; and grandson Marco has been in front for 141 laps and is 0-for-14.

“I don’t think it (the curse) exists in August, so we are good,” said Marco with a chuckle earlier this week. “Results-wise, yeah, maybe there is something to it because, man, the three of us have been so dominant here.

“We don’t believe in it as a family,” Marco added. “This is a dangerous place and we are all healthy, so it’s hard to say we’re cursed.”
Michael’s Newman/Haas Lola led 160 laps in 1992 and had a huge lead when it broke just seven laps from the finish. Motorsport Images

The proud patriarch scoffs at the notion of the Andretti Curse: “Indy has always been a blessing for me and my family. I mean it. It’s a tough place and, sure, it’s been disappointing many times, but we love it.

“And I’ll never endorse that bulls–t about a curse.”

Indy 500, Marco Andretti, Mario Andretti, Michael Andretti, IndyCar

 

The most important Indy 500 Penske missed wasn't in 1995 ...

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emailBy Marshall Pruett | August 22, 2020 8:26 PM

The pain of missing out on the Indianapolis 500 was eating at Roger Penske as the CART and IRL wars raged on. A force of nature at Indy, Team Penske scored the most lopsided win in ages as the 1000-plus horsepower Penske PC23-Mercedes driven by Al Unser Jr. stomped the field in 1994. And, for its follow-up act in 1995, the unthinkable happened as The Captain’s drivers failed to qualify for motor racing’s biggest event.

Mortified by the Speedway’s stinging rebuke, Penske wears the shocking outcome like a scar.

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With the advent of the IRL in 1996, and a thriving CART series to support (Gil de Ferran’s Reynard-Honda in 2000, above), Penske was unable to correct the costly errors of 1995, and watched throughout the rest of the decade as his favorite race was won by names and teams that probably wouldn’t stand a chance if his outfit was in the field.

By 2001, Penske and his sponsors had enough of The Split, and at the season-opening IRL race in Phoenix, Penske crossed the dividing line with entries for Helio Castroneves and Gil de Ferran.

The Brazilian duo were interlopers, adding to their full-season CART calendars with the familiarization race at Phoenix before returning in May to bring Penske back to his favorite 2.5 miles on the planet.

Castroneves went on to win the first of his three Indy 500s, and The Captain put the lingering emotional effects of 1995 to rest. To Paul Tracy’s eternal frustration, Castroneves would be awarded the win in 2002, de Ferran would take the 2003 race, and from there, Penske would capture five more Indy 500s – through last year with Simon Pagenaud – to amass 17 victories at the Speedway.

If it weren’t for a new, young Team Penske president by the name of Tim Cindric, though, the story might be different. Radically different.

“Roger had bought a Riley & Scott chassis, do you remember that?” Cindric asked. “Somewhere in that ’98, ’99 timeframe, he bought a Riley & Scott because Michael Kranefuss was at one point his partner in the NASCAR world, back in the Jeremy Mayfield days, and Kranefuss had sold him on a Riley & Scott.
Tim Cindric, Penske’s new young president, was quickly established in the organization. But his introduction to the Penske Way and The Captain’s Indy 500 fascination was quite memorable. Image by Williams/Motorsport Images

“When I first started talking to Roger, he says, ‘Hey, confidentially, I’ve got this Riley & Scott, and I’m going to go to Indy in 2000. You and I are going to figure out how to (do that).’ I remember thinking about it, and I remember when we went to Penske Cars in Poole (England) that year in ’99, Roger was still on about going to Indy in 2000.”

Having idolized Penske while coming up in the sport, the ex-Team Rahal team manager knew the glory and sorrow experienced by his new boss in the pre-IRL days at Indy. He also knew the Riley & Scott IRL machines were no match for the all-conquering Dallaras and G-Forces. A massive dilemma presented itself when considering the team’s chances at Indianapolis.

“I’m sitting there thinking to myself, ‘The most important thing for us is to keep Marlboro and find success in CART, because, when I came in, 1997 through 1999 were pretty brutal for the team,” Cindric said. “So nobody was pushing to go to Indy at that point in time, other than Roger. And I’m sitting there staring at the ceiling, going, ‘My dream is to go the Indy 500 as part of Roger’s team, right? But I’m going to have to talk one of my heroes out of going (there) in 2000!’

“We got over there to Poole, and we talked about all this stuff, and I sat down with him and I said, ‘Roger, this is impossible for me to say this, but we really…I don’t see any viable way that we can go to Indy in 2000, be successful and get the CART program back on track, and do the 500, especially with the Riley & Scott.’”

Fear of Team Penske going 0-for-2 at its last two Indy 500s drove Cindric’s handling of the topic in the early stages of the 2000 CART season. Making matters worse, the last time a Riley & Scott chassis qualified for Indy was in 1998.


Eliseo Salazar (top) and Stan Wattles (above) in Riley & Scott cars struggled to match the pace of the Dallaras and G-Forces in 1998. Y2K? Forget about it …

“I’m like, ‘Think about it, Roger. The last time this team went to the Indy 500 was ’95 and you missed the show; so for us to go back there in 2000 and try and make the show with this … When we go back, we need to be ready to win the race.’

“It was a real tough conversation. And he was like, ‘You know what? You’re right. We’re not going to go to Indy. You’re going to go to Indy.’”

With the crisis averted, Penske hatched a plan to embark on a co-entry run by the 1997 Indy 500 winners at Treadway Racing. No direct entries in a Riley & Scott chassis, and almost no risk of failing to qualify. Penske’s passion for returning to Indy, prematurely, and with the wrong car, was only surpassed by Cindric’s refusal to allow The Captain to return one year too early. Had he insisted upon executing the original 2000 plan, there’s no telling how its negative effects would have shaped the organization.

Along with Penske race engineer Ian Reed, Cindric flew back and forth between CART obligations in Nazareth and the Indy 500 to look after the Treadway-Penske entry for USAC star Jason Leffler. The insights gained during the month would serve Team Penske as it ramped up its plans for a proper run at the Borg Warner trophy in 2001. The rest is history.

“Roger’s like, ‘Let’s take one of our engineers and have them engineer Leffler’s car,’” he added. “And then he said, ‘You need to go in May and call the race and look after Leffler’s process, so that when we go back in ’01, you know the game, you know what we need, you know what the race is like with these cars, and Ian knows what works and what doesn’t work.

“And we’ll figure out what cars to buy and we’ll go run.”

IndyCar

 

MILLER: Sad, surreal, but still Indy

Image by Joe Skibinski/IMS
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emailBy Robin Miller | August 23, 2020 5:16 AM

The first thing you notice is driving downtown or out 10th Street, 16th Street, 30th Street or Michigan Road. There are no checkered flags, no black and white bunting anywhere and no sign the biggest race in the world is right around the corner.

You get close to the track and see one merchandise trailer in a parking lot across from the track but nothing else …. no ticket scalpers, no breaded tenderloin stands and no cars lined up at the main gate.

Pulling into the parking lot of the golf course you fill out a COVID-19 form, get your temperature checked and drive under the old Turn 2 tunnel where your path to the Pagoda lot is paved with orange cones.

There is one yellow shirt to wave you in the right direction and one to make sure you have the right pass and a few more scattered around the pavilion but that’s it – nothing like the usual compliment of 1,000 directing traffic and maintaining law and order.

Because, obviously, there is no traffic. And there are no fans. And there’s no atmosphere. This is the 51st consecutive year I’ve covered Indy as a writer and the 62nd in a row I’ve attended and it’s somewhere between surreal and unimaginable.

Not being allowed in the pits or Gasoline Alley robs the small group of media in attendance from interviewing drivers, mechanics and engineers right after they come off the track. You cannot properly cover Indy without that spontaneity and interaction and you can’t get that from the fourth floor of the media center.

It’s like being at a tire test at Ontario back in 1971. Beautiful two-and-a-half mile oval, splendid weather and no access.

The 104th Indianapolis 500 will go down history as the strangest, saddest and most talked about race before a wheel turns on Sunday. The pandemic moved it from May to August and then neutered it from the general public. It’s the greatest spectacle in hand wringing because so many die-hard and passionate fans have been left outside looking into a day they live for once a year.

There will be approximately 2,500 people allowed into the Indianapolis Motor Speedway instead of the usual 250,000.

It’s been a financial nightmare for Roger Penske, who spent $15 million giving the old girl a facelift these past six months and who will not reap a penny from ticket sales or suites or concessions.

To his undying credit, The Captain hasn’t moaned once about his plight and has remained about as upbeat as humanly possible considering he’s also spent a fortune keeping the NTT IndyCar Series on track.

The best thing about the 2020 Indy 500 is that Penske runs it and has done whatever necessary to make it work. He had what appeared to be a very workable plan to spread 60,000-70,000 people around the track before it was gunned down by the politics and numbers of this virus.
Without fans, Newgarden knows it’s on the drivers to create the atmosphere of a great event. Barry Cantrell/Motorsport Images

Anyway, without anybody in the grandstands, it’s not eerie – it’s boring.

“We really miss the energy of the fans,” said 2014 Indy victor Ryan Hunter-Reay. “It’s such a great atmosphere on Race Day, Pole Day and Carb Day and it pumps you up.”

Added defending IndyCar champ Josef Newgarden: “Obviously we really miss the fans but we’re going to do our best to put on a magical 500 and make it a great race.”

It would be pretty weird for a first-timer to take the checkered flag and have no one to salute on the cool-down lap or nobody to do donuts for on the main straightaway or no addressing the fans on the PA system.

The purse is half of what it was going to be and that adulation from the masses all around the Speedway won’t be there but it’s still the race everyone wants to win. And if it’s anything like the last few finishes, it might make fans forget the isolation and depression of not being part of it.

It’s totally understandable why people who have gone for 10-20-30-40-50 years in a row are so bummed but hopefully they’ll be watching NBC and drive up the ratings, which could really help sell sponsorship for 2021.

People will still have a voice — we just won’t hear it on Sunday afternoon.

Indy 500, IndyCar