LITMIR.BIZ

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based on previous day. Car now low on fuel. Hitch car up to quad bike and tow car to ‘Gasoline Alley’ to refuel (we were not allowed to refuel in the pit lane for safety reasons); sit in queue at fuel station. Get car back in pit lane and make the set-up change I had prepared on my list for the day.

      12.20: Go out, full course yellow thrown because a car has broken down and dropped oil before Bobby has done a lap.

      13.10: Finally get out and do four timed lap runs to try to evaluate change. But by now ambient and track temperatures have increased considerably, so we are not sure if it is better or worse. Decide to revert to start-of-day set-up to check; what is known as an A-B-A test.

      13.50: Run again on base set-up.

      So, at a little after 2pm, four hours after the track opened, we have evaluated precisely one change.

      I couldn’t get over just how big Indy 500 was, and not just on the day itself, but the build-up to it as well. The grandstand alone has a capacity of upwards of a quarter of a million, with in-field seating raising the attendance to about 400,000 on race day – making it the most-attended single day of sport anywhere on earth. But even knowing that fact doesn’t quite prepare you for the size. It is huge. Vast. They had a campsite called the Snake Pit, which was rammed for the entire three weeks, and going in there one night was almost as much of an eye-opener as getting lost in the Bronx. Hard rock blasting out. Motorbikes revving. Massive, ZZ Top-looking blokes wandering around with a beer in one hand and a girl in the other. I remember seeing a girl standing on top of a VW camper van advertising blowjobs for $5, and nobody – well, nobody but me – batting an eyelid. I overheard a TV crew interviewing one of the campers, a rather grizzled, lived-in guy in an oily denim jacket. ‘How long have you been coming?’ they asked him.

      ‘I’ve been coming here for the last twenty years; haven’t missed one yet,’ he said proudly.

      ‘Oh, that’s fantastic, and what do you think of it?’

      ‘Well it’s just the best goddamn event in the whole of the USA.’

      ‘What do you think of the cars then?’

      He paused, thinking. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘that’s the damnedest thing. Twenty years, I ain’t seen one yet.’

      He was just there to party.

      Race day was quite something. We had to get up early in order to steal a march on the quarter of a million people also trying to get into the circuit. At 7am a cannon went off to signal the gates at the two opposite ends of the oval opening and punters began flooding in. Watching it, we saw two cars collide as they met in the middle. It was pandemonium.

      Everybody took their seats. I remember our team manager, Steve Horne, tripping over the low wall, falling flat on his face in the pits and earning a standing ovation from the grandstand, a reminder of just how much attention was focused on us. And, of course, with it being one of the biggest sporting events in the world, there was all the American pomp and ceremony that goes with it. Jets flying past, pom-pom girls, the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’.

      That particular year, it looked as though the March 85C was a little quicker than the Lola, which was its nearest rival.

      As the race developed it became a tight battle between the two cars. Mario Andretti in the Lola had the lead but Danny Sullivan in the Penske-run March had a performance advantage.

      Danny got up to second and was on Mario’s tail, but couldn’t find a way to overtake. Finally he tried to get past on the inside, but Mario, being the experienced old fox that he is, wasn’t making it easy.

      The apron is where the banking angle changes, so you get this change in camber of the track, which unbalances the car as it crosses. What Mario did was force Danny down onto the apron, which was aggressive but legitimate. Danny was halfway past Mario when the camber changed and he lost the rear and spun – ending up directly in front of Mario. Mario managed to brake and avoid him, and for a moment you could see Danny spinning in a cloud of tyre smoke with Mario just behind him, no doubt grinning in his helmet.

      But Danny held on. The car didn’t hit anything, and when the spin was complete, he was pointing in the right direction. The engine stalled but Danny put the car in gear, the engine fired and he was able to continue. Later, Danny would say that it was half skill and half ‘dumb luck’ that he was unhurt and able to continue.

      The stewards flew the yellow flag for the pace car while the smoke cleared. Danny continued with heavily flat-spotted tyres, screaming in the radio, ‘I’ve spun, I’ve spun!’ Both drivers came into the pits for a fast tyre change and then went back out. There was a new race order now, but it soon reverted back to Mario in the lead, Danny second. And this time Danny managed a clean overtake to win the race.

      The ‘spin and win’, it’s called. It’s one of the most dramatic moments in IndyCar history and well worth seeking out on YouTube when you have a chance.

CHAPTER 16

      Truesport’s team principal was Steve Horne, a gruff Kiwi who liked to run a tight ship. That was fine, nothing wrong with that – up to a point. The trouble was, his style was very autocratic. For example, after qualifying at Indy, he decided that rather than continue with testing the following week leading up to the race, as is the norm, he would get the cars sent back to the race shop in Columbus for three days of prep back there. A questionable decision, but worse, the first thing Bobby and I knew of it was when we drove into the circuit on the Monday to see the Truesport truck heading out!

      At the same time, Robin Herd brokered a deal for me to join Kraco, another March customer. On the table was an increased development budget, bigger salary and Michael Andretti, the talented son of Mario, as driver. I’d be moving there on the race-engineering side for 1986, while remaining as chief designer on the Indycar at March. What’s more, while Truesports was based in Columbus, Ohio, not the most exciting place to live, Kraco was in LA, which sounded a lot more appealing.

      And so, after two years’ race engineering at Truesports, and having forged a wonderful relationship with Bobby, I decided to bid them a reluctant farewell and join Kraco for the race-engineering side of things.

      I was still pulling double-duty, though, from July flying regularly back to the UK between races to begin research for the 86C.

      Knowing that I would be in charge of design for the 1986 car allowed me to put in place a much more thorough wind tunnel and research programme than had been the case for the 1985 car’s rushed schedule. The chassis was quite a bit narrower and more elegant. But the big step forward was at the rear. By regulation, IndyCars have a single turbo, and it was a big unit. I had the idea of rotating it through 90 degrees, so instead of sitting across the car, it would sit longitudinally along the axis with the exhaust facing forwards rather than backwards. That way we could split the exhaust into two tailpipes, one to the left, one to the right, with each tailpipe looping around in a 180° bend, then transitioning into a fantail that could blow the back end of the diffuser.

      We started developing that in the wind tunnel, using compressed air fed down through the mounting arm of the model, into the model and out through the exhaust, and it looked promising. I then redesigned the rear suspension completely to package it, which wasn’t easy because you now had a longitudinal turbocharger with the exhausts and waste gates all trying to vie for the same space with the rear suspension, particularly the spring/damper units.

      We rearranged the rear dampers so they sat longitudinally beside the gearbox and above the exit from the exhaust. To prevent people from putting the exhausts into the diffuser – a practice that had become commonplace in Formula One during the 1984 season – IndyCar rules stated that the diffuser must not have holes in it. However, the spring/damper units would need a heat shield to prevent them from being burnt by the exhaust gas, so I positioned the units in such a way that the heat shield would be naturally tail up, creating a ‘coanda effect’ downforce-producing extension to the tailpipe. Not legal if considered part of the diffuser, but legal if considered as being there for the primary purpose of protecting

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