It’s… A… New Track Record!

CHAPTER 2

1963

FINALLY, THE REVOLUTION IS TRULY UNDER WAY

One Indy 500 into the 11-race “Decade of Speed,” one- and four-lap track records had been established in qualifying at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and a major barrier known as the 150-mph mark was finally breached. The 150-mph mystique at Indy may have departed with Parnelli Jones’ successful run to the pole, but most likely there were probably still a few naysayers remaining who thought the drivers would not be able to go much faster than 150.

With some exceptions, there also was little to show where the rear-engine revolution was concerned, certainly not as much as one might have anticipated given the promise of the new configuration in the previous two 500s. Following the first-ever top-10 finish of a rear-engine design in 1961, the 1962 entry produced only one qualifier out of four rear-engine cars entered, but at least the car that qualified was competitive. Those new 1962 rear-engine designs looked good and there was even some creativity with one of the four entries looking to the future by employing turbine power.

The change would be more dramatic for 1963, when the revolution finally began to take hold at the famed IMS track still known as “the Brickyard.” It was serious change in the form of sheer numbers, some major players and, most importantly, on-track results.

For a start, there were 11 rear-engine cars among the 65 cars entered in 1963—nearly 20 percent of the total. Of the new challengers the most notable effort came from the partnership between Team Lotus, a top Formula One team and racing car manufacturer, and Ford Motor Company. Officially known as the Lotus Indianapolis Project, cars were entered for rookie Jim Clark and second-year man Dan Gurney with a third car also entered as a backup should it be needed. It indeed would be needed.

Clark, the shy, taciturn sheep farmer from Duns, Scotland, was initially put off by Americans in general and Indianapolis in particular. He seemed to take umbrage at the familiar expression “Nice to know you” when being introduced to someone at the Speedway. “How can they say that when they don’t really know me,” Clark was quoted as saying. Clark was also alarmed at what he thought was a high rate of crime in the United States as evidenced by what he perceived were large numbers of armed people roaming the streets. Eventually, he became more comfortable with America and Americans. In the meantime, he would quickly become very comfortable at the Speedway and quickly acclimated to the art of high-speed, left-turn-only auto racing.

The Lotus Indianapolis Project marked the first factory-backed effort by Ford since its disastrous foray of 1935. That year, Harry Miller had attempted to regroup after losing his company to bankruptcy earlier in the decade. For 1935, he partnered with Preston Tucker to form Miller-Tucker. With considerable financial backing by Ford, Miller and Tucker were commissioned to build 10, low-slung, front-wheel-drive cars that would be powered by Ford’s highly regarded production V-8 engine. Miller was listed as the entrant for all 10 cars, but only four drivers qualified for the race—Ted Horn, Johnny Seymour, George Bailey and Bob Sall. Another Miller-Ford driver, Dave Evans, qualified 34th to be first alternate.

Even with four cars in the 33-car starting field, qualifying results were less than impressive. In what would be his first of 10 straight starts at Indianapolis, Horn led the team by qualifying 26th with Seymour 27th, Bailey 29th and Sall 33rd (and last). It got worse in the race itself. None of the cars finished and three retired due to a major design flaw. Miller had placed the steering gear too close to the exhaust manifolds, causing heat from the manifolds literally to fuse the metal steering gear. This left the drivers unable to steer their cars, a frightening occurrence at any racetrack let alone at a high-speed one like Indianapolis. The fourth car seemed to escape that fate but was sidelined by a “grease leak.” Horn, a future Indy legend, had the best placing at the end, winding up in 16th.

Henry Ford was so angered and embarrassed by the results that he impounded the cars with the intention of having them destroyed. But cooler heads waited for Mr. Ford to calm down and then convinced him that they could at least recoup some of the money lost in the project by selling the cars, some of which would appear in 500s in the late 1930s and throughout the ’40s.

By 1963, Henry Ford’s grandsons were firmly ensconced in the management of the company, and Ford would be more hands-on in its collaboration with Lotus than it had been with Miller. Colin Chapman was able to design and build three special Lotus 29 chassis that housed a production-based Ford Fairlane V-8 capable of producing more than 360 horsepower. To take advantage of the all-left-turn Speedway, the new chassis borrowed the offset suspension design already employed at Indy on the front-engine roadsters. The cars also reintroduced the monocoque chassis design to Indy for the first time in nearly 50 years. The original Indy monocoque had featured in the somewhat futuristic Cornelian of 1915. Forty-eight years later, the Lotus 29 was pretty much identical to its sister Formula One car, the Lotus 25. Both Lotus designs incorporated a fuselage consisting of sheet metal wrapped around a series of bulkheads that gave the car structural rigidity but offered lightness as an added benefit. Colin Chapman’s background in aviation engineering paid dividends in this trend-setting design.

Chapman was not the only new Indianapolis designer to bring innovative ideas to Indianapolis. Buoyed by a somewhat successful outing in 1962, Mickey Thompson returned, this time with a revolutionary car design that would continue to set him apart from his competitors. With the only rear-engine car to qualify for the ’62 race, Thompson had a more ambitious effort for ’63 with no fewer than five entries. They included three of his new so-called “rollerskate” cars that featured a low, pancake shape and specially constructed wide, low-profile tires from Firestone. Thompson went a step further with the tubular frame on one of his “rollerskates.” The No. 82 Harvey Titanium Special was made primarily of titanium. It weighed 1,000 pounds, far below the 1,600- to 1,700-pound range of the roadsters.

“The experience I had with the ’62 cars convinced me that I was on the right track and that brute horsepower, torque and structure had been emphasized to a ridiculous extent,” Thompson explained in his autobiography Challenger: Mickey Thompson’s Own Story of His Life of Speed. “The new emphasis had to be on a smaller frontal area, lighter weight, lower center of gravity, lower unsprung weight and greater traction. Each of these is inseparably linked with tire design. If I wanted to build a better race car, I could not do it without building a better tire. So as I designed the new car, I simultaneously designed tires that were an integrated part of it. They, too, were wild.”

“Wild” might be understating it. Thompson’s tires were mounted on 12-inch wheels. In Erik Arneson’s Mickey Thompson: The Fast Life and Tragic Death of a Racing Legend, Thompson’s son Danny recalled: “Dad’s tires were lower, wider and softer and they gave him such an advantage that it pissed off... the really heavy hitters from USAC. Bowing to pressure, Firestone replaced Thompson’s original tire design with a heavier compound.

Early in 1963, Thompson knew there would be controversy over his new car and tire design. In his autobiography, he said: “Rumors about my plans were running in January when word reached me that USAC’s technical and safety committee was having a major rules meeting in Indianapolis and they were gunning for me and things like super-light cars and teeny-weenie tires.

“I flew to that meeting, was admitted and asked to state the reason for my presence. I stood up and said ‘Gentlemen, I came to meet a group I expected to be opposed to advanced thinking. I don’t know how true that is. But I have spent $150,000 on this project so far and if you shut me out that’s what I’ll be losing. I think that for $150,000 invested in the sport, I deserve five minutes of your time.’

“I told them I felt like Daniel in the lions’ den but to please tell me what their worries were about my project and that I would do my best to explain how and why I was handling these problems.

“They kept asking and I kept talking until the first thing I knew [USAC] president Tom Binford was saying: ‘Mickey, it looks like you’re the lion and I’m Daniel. We are not enemies of advanced thinking; we’re impressed with what you have told us and find no fault with it. In fact, we could use a man like you on our technical committee.’”

The meeting served as a “go-ahead” for Thompson and his revolutionary Indy-car project.

Thompson’s original driver lineup was unconventional by Indy 500 standards with no oval-track specialists on the roster. Initially heading the team were a trio of rookies, led by reigning F1 World Champion Graham Hill, American expatriate F1 driver Masten Gregory and American sports car specialist Billy Krause, all assigned to the new cars. Ultimately, rookie Al Miller and veteran Bill Cheesbourg, who were oval-track specialists, would be assigned to the year-old cars. All five were powered by fuel-injected Chevrolet V-8s.

Jim Kimberly, who had sponsored the Cooper effort with Jack Brabham in 1961, returned for a second straight year as an entrant. For 1963, he had a pair of year-old Thompson-Buicks for Jimmy Davies, a standout in USAC midgets who had last raced in the 500 in 1955 and finished third, and Keith “Porky” Rachwitz, a rookie with one of the more eye-catching names in auto racing.

The 11th and final rear-engine entry came from West Coast imported car dealer Kjell Qvale, who had purchased the 1961 Cooper-Climax raced by Brabham that now featured a lengthened wheelbase (as per new USAC regulations). Power came from a 6-cylinder Aston Martin engine that replaced the 4-cylinder Coventry Climax engine used in ’61. To accommodate USAC’s new regulations governing wheelbase, veteran sports-car builder Joe Huffaker handled the conversion. Most thought the revised Cooper would still be competitive, but the engine remained a question mark. Noted primarily in racing for its success in sports-car competition, it would be a rare instance of the Aston Martin name competing in any form of open-wheel racing in that era.

The car was now known as the BMC-Aston Martin Cooper Special and Mexico’s rising star Pedro Rodriguez was signed to drive it. A familiar figure on the worldwide endurance racing scene and extremely experienced at age 23, Rodriguez shared the same disdain of having to participate in a rookie test as did Grand Prix stars Clark and Hill. The young Mexican reportedly suggested that they make the American racers take similar tests to run endurance or Grand Prix events which probably did not endear him to his fellow Indy competitors. And Rodriguez also stood out by wearing a wool checked deerstalker cap. It seems the Mexican driver was quite the Anglophile who preferred large British luxury cars for everyday driving.

Not all of the unusual cars in the 1963 entry were rear-engine designs. Smokey Yunick’s front-engine Python, originally entered in 1962 for Jim Rathmann, carried its fuel on the sides of the car instead of the standard location in the tail section. Entered as the Fiberglas Special and powered by a conventional Offenhauser, its driver, NASCAR ace Curtis Turner, crashed in practice. That may have been the end to the Python, but Yunick would be back the following year, drawing even more attention with an even more radical design.

For the conventional front-engine set, it was going to be hard to beat either a Watson or in many cases Watson lookalikes. Among the leading entrants with Watsons were pre-race favorites Parnelli Jones and defending race winner Rodger Ward. Jones was back in his updated roadster, entered for the fourth straight year and officially known as the Agajanian Willard Battery Special but still lovingly referred to by most as “Ol’ Calhoun.” For 1963, Jones’ chief mechanic Johnny Pouelsen added an air duct opening in the nose of the car and reworked the location of the brake line that had deprived them of a win in the 1962 race.

Leader Card Racers, coming off its 1–2 finish with Ward and Len Sutton a year earlier, had an even stronger driver lineup by adding talented fifth-year driver Don Branson to its roster. A.J. Foyt and Eddie Sachs, the main combatants in 1961, were back but each with different teams. Foyt was still in the same Trevis-Offy he had driven the past two years, but the team was under new ownership with Bill Ansted and Shirley Murphy having purchased the assets from Bignotti-Bowes Racing Associates. In addition to Foyt, Ansted and Murphy also signed highly respected chief mechanic George Bignotti as part of the deal. Apparently miffed that Al Dean would not buy him a new car for ’63, Sachs was no longer with the Dean Van Lines team, having defected to the locally based DVS team. For the first time at Indy, Sachs would be driving a Watson-Offenhauser, this one sponsored by Bryant Heating and Cooling. Second-year man Chuck Hulse took over Sachs’ place with the Dean team in the same Ewing roadster Sachs had placed on the pole in 1960 and ’61. Jim McElreath was also a part of the Watson contingent, having signed on to drive one for the Bill Forbes’ team after racing a Kurtis the previous year.

The laydown chassis design that had dominated 1957 and ’58 was starting to become obsolete, but still involved good teams and drivers. Epperly laydowns were entered by Lindsey Hopkins for Bobby Marshman (the Econo-Car Rental Special), George Salih for Johnny Boyd (the Bowes Seal Fast Special) and Tidewater Associates for Bud Tingelstad (the Hoover Motor Express Special). Bob Veith was entered in the Racing Associates Porter laydown while 1952 winner Troy Ruttman had a Kuzma laydown owned by Jim Robbins.

Thanks to its colossal noise, another fan favorite in May of 1963 was the Novi team back in force with the Granatelli brothers entering both of their year-old Kurtis chassis and a seven-year-old Kurtis that was distinguished by a large dorsal tail fin. All three cars were powered by the supercharged Novi V-8 that had been enthralling Indy fans since 1941. Jim Hurtubise led the team that would eventually include rookie drivers Bobby Unser and Art Malone. Unser came from a New Mexico-based racing family and his older brother Jerry had been a starter in the 1958 500. Malone may have been a drag racing specialist, but he proved adept at running on tracks that involved turns. Malone set a world closed-course record topping 180 mph (181.561 mph) at Daytona Speedway in a highly modified Kurtis-Kraft Indy car powered by a supercharged Chrysler Hemi engine.

The month of May also produced its share of action in the form of accidents. Some were minor spins or slight taps against the IMS concrete walls. Others were more serious, especially with the high speeds turned at Indianapolis.

Jack Turner, a veteran 500 driver who honed his skills on the short tracks of the Pacific Northwest, was involved in the most serious incident of the month. Turner flipped on the main straightaway for the third straight year, this time barrel-rolling down the track during a practice session. In the 1961 and ’62 races, Turner had got caught up in someone else’s accident and flipped several times both years. He was only slightly injured each time, but the 1963 practice accident resulted in a hospital stay. From his hospital bed, Turner announced his retirement. In what some might consider to be a rather insensitive gesture, he was eventually presented a trophy with an upside-down Indy car on top.

Qualifying produced few surprises as Jones took his second straight pole position and broke his own records from 1962 with a top lap of 151.847 mph and a four-lap average of 151.153 mph. Jones joined Ralph DePalma (1920, 1921), Rex Mays (1935, 1936) and Sachs (1960, 1961) to become the fourth driver in 500 history to win back-to-back poles.

Unlike 1962, there was no questioning that all four of Parnelli’s laps exceeded the 150-mph barrier. Row 1 also produced a couple of pleasant surprises. Don Branson proved to be a worthy addition for Leader Card Racers as he qualified on the outside of the front row. It was his second start on the front row in three years as he had also started second in 1961. And the combined pairing of fan-favorite driver Jim Hurtubise and his fan-favorite Novi lived up to expectations as he qualified second fastest and returned to the 500’s first row for a second time (he had started third next to Branson in 1961). In addition to Jones’ record run, averages of 150.257 mph for Hurtubise and 150.188 mph for Branson gave Indianapolis its first-ever all-150-mph front row. The second row was comprised defending winner Ward, spectacular rookie Clark and McElreath. Marshman averaged 149.458 mph and was the slowest qualifier on Pole Day. Still, he would be starting inside of Row 3 in seventh.

Only two other qualifiers in 1963 recorded 150-mph averages: Foyt at 150.615 mph and Paul Goldsmith at 150.163 mph. Because they were second-day qualifiers, Foyt would start eighth with Goldsmith ninth, his best qualifying effort in six starts. The latter was reunited with Norm Demler’s team, which had employed him in 1959 and ’60 when he finished fifth and third respectively. In those two races, Goldsmith drove the original Epperly laydown. However, after two major accidents for Hurtubise in 1962, the Epperly was entered as car # 55 for driver Norm Hall but did not qualify and was replaced with a Watson roadster that Len Sutton had driven to second in 1962. The Demler Epperly’s days were not done at the Speedway, however, and it would resurface.

Hurtubise not only put a Novi in the 500 for the first time since 1958, the dayglow orange Hotel Tropicana Special also marked the Novi’s first front-row start at Indy since 1951 when Duke Nalon captured the pole. The other two Novis would make the race the second weekend. Unser qualified his yellow and black-trimmed Hotel Tropicana Special (with the 10th fastest in overall speed) and credited Parnelli Jones with convincing Andy Granatelli to give the rookie driver a chance. Malone put the seven-year-old Kurtis-Novi in the field as well. His car was sponsored by what at the time was a little-known oil additive product called STP. Thanks to one of the most incredible marketing programs of all time, it would soon become a very well-known oil additive product. Eventually it would seem like a significant part of the planet was plastered with the distinctive oval-shaped STP stickers.

The success of the Granatelli entries proved that the cars produced by Kurtis-Kraft were obviously still competitive, but looks were somewhat deceiving. If anything, the California-based manufacturer was in a serious decline after being the most popular chassis of choice in the 1950s.

Kurtis-Kraft chassis had won five of the six Indianapolis 500s between 1950 and ’55, and had dominated the 1956 and ’57 grids by capturing 22 of the 33 starting positions in each of those races. Afterward the numbers began to drop dramatically. For 1963, the only qualifiers using Kurtis-Kraft chassis were the three Novis. In fact, for 1963, Frank Kurtis produced his last Indy car, the KK500L purchased by Indiana businessman John Chalik. This final design featured a square-shaped tail section as well as the first-ever roll cage at the Speedway. Rookie driver Robert “Junior Johnson” of NASCAR fame practiced in the car, but soon returned to the world of stock cars, quitting during his rookie test.

Jim Clark, the Scottish farmer who moonlighted as a top F1 driver (or was it the other way around?), impressed by averaging 149.750 mph to qualify fifth for his first-ever oval-track race. That qualifying effort would be the best to date for a 500 driver in a rear-engine car. Clark’s run broke the 24-year-old record set when George Bailey qualified sixth. Clark’s successful run also stood out for another reason: his car was painted green. The British Racing Green of Clark’s Lotus-Ford was simply a representation of international racing colors that had been established back in the early years of the 20th Century with the annual Gordon Bennett Cup races, but for Americans, of course, it was bad luck to paint an Indy car green.

Dan Gurney, who started out in the No. 91 Lotus-Ford entry decked in America’s white-and-blue international colors, was forced to qualify the team’s green-liveried No. 93 backup after crashing his original entry in the morning practice on Pole Day. He qualified the backup car the next day to start in 12th position and by Race Day the car had been repainted in its proper white-and-blue colors.

Clark’s maiden appearance at Indy also coincided with the introduction of what would become a popular 500 tradition that continues today. Appropriately, this tradition came in the form of a locally based Scottish bagpipe band that performed in kilts and was known as the “Gordon Pipers.” Speedway owner Tony Hulman had seen the band perform at a race at nearby Raceway Park a year earlier and ultimately invited them to participate on several important May dates in 1963, including Opening Day, Pole Day and Race Day. More than 60 years later, the haunting sound of the bagpipes echoing off the towering grandstands of IMS lets everyone know that the Gordon Pipers are nearby, a relic from the past that still remains and still entertains.

By the time qualifying ended, there was a noticeable change in the makeup of the field with four rear-engine cars, making this 47th rendition of the 500 the first to have more than one rear-engine car compete in the race.

Although he was able to get two cars qualified in the 1963 starting field (twice as many as he had in 1962), Thompson’s effort suffered setbacks during the long month. Deciding that the new car was not exactly raceworthy and a bit too radical for his tastes, Graham Hill left the team after losing a wheel in practice. Hill already had ample experience in losing wheels during his original stint as a driver for Team Lotus.

In his autobiography Life at the Limit, Hill described his experience: “For Indianapolis, [Thompson] had a very revolutionary car, a streamlined saucer-shaped thing with a very flat elliptical section… the wheels themselves were tiny with great big fat tyres which were a new idea then. Small wheels have to turn faster, involving more stress and Firestone were worried about the increased centrifugal force; they therefore used a pretty hard old tread compound which meant that there wasn’t much grip. When I drove it, I thought the car was diabolical.”

Even though he had decided to forego the race, Hill’s initial visit to Indianapolis did make an impact. In Neil Ewart’s biography, Graham, he recalled his first meeting with track owner Tony Hulman, who innocently asked what he thought of the Speedway. Hill’s reply was: “Well, there’s two things wrong with it. You run it the wrong way around [counterclockwise]—and there are no doors on the loos [the British term for toilet stalls]. It’s one place I like to be private, and I think it’s embarrassing, indecent and undignified.” By the next morning, several IMS toilet stalls had doors.

With at least that wish accomplished, Hill then departed for Europe. However, he would be, shall we say, a bit more successful on his next Indy 500 endeavor.

Hill’s teammates fared no better. Krause was involved in a two-car accident with McCluskey and never made a qualifying attempt. Gregory made an incomplete qualifying run in what originally was Krause’s car and later failed to bump his way into the field in the titanium-chassis car. Cheesbourg wrecked his year-old car in practice and moved to another team. On the positive side, Duane Carter took over Hill’s car and qualified a respectable 15th while Al Miller squeezed his year-old Thompson-Chevy into the field on the final day, qualifying 31st.

It marked the first time that Chevrolet-powered cars had qualified for the Indianapolis 500. One of the ironies in racing history is that three Chevrolet brothers—Arthur, Louis and Gaston—made a collective eight starts with Gaston winning in 1920 but none ever raced a Chevrolet in the 500. For the record, Chevrolet-powered cars were entered in the 500s of 1950, ’51, ’53 and ’60, but none of those entries qualified for any of those races.

Carter had quite a noteworthy career at Indianapolis. A consistent competitor in Indy-car racing since 1948 and fourth-place finisher in the 1952 500, he retired in 1956 to become director of competition for the newly formed United States Auto Club. It was a brief retirement, however, as Carter returned in 1959 and finished seventh in that year’s 500. In 1963, he turned 50 on May 5 and later in the month made history by becoming the first of three drivers to have qualified and raced a dirt car, a roadster and a rear-engine car in the Indianapolis 500.

Qualifying at Indianapolis would not be qualifying without the usual disappointments.

Len Sutton had to be one of the most frustrated people at Indianapolis in 1963. After scoring a career-best 500 finish with second place the previous year, things quickly went downhill. A crash at Milwaukee the week after the 1962 500 left him with several broken vertebra, forcing him to miss races that summer. However, he recovered and posted some good results to wind up seventh in the championship. For 1963, he returned with the Leader Card Racers with understandably high expectations. But 1963 was not at all like ’62 for the amiable Oregonian. After crashing in practice, he qualified his repaired car only to be bumped. Then he was bumped after qualifying Ray Crawford’s Elder-Offenhauser at an average speed of 147.620 mph. He was designated first alternate for the ’63 race. Racing can be tough and it can be cruel, but Sutton was far from finished. As in any sport, there would always be “next year” and, what is more, he would soon find himself an active participant in the rear-engine revolution.

The average speed for the 33 starters was a record 149.028 mph. In addition to 28 veteran starters, there were five rookies, including future winners Jim Clark, Bobby Unser and Johnny Rutherford. Al Miller and Art Malone were the other newcomers. There were also four former winners: A.J. Foyt, Rodger Ward, Troy Ruttman and Jim Rathmann, who was making what would be his final 500 start.

A total of 11 different chassis were represented on the 1963 starting grid. Of the 29 front-engine roadsters, there were nine separate designs: 14 Watsons, three Epperlys, three Trevis, three Kurtis, two Kuzmas, one Ewing, one Lesovsky, one Christensen, and one Porter. The four rear-engine starters were two Lotus 29s and two Thompsons, one a year-old Crosthwaite-designed model and the other one of Thompson’s new “rollerskate” cars.

For the first time in 11 years, four different engines powered starters in the 33-car field. There were 26 Offenhauser-powered roadsters and a record three Novis for the 500 traditionalists. For the nonconformists, there were the rear-engine Lotus-Fords and Thompson-Chevrolets. The Ford Fairlane-based Lotus engines would be the last to feature carburetors. Not since 1952 had four different engines powered cars on the starting grid.

Qualifying also provided another historic footnote. Eight-cylinder engines had been around since 1919 when four French Ballots qualified, all employing inline 8-cylinder powerplants. By 1927, the entire 33-car starting field had “straight eights” for power. Various rule changes over the years would see 500 fields with cars using 4-, 6-, 8- and occasionally even 12- and 16-cylinder engines. The seven 8-cylinder qualifiers in 1963 were the most since 1948, although five of the seven in ’48 had been inline 8s. For 1963, all seven were V-8s, a new record for the race.

The 1963 rendition promised to be one of the most interesting Indianapolis 500s to date.

First introduced in 1946, one of the highlights of pre-race ceremonies has been the traditional song “Back Home Again In Indiana” that was usually sung by some sort of entertainment figure. In 1963, that person was Brian Sullivan, a tenor who sang with various major opera companies. The Pace Car for 1963 was the Chrysler 300 and its driver was 1957 winner Sam Hanks. For Hanks, it would his final time to pace the race, but he had done it a record six straight times. Hanks had tied Carl Fisher’s record of five the previous year and although he would ultimately be tied by Jim Rathmann, whose sixth Pace Car drive came in 1982, Hanks still holds the record for most consecutive times to pace the 500.

Besides the usual pre-race traditions, there was an interesting spectator visiting select drivers on the grid prior to the start. Stirling Moss, the British driver considered by many to be the “greatest driver who never won the F1 World Championship,” came to witness the Indianapolis 500. Nearly 40 years earlier, the Moss family had been represented in the 1924 500 by Stirling’s father, Alfred E. Moss, who at the time was a student at the Indiana University School of Dentistry in Indianapolis. During his dental school days, the elder Moss discovered the thrill of American oval-track racing and soon became a proponent of the art of “turning left” in racing, or as Niki Lauda once described it “going in circles dangerously.” After placing 24th in the 1924 race and driving relief in 1925, Moss finished his dental studies and returned to England where he sired one of the greatest racers of all time.

There seemed to be more excitement than usual for this race. Could Parnelli Jones, the fastest man at the Speedway the past two years, finally make it to Victory Lane? Would his main competition come from the likes of former winners Foyt or Ward? How would the ever-popular Jim Hurtubise do now that he was paired with a powerful Novi? And after their strong performances in practice and qualifying, there was much conjecture on how effective the rear-engine Lotus-Fords would be in racing form against the front-engine set.

These questions would soon be answered as second-year starter Pat Vidan dropped the green flag to start the race. Predictably Jones jumped into the lead, but where was Hurtubise? Dropping back to seventh, “Herk” relied on the awesome horsepower of the Novi to pass the six cars ahead of him and lead Lap 1. Over the years, there has been speculation that Jones and Hurtubise had made a wager as to which driver would lead the first lap. No one knows how much money was involved or if indeed there was such a bet. But if there had been a bet, Hurtubise won it. On a historical front, it is also interesting to note that this would be the second 500 Hurtubise led but also the last lap he would ever lead at IMS. It would also be the last time a Novi would pace the Indy 500 field.

On Lap 2, Jones took over and pretty much had things his way, leading 167 laps of the race’s 200, which today is tied for fifth for most laps led by the race winner and eighth most laps led by any driver in any 500. Jones’ main competition came courtesy of Clark, who made history by becoming the first driver to lead the 500 in a rear-engine car when he moved into the first place on Lap 68 while Jones made his first pit stop. The Scotsman stayed there for 28 laps until Lap 95 when he made what would be his only pit stop of the race. Clark’s production-based engine obviously got better mileage than the Offenhausers and Novis, but the lighter weight of the Lotus also played a major role in both fuel mileage and tire wear as well. The Lotus 29 was said to weigh 1,130 pounds compared to the 1,600-pound front-engine roadsters.

Jones retook the lead on Lap 96 and led the rest of the way. On Lap 114, Jones posted the fastest lap of the race at 151.541 mph, incredibly only a tick slower than his one-lap qualifying record of 151.847 mph. Although not the case in every form of auto racing, the track record has rarely, if ever, been broken during the Indianapolis 500.

There, of course, was the issue of oil leaking from Jones’ car, but oil loss was commonplace in those days. Some observers believed Jones’ car was only one of many losing oil during the race. However, two drivers—Sachs and McCluskey—blamed their spins on Jones’ oil. At one point, it appeared that Chief Steward Harlan Fengler was about to have the starter black-flag Jones, but Agajanian was able to convince him that the car was no longer dropping oil. It is also important to note that when Jones’ car was losing oil, it leaked onto his left rear tire before reaching the track. Jones (as well as most of the other drivers) managed to complete the race without spinning and in fact recorded one of his fastest laps of the day on Lap 199. A post-race check by USAC officials also revealed that Jones had not lost as much oil as many had believed. According to a report in the Floyd Clymer Indianapolis 500 Yearbook, the officials concluded that there was “not enough oil used or lost to be a hazard.” And perhaps even more telling was an observation by Benson Ford in Eddie Sachs: The Clown Prince Of Racing. Ford commented to Fengler: “We were delighted by the outcome of the race and I believe that is the finest decision you could have made.” In the same book, even Colin Chapman conceded: “It would have been a shame to have called Jones in.” Hard to dispute Jones’ win with those two endorsements.

Averaging a race-record 143.137 mph, Jones finished first by a 33.8-second margin (the biggest since 1955) over Clark, who easily now had the best race result for a rear-engine car.

Foyt, the 1961 winner, failed to lead a lap, but finished third with defending winner Ward fourth and Branson coming home fifth. McElreath finished sixth for the second consecutive year with Gurney seventh in the other Lotus-Ford, Hulse in eighth, Miller ninth and Dick Rathmann rounding out the top 10. One sure sign of progress in the so-called revolution was the fact that three of the top 10 finishers had their engines behind the drivers.

For the victory, Jones earned a record $148,513 in prize money out of a total purse of $494,030, also a record. Clark, whose award of $56,238 was considerably higher than the money he would earn in Formula One racing, also garnered the “Rookie of the Year Award” for his impressive first-year performance, even more impressive considering he had never competed on an oval track. At the Victory Banquet, Johnny Boyd offered his view of oil controversy. In Eddie Sachs: The Clown Prince Of Racing, Boyd said to Jones, “You’re a champion and you didn’t need any help to win this race.”

With some luck, Jones could have won the 1961 race and had he not gotten a bad break with his brakes in 1962, he would have walked that race to Victory Lane. Now he had done it, but even with all the hoopla during the post-race victory celebration for the Indianapolis 500, it took some time for it to sink in.

In Bones Bourcier’s As a Matter of Fact I Am Parnelli Jones, the newly crowned winner recalled: “In the immediate aftermath, I didn’t listen to what anybody said about the oil or about the black flag, or about Aggie and Fengler. I didn’t care. We celebrated for a while in the garage because a lot of friends kept stopping by and so did several drivers and mechanics. I don’t recall what we did after that; I’m sure we had dinner and I’m sure we celebrated some more.

“I was staying in a rented house and it was late, probably about 2 am when I got to bed. I fell into a deep sleep where when you wake you feel like you just came out of a dream. And that’s exactly what happened: I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night and for a minute, I thought maybe the whole race had been a dream. I ran to the bathroom and stared at the mirror. Yes, I was really standing there and I had really won the Indianapolis 500.”

Of course, the Jones oil controversy continued to make headlines. After being confronted by Sachs in the IMS Motel lobby the day after the race, an argument ensued and ended with Jones decking Sachs. The man nicknamed “The Clown Prince of Auto Racing” later posed for photographers with a small black flag in his mouth. Sachs would later be fined for disparaging remarks made about the USAC officiating.

Wondering what to make of the potential stream of European teams and drivers wanting to convert Indy-car racing to rear-engine designs, many of the Indy-car community dubbed the small lightweights “funny cars.” Not surprisingly, the rear-engine contingent responded by dubbing the much larger, more powerful Indy 500 roadsters as “dinosaurs.” All name-calling aside, the previous three years of rear-engine cars had led to much speculation about the future. But now it was very clear. The rear-engine cars were here to stay—and they WERE the future.