1964 Indianapolis 500 Film
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- Опубликовано: 27 сен 2024
- No copyright infringement is intended with this, or any other video I upload. The purpose of uploading this video is for the viewing pleasure for those that watch it.
This is the 48th running of the Indianapolis 500, run on May 30, 1964.
This race will go down forever as one of the blackest in racing history, as two drivers were burned to death and two others were seriously burned. This race also marked the apex of the competition between front-engine and rear-engine cars at Indy, as numerous teams, including those of Parnelli Jones and A.J. Foyt, had on of each, but both teams decided to go with the roadster for this race. Another veteran team, Leader Card Racers, decided to go with e rear-engine car for this race.
Reigning World Champion Jim Clark was the man to beat, destroy the old track qualifying record by more than 7 MPH, with Bobby Marshman and 2-time winner Rodger ward completing the front row, all n rear-engine cars, with Parnelli and A.J. Foyt qualifying fourth and fifth.
When the race started, Clark took the lead as expected, but at the end of the second lap, rookie Dave MacDonald, driving one of Mickey Thompson's low profile cars, lost control exiting turn four and hit the inside wall where it angled, and the car, full of gasoline, exploded on impact, careened across the track, and hit both the outside wall and Eddie Sachs at the same time. Sachs' car, like MacDonald's, exploded on impact. Sachs was killed instantly and MacDonald died two hours later. Ronnie Duman was also seriously burned in this crash. Others involved included Johnny Rutherford, Bobby Unser, Chuck Stevenson, and Norm Hall. Mickey Thompson's team withdrew the car of Eddie Johnson in deference to MacDonald one lap after the restart.
Incidentally, the lemon-necklace that Sachs wore to alleviate some of the problems drivers of that period had with a dry mouth ended up on one of the axles of Rutherford's car, which rode over the top of Bobby Unser's in the crash. Think of how Indy history as we know it could have been forever altered, as both Rutherford and Unser would win the race three times each.
That crash, along with the one six days earlier in the World 600 that would eventually take the life of Fireball Roberts, and one not long after is race that seriously burned Jim Hurtubise, would lead to the invention of fuel cells by both competing tire companies, Goodyear and Firestone.
Clark and Marshman dominated the race after the restart, but both ran into trouble. Marshman lost an oil plug as a result of running on the apron, and Clarks' rear suspension collapsed while leading. That, plus a botched pit stop, would lead to the Lotus team withdrawing Dan Gurney not long after the halfway point. The other contending rear-engine car, driven by Rodger Ward, had a fuel mixture control jam, giving him such poor fuel mileage that he would have to make five pit stops in this race.
The misfortunes of Marshman and Clark handed the lead to Parnelli Jones, but as he left the pits after his first pit stop, his on-board fuel tank exploded, knocking him out of he race and giving him serious burns, as well. After that, Foyt had virtually no competition the rest of the way, and Ward's extra pit stops resulted in Foyt eventually lapping him on route to, by far, the easiest of his four Indianapolis 500 wins. Ward took second, the sixth consecutive year in which he finished fourth or better (1-2-3-1-4-2), a streak bettered only by Ted horn, who piled up nine consecutive finishes of fourth or better from 1936-'48. (But unlike Ward, Horn never won the race.)
This would also be the last time that a front-engine car would ever win the Indianapolis 500, and just three years later in 1967, there would not be a single front-engine car in the entire field, and the last time a front-engine car would qualify for the Indianapolis 500 would be in 1968.
Interestingly, every driver behind ward in the top third of the field, except Johnny Boyd, who finished fifth, scored his best Indy finish in 1964. Lloyd Ruby finished third, which despite the numerous times he would come close to winning the race in later years, was to be his best finish at Indy. Johnny White took fourth place and top rookie honors, while behind Boyd were Bud Tinglestad in sixth, 1958 Indy pole sitter and 13-time NASCAR winner Dick Rathmann in seventh, Bob Harkey eighth (a finish he would match in 1974), Bob Wente ninth, Bobby Grim tenth, while Art Malone brought one of Andy Granatelli's Novis home in 11th place.
All credits go to FOX and SPEED (SpeedVision, the forerunner to the SPEED Channel, originally aired the material seen in the video), the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, USAC, and Championship Racefilms.
I like that each car was unique, and not some cookie cutter formula chassis
Although overshadowed by the deaths of Eddie Sachs and Dave MacDonald, 1964 winner A.J. Foyt would be the last driver to win the Indianapolis "500" in a front-engine car.
And with a Roadster car.
"If you can't win, be spectacular"
Eddie Sachs
(1927 - 1964)
United States Auto Club driver. He died a day like today fifty four years ago 😦 God bless him!
"Car racing always will be dangerous"
Jackie Stewart
(1939- )
Former scottish Formula 1 driver.
World Champon in 1969, 1971 and 1973.
This quote seems to be taken out of context and could be misinterpreted: Stewart, along with Rindt, was one of the driving forces for increased safety measures in F1 and motorsports in general.
I love your coverage of the Indy 500s. I am a true devotee of the event--my neighbor across the street owned an iconic Watson Roadster, and I will never forget his experiences at Indy. One the other hand, I don't think these events should be whitewashed, or that reporting on them should indulge in coverup. The event is what it is, and knowledgeable people need to know the black with the white. thank you very much!
A perfect case of the speedway trying to "whitewash" something related to the Indianapolis 500 was the 1971 pace car crash, which was never mentioned in the official highlight film of the 1971 race, nor is it mentioned in other documentaries the speedway has done that included the 1971 race. Fortunately, when Dynamic Films did their version of the '71 Indy race, that was included, and is seen in the upload of the '71 Indy film, along with the rest of the bad crashes from that race.
I was 16 years old and was in the fourth turn when the accident happened right down to the right just in front of me. The fireball was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was a horrible thing to witness in person.
I don't think anything quite like that has ever happened in another major auto racing event in the USA, before or since, and that catastrophe happened just days after the incident at that year's World 600, in which Fireball Roberts was also effectively burned to death and had already cast a bit of a pall on the proceedings at Indy before the race even started.
One thing about this that many don't know (I didn't myself until relatively recently) was that Fireball Roberts had actually taken Dave MacDonald somewhat under his wing and acted as somewhat of a mentor when the two ran road course races after Fireball joined the Ford ranks in 1963. In fact, Dave MacDonald's two best NASCAR finishes came in the 1963-'64 season, both of them runner-up finishes. The drivers that won those events? Joe Weatherly and Roberts. Weatherly had been killed in January at Riverside, Roberts would succumb to the burns he suffered in his World 600 wreck in early-July (not unlike Swede Savage in 1973), and MacDonald was pronounced dead about three hours after he slammed that inner wall, which should have been removed after this race, but remarkably, stayed there for another nine years and would be the scene of several more horrific crashes, including Swede Savage's crash in the 1973 Indianapolis 500.
@@cjs83172 That's some very interesting history of the events preceding this crash. Thank you for sharing this.
McDonald finished second to Darel Dieringer at Riverside and to Roberts at Augusta. There might be some confusion due to the fact that Weatherly clinched his second points championship in the Riverside race with a top ten finish.
And Fireball was a major backer of the then-new Augusta GA racing complex. Only a couple races were held on the road course, and most of the top finishers died shortly thereafter@@cjs83172
@@robertstaley5049 Thanks for correcting my error.
Motor racing is a unique thing . . .we push things to the limit and beyond and when tragedy happens (and it almost always does) we wring our hands and wish otherwise . . .and then we get to work to learn what went wrong and why and most importantly, WHAT to do to make it better and most importantly SAFER!
For a moment at 2'55" i thought the Speed Racer opening would begin...obviuously inspired the cartoon
My Dad and I saw this race in a first of its kind theater screened live broadcast.
Cita de Wikpedia, la enciclopedia libre:
"Juan Manuel Fangio dijo una vez: 'Correr es vivir' Pero aquellos que murieron mientras estaban corriendo supieron, tal vez, cómo vivir más que todos los otros. La tragedia también escribió parte de la historia de las 500 Millas de Indianápolis: un total de 41 corredores perecieron en el Brickyard. 18 en plena carrera y 23 en entrenamientos y clasificaciones. El primer conductor en morir en este evento fue William Bourque en el año 1909"
La pista se creó en 1909, la primera edición de las 500 fue en 1911.
3:05
"Get that damn camera car out of my way, trying to qualify here!"
You could see how much force the drivers took in even "little" wrecks. Just backing into the wall could snap your neck. The cars were so solidly built and did not give at all, all that force was put into the driver.
And that's one reason for the high mortality rate among drivers of that era, either in IndyCars or midgets and sprint cars. Bobby Unser once said that the mortality rate (drivers being killed in race cars) was about one out of every two when he was coming up. This was never more pronounced than in the starting field for the 1958 Indianapolis 500, a starting grid that would see 15 of it's 33 drivers get killed in race cars.
that happened on a leap year
edit: this is one of the worst crashes in Indy 500 history if not the worst crash ever in Indy 500 history
Why is it significant that it happened on a leap year?
9 Years later was another dark Indy 500
1964 was a bad year Indy cars as a whole. Not only the losses of Eddie Sachs and Dave MacDonald at Indy, injuries to Ronnie Duman and Parnelli Jones, but also The untimely passing of Bobby marshman who died after succumbing to his injuries sustained in a crash during a test session at Phoenix, on November 27, 1964… served as the last straw in the controversy over gasoline as a fuel.
Add that to Jim Hurtubise's horrendous crash at Milwaukee a week later (when he ran over the top of A.J. Foyt and suffered serious burns) and what happened in NASCAR, with the death of 2-time reigning champion Joe Weatherly in January at Riverside, the fiery crash that took the life of Fireball Roberts in the World 600 just six days before this race took place, the testing crash at Charlotte that took the life of Jimmy Pardue not long after he nearly won the Southern 500, and the January crashes of 1965 that took the life of Billy Wade at Daytona and broke A.J. Foyt's back at Riverside, injuries that would effect his performance for a couple of years, and it all adds up to the fact that 1964 may have been the worst year in American auto racing history at the elite levels of the sport.
Yes, "Hurk's" accident at Milwaukee was nasty.. it was a very dangerous era in Motorsports as a whole.
That aside, Jim was a great driver, but certainly had an eccentric and stubborn side too...choosing to try making that front-engine Mallard Chassis competitive all the way up till the beginning of 1972.
thevmanvj
"If you can't win, be spectacular"
Eddie Sachs
(1927 - 1964)
United States Auto Club driver. He died a day like today May 30th. fifty four years ago 😯
@@cjs83172 The use of gasoline at Indy was mandated by Ford for all of the cars using their power plants. What made the crash so horrific was the fact that the Micky Thompson cars had shaved weight by not using a fuel tank! The gasoline was in a rubber bladder and MacDonald hit the wall with that side of the car. When MacDonald spun out of control across the track Sachs had nowhere to go. In those days the racing cars did not have posi-lock caps so when MacDonald and Sachs collided the fill cap(s) on Sach's machine popped open. A final note, if you stop the replay at 11:28 I am sitting in the grandstand inside the track about 1/3 of the way up, it was my first 500, at age 10.
My understanding is that MacD’s car design was regarded as extremely dangerous by several other drivers, who passed on driving it. He actually survived the crash, but passed a couple hours later.
Sachs was much-loved by fans and almost won the ‘61 race. In ‘63, he slid on oil from race winner Parnelli Jones (who should have been black-flagged) and crashed. When he confronted Jones about it afterwards, Jones decked him.
A cute follow-up on the Jones/Sachs incident is that the next morning in the motel they were staying at, Sachs had crafted a small black flag and stuck it in his mouth. That story came from Parnelli himself. One of the reasons they didn't flag Parnelli may have been that there was so much oil on the track from his and numerous other cars that, while Parnelli did lose oil courtesy of a crack in an external oil tank, so many other cars lost, or had been losing oil during that race they the officials couldn't be sure Parnelli's car was still leaking oil. Rodger Ward, who wound up fourth that day, summed it up best years later when he stated if a guy was leading the race, that you'd better be sure you're right if you're going to black flag him, and the USAC officials couldn't be sure it was Parnelli at that time, so they let him stay out.
I would paid money to see the confrontation
J. C. Agajanian and Colin Chapman had with Harlan Fengler and Henry Banks by the start-finish line. Also interesting to speculate what the decision would have been, had Clark had been leading (and leaking) instead of Jones.
One piece of irony was that Jim Hurtibise was black-flagged for leaking oil when he actually wasn’t. But since it was a Novi, something else would have probably knocked him out, anyway.
@@cjs83172 Come on man! The car was spewing oil - against the rules! Blatant cheating!
EVERYBODY KNOWS THE YANKS WOULD NOT SUFFER THE HUMILIATION OF BEING BEATEN BY A ROOKIE SCOTSMAN, DRIVING A SILLY GREEN ENGLISH CAR WITH A SOUPED-UP SEDAN ENGINE IN THE BACK!
The roadster stalwarts were totally humiliated, pissed off, and very embarrassed! Before the race AJ Foyt had told Chapman to take that piece of junk back to great Britian.
Clark and Chapman were robbed. Ford did not protest; their marketing guys reasoning this would show FORD in a bad light with all the jingoistic Yank fans!
Foyt benefited from a number of misfortunes by his rivals, most of which were obvious. The misfortune not obvious was the fuel richness selector on Ward's car, which was stuck on full rich. Ward was 1 mph faster than Foyt, but he had to pit for fuel 5 times. He had to slow down at the very end, to avoid burning a piston.
The rear-engine cars were much faster than were the roadsters, but the difference between the ones Ward and Don Branson were driving and most of the others in that race was that, as Freddie Agabashian noted on the IMS Radio broadcast of this race, the rear-engine cars built by A.J. Watson were built far more sturdy than the Lotus cars were, which is one reason why they structurally lasted and the Lotus cars didn't.
And in the case of Ward's car, his fuel mixture control jammed around the time of his first pit stop (if not sooner), and it jammed on the richest setting, which is why he needed so many more pit stops, negating any speed advantage his car might have had. But I'm not sure his car would have burned a piston if he had not slowed down near the end. What was more likely to happen was that he wouldn't have had enough fuel to finish the race, because his pitside tank was likely empty by the end of the race, and if he didn't slow down, he would never have made it to the finish.
A question I never heard if spectators were hurt in that major crash I would think some people got hurt being so close to all that fireball. This and the '73 race have to be one of the worst in modern Indi history thanks for posting
There likely were spectators burned by the second explosion, but I'm not sure that, if they were, any burns suffered were serious, because if they had been, it would have been known about, especially given that this was the second such horrific crash in a week (the first was to take the life of NASCAR great Fireball Roberts, who had been mentoring a number of drivers, one of whom was Dave MacDonald). 13 spectators were burned in that crash when they first tried to start the 1973 Indianapolis 500, and a number of those burned had serious to severe burns.
A sad day 😢I’m from Indiana I was 4 .. I remember..
Today, they never would restart the race after such a tragedy. It was insane, wasn't it?
They restarted the 500 in 1973 when Salt Walther crashed, flipped, and spewed fuel into the grandstands, In 1949 Duke Nalon crashed and ruptured his fuel tank igniting a stream of gasoline that ran across the track requiring other drivers to drive through the flaming wall to continue. They didn't stop the race to fight the fire, it took 2-3 laps to put it out.
Stopping a race for any reason used to be seen a sacrilege. This was the first time the Indy 500 had ever been red flagged due to an incident. It was also one of the first red flags for a crash during a race in motorsports history. Before this, a red flag would only happen if there was quite literally zero lanes left to get by a crash. In fact, even yellow flags were still fairly rare in the 60's
When Swede Savage had his crash in 1973 (he later died while recovering) the race was stopped to clear all the debris. However, when Dan Weldon was killed in Las Vegas they immediately stopped the race.
They were slow but they were dangerous!
What's that "tragic week end 431 killed!"?
Pausing at 17:08 and looking at the silhouette of that car, my first thought is that that must the expression of a 30 years old technology since pre-WWII Mercedes' looked like that.
so the two at the track DIDNT die needlessly???
I was 5, mom was dating #66 lynn Sutton, first and only race I attended. Mom put cigarette filters in my ears for ear plugs. Mom broke up with him after that race because of the crash.
Is this Stu Sanders?
Narrating the film? Yes, it is. He narrated the official films of the 1963 and 1964 Indianapolis 500s. The information of who the narrator was came courtesy of watching the film of the 1963 Riverside 500 NASCAR race.
7:28. My man the flagger 🏁 is straight up From Author Murray.
I think you mean Arthur Murray. :)
6:07 you had one job............6:50 those guys look silly in their pajamas
Jim McKay at the mike at the beginning, then someone else?
That was actually Sid Collins, the Voice of the 500, in the first minute or two of the film portion of this presentation in a different film for this race, but the bulk of the film presentation is the official film done by IMS, Racefilm Productions, and USAC. I actually did that for the 1960, '61, '63, and '64 race film uploads (using two different versions), and did so again for 1971 (the speedway did not include that year's pace car crash in it's film of that year's race, but Dynamic's version included that).
Ozzy Ozbourne was a car owner? Lol!
Howcome these cars were exploding like that ??? Looks like a plane crash
As I understand it (and as the late Brock Yates mentions in the open), there were three cars in that race that were running high octane gasoline, instead of methanol. Two of them were the cars entered by Mickey Thompson, one of which Dave MacDonald was driving, and when it slammed into the part of the inside wall that jetted toward the track, MacDonald's car exploded. The other car in the race that was running high octane gasoline was the car Eddie Sachs drove, and when MacDonald's car slammed into Sachs', Eddie's car also exploded. In that same crash, Ronnie Duman's car also crashed further down the main straightaway, and although he was burned, the car did not explode the same way the cars of Sachs and MacDonald did.
Then, later on in the race, after he made his first scheduled pit stop, the on-board fuel tank in Parnelli Jones' car also exploded, but like with Duman's car, the flames were not visible because his car was using methanol fuel, not gasoline. In addition, the cars did not have fuel cells, which played a part in not only the crash that killed both Sachs and MacDonald, but also played a role in what happened at Charlotte a week earlier when Fireball Roberts suffered burns that would take his life, and in the same crash, Junior Johnson also suffered burns and was in a hospital listening to this race on the radio.
Foyt casually tossing that cup at 19:21 with water still in it, only for it to land upright.... *bossin'*
that's wild!!!
It appeared to be the last ever indy 500 victory for a front engine car.
+33kalam It was, and in just two years, only one would make the field, as Bobby Grim qualified 31st in his roadster, was involved in the huge crash to start the race, and finished 31st. In 1967, there would be no roadsters in the field at all, and in 1968, Jim Hurtubise snuck one into the line-up, and was out within 10 laps. Hurtubise would attempt to qualify a roadster into the early 70s, but even he finally gave that up in 1972.
Lorenzo Bandini's crash 3 years later at Monoco was so similar. R.I.P. brave drivers. 🏁
In 1963 Graham Hill tested the Sears-Allstate Special, and refused to drive it again. Then after USAC mandated larger wheels it forced a design change which made the car even worse. In 1964 Jim Clark, after noticing how the car was behaving in practice followed Dave MacDonald into the pits, got out of his Lotus and told him to get out of the car and just walk away for his and others safety. In the race Johnny Rutherford saw how bad the car was on the first lap and said to himself that it would either win or crash.
+Holden308 And after the crash that killed both Sachs and MacDonald, Mickey Thompson, a drag racer who owned the car MacDonald drove, withdrew the other car he had in the race, which was driven by Eddie Johnson, after it completed one more lap. And the year before, in 1963, veteran Duane Carter had all kinds of problems trying to get Thompson's car into the race before eventually succeeding. Interestingly, Dan Gurney drove one of Thompson's low-profile cars in 1962, and qualified for the race without incident, dropping out after completing 92 laps with rear end trouble, and that effort was what brought Lotus to the speedway in 1963, because Colin Chapman was invited by Gurney as a special guest, as as they say, the rest is history.
very true
That wasn't the only racing death that weekend. In Charlotte Glen "Fireball" Roberts was also killed in a fiery crash while competing in the World 600. That truly was one of the worst weekends in racing history.
Right. That crash, which also involved fellow NASCAR legends Ned Jarrett and Junior Johnson (who, according to the IMS Radio broadcast of the 1964 Indianapolis 500, was listening to this race while in the hospital recovering from his burns), happened just six days prior to this race. In addition to the deaths of Roberts, Sachs, and MacDonald, as well as the burns suffered by Ronnie Duman and Parnelli Jones in this race, not long after this race, Jim Hurtubise was badly burned at Milwaukee a few days after this race.
And that major NASCAR incident at Charlotte, which burned Johnson and eventually took the life of Fireball, shook up quite a few drivers participating in this race, because many of them had raced against Fireball in the NASCAR races they had competed in, including that year's Daytona 500, in which both Foyt and Jones were contenders before dropping out, and in which both Johnny Rutherford and Jim McElreath crashed out of, as well as a race in which MacDonald finished tenth and in which Bobby Marshman, who would lose his life later that year, also competed in.
@@cjs83172 that was one horrific week. Btw, thanks for clarifying the date for me. I'm so used to Indy and the 600 being run on the same day I forgot that there was a time when they weren't.
@@Sargebri That's understandable, because that was a result of a change IMS made in 1974 to reverse it's policy to never run the race on a Sunday. In fact, from 1911 to 1970, the race was always scheduled to run on May 30, unless May 30 fell on a Sunday, in which case, the race was run on May 31. That actually resulted in NASCAR drivers being able to run at Indy without necessarily being forced to sit out the prestigious World 600 at Charlotte. In fact, Donnie Allison ran both races in 1970 and 1971, and never finished lower than sixth in either, running Indy and Charlotte on successive days in 1971.
8:16 ozzy osbourne? did he really just say that? this was before ozzy was famous. wait for it, listen to it again. it sounds exactly like ozzy osbourne.
Myron Osbourn was his car owner
I'm friends with the Taylor family and it's my understanding that Ralph Taylor was one of the owners of this car. BTW Sharkbyte 1000 is right, I heard Ozzy Osbourne too. :)
Sharkbyte1000 OMG, you’re stone right. All I can figure is “Ozzy” was Myron’s nickname. Good stuff!
The Ozzy Osbourne we all know about was born with the first name John. He legally changed it to Ozzy back in the 1970s.
i spoke to some modern engineers about the dave macdonald car (sears allstate special) - about whether wings and slick tyres would've solved things - it turns out wings were banned at the time, but anyway they said;
the (non bespoke) engine was placed too high and too far back (and the back axle should've been further back and the driver and fuel tank further forward). As it was the car was far too prone to `lift' at the front.
they said wings and slick tyres in themselves would not have aided the existing car overall (except over safety).
as is, the only possible correction would've been adding cowling around the bottom of it, to prevent the wind getting under it and at the (slower) speeds it would then achieve.
in that context the accident makes complete sense, macdonald came out from behind 2 cars and so the car suddenly hit a big wall of air, which too easily got under the front and lifted it up - so pretty much no steering at that point - so whatever tyres on it would've been irrelevant.
i don't think it had 80 US gallons of fuel onboard either (owner mickey thompson said that to disguise it deficiencies by making out that it wouldn't need a pit stop?) - 80 US gallons is just over 300 litres (check the bottes in your refrigerator and see how many bottles is 80 US gallons or 300 litres etc - it would fill the entire thing) - so i think it was carrying more like 40 US gallons for 1 planned pit stop.
i was thinking the team might have been unlucky (he did pass 5 cars in just 2 laps) - but the modern engineers said no, the car was fundamentally bad.
Part of the problem with the MT car was that to save weight the cars had fuel bladders, not metal tanks. So whatever fuel was aboard wasn't protected in a crash. With only two laps run perhaps 90 percent of the 100 octane gasoline the car carried caused the bladder to burst like a balloon when MadDonald hit the wall.
here is what one of the modern engineers said;
"Wings would have helped that car’s stability and the same for all those cars. But that particular car would be expected to have problems with lift. The Indianapolis 500 was a race that was open to all kinds of innovation during that era. The prize money was so incredibly high that if you could win or finish close to the front the prize might be enough to pay for the development of a special car so you would see the occasional crackpot dream of a misguided genius. Most of them failed to qualify."
@@mrgobrien Complete loss of steering grip certainly explains MacDonald's floaty, helpless spin into the wall. Being in that car spinning across the track to the inside wall must have seemed like eternity.
I wonder if the Smokey Yunick sidecar, which crashed out in practice, gave Andy Granatelli the idea for the layout of his turbocar three years later. Sidecar racers had also competed on European circuits during the first half of the 1950s, including the infamous 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans. To my knowledge, the turbocar was the only sidecar that came close to winning anything. I guess it helps if it only has to turn one direction.
15:57-16:14 “DON’T LET THE INVISIBLE FIRE BURN MY FRIEND!!!”
For an in-depth story of the events leading up to the 1964 Indianapolis "500", the race itself (including the fatal crash) and the aftermath of the race, read the best-selling book "Black Noon".
It's the definitive account of that race.
altfactor I second that recommendation. Quick and engrossing read.
Thank you for the recommendation. I checked out the book and it has a lot of good online reviews. I'm going to get a copy.
Thanks for the heads up, hopefully I can find it in a public library
Such a horrid accident between Sachs and MacDonald. Wasn't spectators burned as well in that crash? I thought I heard that somewhere.
There may have been, but there's a reason why the grandstands on the main straightaway are back from the fence at Indy, and this wreck and the wrecks at the start of the Indianapolis 500 in both 1966 and 1973 are proof of why the stands should NEVER be that close to the track. Remember that the tires from Johnny Rutherford's car made tire marks on top of the wall from when he went over the top of Bobby Unser's car in this crash (and think of how history as we know might have been altered, given the careers they both wound up having).
***** It's funny that you mention Bobby Unser being caught up in a horrid accident like that, considering that his oldest brother, Jerry (aka the first Unser to race at Indy), as a rookie in 1958, was caught up in that horrifying first lap accident that killed Pat O'Connor (who, BTW, was the last native Hoosier "500" polesitter until Ed Carpenter won back-to-back the last two years) when he sailed over the Turn 2 wall. He managed to survive that one, but unfortunately, the next year, he crashed in practice and died of his injuries. Ironically, his youngest brother, Al, Sr., as well as his nephew and Big Al's son, Al, Jr., would make much better rookie runs at the Speedway, although neither won Rookie-Of-The-Year in their respective debuts. (Mario Andretti won in '65 and Teo Fabi won in '83 after grabbing the pole that year, respectively.)
Actually, that crash in 1958 happened in turn three, not turn two.
And isn't it ironic that no member of the Unser family ever won the Rookie of the Year at Indy, yet won there nine times as a family, although only one of them ever had a real good finish at Indy as a rookie, that being Robby Unser in 1998, when he was fifth. But he lost the Rookie title to Steve Knapp that year. The others really didn't run that well in their first Indy starts.
Jerry was in that first-lap crash in 1958, Bobby crashed on lap 3 in 1963, and Al, Sr. and Jr. ran just okay in their Indy debuts, with Al, Sr. beating only one other car that finished in 1965 and Al, Jr. doing okay in 1983, finishing tenth in a race that only 13 cars finished, and Johnny, like his father Jerry, failed to complete a lap in his first Indy attempt in 1996. In fact, he never even got the green flag that year. So Robby Unser was the only member of the Unser family that had a strong run in his Indy debut.
***** wrong it was 64
What was in '64?
So the car that was pulling out of the pits in fire (methanol, no flame) had that same odd brown cloud trailing it just like the Rick Mears pit fire, no flames but you could see a brown cloud.
As far as I know (and that's a lot less than the official historians), the only cars in this race that used the high-octane gasoline were the two Mickey Thompson cars, one of which was driven by Dave MacDonald, and the car driven by Eddie Sachs. I believe all the others were using methanol, including Parnelli Jones, who's on-board tank exploded after his first pit stop, and who had to dive out of the car for safety while it was still moving on pit road.
Ozzy Osborne.
Ozzy
Osborne.
The crash that killed Dave MacDonald and Eddie Sachs was the first time that the Indianapolis "500" had ever been stopped due to an accident.
Prior to 1964, the only other times the 500 had ever been red-flagged was due to rain or thunderstorms.
Big smoke little fire didnt apply here
And there was already a pall cast on this race because of the events of six days earlier, when a crash in the early stages of the World 600 at Charlotte involving Ned Jarrett, Junior Johnson, and Fireball Roberts, NASCAR legends all, resulted in Roberts receiving burns from which he didn't survive (he died on July 2 of that year), and a number of drivers in this race had raced against Roberts as recently as earlier that year. Another of the drivers involved in that horrendous crash that killed Sachs and McDonald, Ronnie Duman, would himself be burned to death in a crash at Milwaukee, shortly after finishing sixth in the 1968 Indianapolis 500.
Those front engine cars were dinosaurs compared to the latest racing machinery from Europe, but they were perfectly evolved for their environment - until a more evolved species came along.
These had pretty much the same technology since the 1930s. Wasn't until the 70s that it changed with front and rear spoilers.By the mid 70s cars were going over 200 mph.