by Alex GabbardIt’s been said a thousand times: necessity is the mother of invention. In racing, the need is for speed, and invention and innovation are the keys to going faster and beating the competition. Nowhere is this more true than at the Indianapolis 500.
From the start, Indy has been a hotbed of racing innovation. The early years saw the advancement of engine and chassis design, culminating in Harry Miller’s cars and engines that dominated the ‘20s. In the ‘30s, the Great Depression hit racing budgets hard; Indy produced the “Junk Formula,” and racers responded with a dizzying array of low-buck, home-brew entries. The ‘40s and ‘50s saw the rise of the Offy-powered Indy roadsters, but iconoclasts still brought Novis, diesels, six-wheelers, and other oddities to America’s greatest race to try their hand. Then in the ‘60s, all hell broke loose, with one revolution after another racing around the 2.5-mile Brickyard.
In this book, Alex Gabbard covers the history of innovation and racing experimentation at the Indy 500, from the Miller era through the Junk Formula and the Roadster era, then gives you a year-by-year account of Indy’s wildest decade ever, the 1960s. The transition to rear-engine cars, followed by Ford’s stock-block V-8 challengers, turbo versions of both Fords and Offys, STP’s turbine cars, DOHC Fords, wider tires, engineers, aerodynamics — all combined to produce some incredible racing that changed the face of Indy forever. Profusely illustrated with more than 300 photos (nearly half of them in color), this book is sure to become a classic among Indy racing fans.
