More from 1987....Mario and the Pit Stop contest
Rick switched to the '86 March by pole day
More from 1987....Mario and the Pit Stop contest
Rick switched to the '86 March by pole day
Neat picture from the day before the race, 1993.
The old Museum at the corner of 16th and Georgetown.
Scans of a IMS Museum ticket from 1982. Longer than the current tickets. Only $1 admission...and they would date stamp it.
" and we invite you to the adjacent.......................................... ... golf course.........."
ZOOOM
"Doc, just set them fingers sose I can hold the wheel"
James Hurtubise, June, 1964
The gentleman on Mario's right is some guy named Adrian Newey. When he still had some hair.Originally Posted by Doctorindy
More from 1987....Mario and the Pit Stop contest
The old Museum at the corner of 16th and Georgetown.
Different view of the same building. Not sure what this little pamphlet is. Looks like something theyd hand out at the track but no one I know was at the '72 race.
Faster than a bullet from a gun
He is faster than everyone
Quicker than the blinking of an eye
Like a flash you could miss him going by
No one knows quite how he does it but it's true they say
He's the master of going faster. -George Harrison
Why was this car so slow? I remember '87 everyone was having issues adjusting to the radial tires, did this play a role? Also, what's with the lower front suspension (I'm guessing that's the lower a-arm?) being so close to the front wing?Some pictures of the ill-fated 1987 Penske PC-16...before they team parked it.
Rick Mears
Danny Sullivan
Danny Ongais
During that era, Penske built his own cars in Poole England. The previous year Penske ran the infamous Mercedes pushrod engine that had much more horsepower than everyone else. The cars blew away everyone at Indy. They were not legal at any other race that season. The following year Penske had to use the same engines everyone else had. The Mercedes engine had masked what was a terrible chassis. When Penske showed up the following year with a standard engine..... is couldn't mask the deficiencies of the Penske Chassis.
No Penske car qualified for the 500 that year.
ZOOOM
I was suprised how "out to lunch" that team was in 1995. They also had the Reynard chassis and Lola chassis, and while they couldn't do any testing with those cars, they were cars that had already been up to speed, and neither Unser II or Emmo could get them going fast enough to make it.
"In America, the winner goes to Victory Lane, everybody else goes to the garage and should soak their tears in their beer and figure out how to be faster next week."
Eddie Gossage
Great stories, but I was more going after the Penske story in '87 when they scrapped their chassis to go back to year old March's. I remember the radial tires were new that year, Sneva wrecked 2 cars in practice, Pancho Carter ended up on his lid, Crawford broke his legs on a qualifying run. Penske had Sullivan qualified in a Penske chassis, then withdrew him for a year old March.....so what's the story on why this car was a lemon? The next year IIRC, Nigel Bennet came on board and it was a different story. Do we need a different thread for this?
And where are those Mercedes engines these days?
In a very fast bus doing the Yucatan-San Diego hemp run.
Im just transporting turi'stas Senor
They gave you one of those in the museam. Those would have been handed out after the '71 race.Different view of the same building. Not sure what this little pamphlet is. Looks like something theyd hand out at the track but no one I know was at the '72 race.
Here's a pic I took when Ton Sneva signed this Texaco promo car in 1983 at Milwaukee.
Recall that Penske's in-house program was not the elite group in 1987 that it was in the early 80s and again from '88-94.
They shelved the in-house program for a while, and from about 1984-1987, they were running customer cars (Marches). In 1986, they helped introduce the Ilmor Chevy V-8 (Al Unser Sr.), and to complement it, they installed it in a PC-15 ('86), their first car in a few years. It was OK, but could not compete with the '86 March (probably March's best car). Mears drove it a couple times during 1986, but did not have much success. His best races came in the March.
When they did the full-scale release of the Imor Chevy in 1987, I think it was intended all along for Penske to roll out the PC-16 to complement it. It was futile, and not just at Indy. Mears and Sullivan struggled everywhere they went with it. Now I don't know exactly what it was, but it wasn't the engine.
Penske did a clean house and hired Nigel Bennett to design the PC-17 ('88).
I know Geoff Ferris designed the PC-10 and 11, Wasn't it a Williams designer that did the PC-15/PC-16??
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security
A TWIN-ENGINED PORSCHE INDY CAR...1966
MARIO AT INDY..1966
NOW THIS IS A LOW-SLUNG CAR!!! 1966
THE "WINNAH " AT INDY...1966
INDY CARS AT ATLANTA.....1966
what's the story on this? Never heard of this car before. Have seen pics of it's predecessor, the 1940's era Floegal (sp.?) Special.A TWIN-ENGINED PORSCHE INDY CAR...1966
"Charging a man with murder here was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500."- Capt. Willard, Apocolypse Now
"Ain't nuthin' like a piece of p***y, 'cept maybe the Indy 500."- Bunny, Platoon
"To alcohol! The cause of- and solution to- all of life's problems."- Homer J. Simpson
2500+ posts is very impressive
But 337,000 views boggles the mind!
What a great thread
don,t know...just cut it out of nssn for all to read.
And thank you very much for doing so, great pictures!!
The limited info in Clymer's 1966 yearbook (his weakest one) is that Cheesburg never could get the thing up to speed. Probably never had much time to get it dialed in. Cheeseburg also worked in Demler's #99 Epperly turbine in 1966, also not being able to get that thing to work. Sounds like ol' Cheese was a busy guy that month. Sadly he didn't make the race that year, or any year after.
Always loved the story of when they fired up that turbine in the garage area the first time, there was a large group of officials, drivers, mechanics and owners watching, about the time it started a cherry bomb exploded nearby, causing all the group to jump. Cheese was seen walking away laughing uncontrollably.
Fageol, as in Lou Fageol...
As someone already noted that they use to give these out at the museum... but that's not all they use to give you at the old museum. They use to always give you free admission as well.Different view of the same building. Not sure what this little pamphlet is. Looks like something theyd hand out at the track but no one I know was at the '72 race.
It was free for me to hop on my Schwinn ride over to the Museum say Hi to Mr. Hulman's secretary who if Mr. Hulman wasn't in town would be the only person in the museum side of the building. If Mr. Hulman was in, I would stick my head around the corner and say Hi to him too. Then I would pick up the new pamphlet that was updated a couple weeks after each years race as it included a list of Winners on the backside.
The Museum was to the Right of the Entrance and while Mr. Hulman and his secretary's offices were just to the Left of the Entrance. There were more offices behind them but you couldn't see or get to them from the Museum side of the building.
So the Museum wasn't all that big. It probably held less than a dozen cars but they also had room for an Indian motorcycle and at one point in the mid-sixties they had a mock up of Mr. Hulman's future plan for the Speedway.
Believe it or not but Mr. Hulman envisioned building up the front straight and then eventually switch the the pits over to the back straight and build up that side of the track. I think it was a good thing that actually didn't come about. I like the direction that Mari and Tony G. went instead. Of course if Mr. Hulman saw fans filling grandstands completely around an enclosed track that would explain his resistance to Live TV coverage.
I know this because one time I was looking at it and Mr. Hulman walked over and and explained his plans to me...
Best Museum guide ever!
"Ride The Barrel & Get Pitted... So Pitted."
It was entered and actually showed up at the track... seemed like everytime I saw it on pit lane they were working on. Don't recall seeing it on the track but I'm sure it got out there. They just never got it developed enough to make a qualifying attempt. But it was #79 and entered as the "Stein Twin Porsche"
It probably didn't help that they chose Bill Cheesbourg as their Driver because he was one our Mid-60s back row qualifiers. He was at Indy from 1956 until 1967 making the race 6 times and of those six started 33rd 3 times and another qualified 30th. His best finish was 9th in 1958 in one of his better rides when he was Paul Russo's Teammate in one of the Novis but that was still one of the years he qualified 33rd. It's also interesting that Paul Russo was the driver of the Fageol Twin Coach Special in 1946 which while qualifying 2nd only made it around the track 16 times on race day before crashing in the NE turn and finishing at Bill's favorite number 33.
Bill's Best ride was probably in 1961 when he was Eddie Sachs' teammate and drove the 2nd Dean Van Lines special that year. He qualified 9th to Eddie's Pole run before Bill got caught up in one of Jack Turner's front straight Dilly-Os on his 50th lap and finished 28th.
Last edited by Frank Capua; 04-22-2011 at 10:34 AM.
Cheeseburg knew how to get a quick start though, he started 9th in 1961, by the third turn he was second. He did the same thing in 1964 starting
33rd, advancing about 10-12 positions on the first lap.
He never had a really good ride.
"You just don't know what Indy Means" Al Unser Jr.
What a tread! I spent the last couple of afternoons going through all 86 pages. Thanks to all who have posted photographs so far.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks