By Paul Dalbey
Note from George: Today we welcome an old friend back to this page, to delve into an interesting topic. There is one disclaimer; I don’t necessarily agree with Paul on couple of these. But the good thing is, I don’t have to agree with him. In fact, disagreeing makes for more interesting dialogue. I appreciate the time and effort Paul put into this. Readers should also be appreciative that they are not being subjected to another video appearance by the both of us. Come back tomorrow for my Indianapolis 500 Preview. – GP
There is a reason the Indianapolis 500 is the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. There is a reason why 300,000 people will stand shoulder-to-shoulder this weekend at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and remember the legacy and the stories of the 109 previous runnings of the Great Race. There is a reason why tickets, traditions, and tales are passed, literally, from generation to generation of family who trace their lineage amongst IMS history back to the very roots of the race in 1911. It’s because the history of the race is celebrated each and every year, woven into the very fabric that makes the event what it is. It isn’t a new race, or a “new tradition” (a term I completely despise), but this weekend’s race stands on the shoulders of the races that have come before it, the men and women who have given their last out of blood and sweat, bones and dollars to win this specific race.
But as with any great moment, the tales about the event have a way of turning into fish tales – to become perhaps slightly exaggerated with the passage of time. As the great Historian Emeritus of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway liked to say, “some stories have a way of growing legs.” So while I love the history of the Indianapolis 500 and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway as much as anyone, I figured it is sometimes good to take a step back and perhaps quell some “facts” that seem to be common knowledge but perhaps aren’t quite exactly as they seem.
The first two factoids have been kicked around for as long as I can remember being interested in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and one of them is so ingrained in IMS vernacular that I don’t even recall ever seeing it questioned. Let’s talk about the track itself.
Exactly how much banking is in the IMS turns?
I think most people on this site know the banking of the turns at IMS is considered flat by today’s standards, which often see 1.5- and 2.0-mile ovals with banking between 14° and 24°, Bristol Motor Speedway at 24°, and Talladega Speedway at a ridiculous 34°. By contrast, the 117-year old turns at IMS are banked at exactly 9 degrees and 12 minutes.
Or are they? Going back to the original drawings from 1909 suggests that number isn’t quite right.
Before anyone comes at me – or more appropriate comes at George since all the comments will go to him – let me reiterate two points here. 1.) There may have been actual engineering surveys completed on the four turns at Indianapolis that would support the 9°-12’ measurement. In fact, I am quite certain the track itself has been surveyed many times over the years both during track repavings and during other points in its history. I do not, however, know if those surveys every confirmed the actual banking of the turns. And 2.) I am not considering the “cap” or “lip” that had increased banking on the outside 10 feet of the curves. That lip added two additional feet of height to the height of the turns but was removed during the process of numerous safety improvements starting in 1935.
WARNING: MATH NERDOM COMING!! The main portion of the four turns at IMS were designed to have exactly 10 feet of rise along the 60-ft width of the track. As the original designers realized that most folks in 21st Century America would quickly dispose of any knowledge of high school geometry as soon as possible, they were kind enough to note that equates to 16-2/3% grade. However, that math doesn’t quite work out correctly as a 10-foot rise (opposite leg for those geometrically inclined) over 60-ft hypotenuse (or actual track length) yields an actual horizontal length of 59.16 feet, or a slope of 16.9031%. Taking that slope into consideration, the actual design banking of the track is not 9°-12’ but rather 9.6° or 9°-36’. Now, how much difference does this “correct” banking make? Over the track width of 60 feet, that equates to a difference of about 0.136 feet, or about 1-5/8 inches. Hardly significant, but I would still love know to where the commonly used “nine degrees twelve minutes” comes from rather than the more accurate “nine degrees thirty-six minutes.”
What about that supposed 3-mile oval?
Now that we have that turn banking dispelled, let’s talk about the track length. I have heard many, many times that Carl Fisher’s original vision for the track would include a three-mile banked oval with a two-mile interior road course, bringing the total track length to five miles. Of course that interior road course was fairly quickly abandoned for another 90 years, but the three-mile oval was to remain. It doesn’t take much to quickly dispel this long-held tradition though.
Original track civil engineer, P.T. Andrews, is said to have met with Fisher early on to explain his vision for the track by cutting a circle into quarters and pushing them to the far corners of the model lot, the full perimeter of that circle representing one mile and each turn being a quarter mile in length. He then connected each turn with straight lines to make the track a full three miles and meeting Fisher’s vision. However, Andrews supposedly pointed out to Fisher that such an arrangement would allow for no room on the outside of the track for grandstands, so the decision was made to move the south connecting short straightaway slightly north and the western long straightway slightly east, thus reducing the track mileage to 2.5 miles and giving room for grandstands on the outside of the track. But that three-mile track was never really a possibility.
The land purchased by Carl Fisher, James Allison, Arthur Newby, and Frank Wheeler in December 1908 was actually four parcels of land, then known as the Pressley Farm. The combination of lots total 320 acres and measured exactly one mile from north to south and exactly one half mile from east to west. The most basic of geometric principles would note that the perimeter of a rectangle measuring one mile long by one half mile wide is exactly three miles. It is simply impossible to suggest that a three-mile track with rounded corners could have ever fit onto the land purchased in 1908.
What is true is that the track, as built, was pushed as far east and as far north as possible. Property records and aerial photographs from the early 20th century clearly show the eastern boundary line of the Speedway property within only a couple feet of the outside wall along the backstretch. Similarly, the north short chute wall sits nearly exactly on the original property line. Measured from the middle of 16th Street, the north chute wall is almost exactly 5,280 feet away. Likewise, the outside of the backstraight wall sits almost exactly 2,640 feet east of the center of Georgetown Road.
Using those points of reference for where the original property lines were in 1908 suggests the front straight was moved east 190 feet and the south chute was moved north 202 feet. Adding 190 feet to both chutes and 202 to both straightaways, the maximum total length the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval ever could have been – assuming the quarter-mile turns were fixed – was 13,984 feet, 2.648 miles.
Just how close WAS Little Al’s win?
I know you’ve had enough of my math, but stick with me for one more interesting fact and then I’ll move on. Let’s talk about the 1992 finish for a moment. Everyone reading this site knows Al Unser, Jr. beat Scott Goodyear by 0.043 seconds in what is still the closest finish in Indianapolis 500 history. But… it’s actually closer than what you’ve been led to believe.
Little Al’s proprietary-designed winning car in 1992 was a Galmer G92, commissioned by Rick Galles and designed by former March engineer Alan Mertens. One of the hallmarks of the G92 was its extremely small and shallow sidepods. In fact, they were so small, there was not even room to fit the standard scoring transponder, so the team had to instead mount it in the nosecone of the car. All other cars in that race, including the stalwart Lola, the Penske PC-21, and the Truesports 92C, ran with transponders in the sidepods.
Ordinarily, this made little difference during CART races of the early 1990s because races were rarely all that close for the win. A margin of victory of less than 10 seconds was considered a real nail biter. Except the 1992 Indianapolis 500 came down to the wire.
With Scott Goodyear crossing the Yard of Bricks with his front tires nearly perfectly in line with Little Al’s rear tires, the actual difference in position between the cars was about 11 feet. In recognizing the difference in transponder locations for each car and thus when the scoring loop for each was tripped, the United States Auto Club (USAC), which then sanctioned the race, determined the actual time difference to be approximately 0.033 seconds. However, USAC never felt it necessary to adjust the box score, and so to this day, the closest margin of victory remains at 0.043 seconds.
They were all Culver bricks, right?
And now I promise I’m done with the math!! But I’m not done talking about the track itself.
It is well known that the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was paved with bricks in fall 1909 after a disastrous (to put it lightly) opening weekend of events in August of that year that saw motorcyclists refuse to return until track conditions improved. To avoid financial ruin and to greatly improve the facilities, Carl Fisher contracted with the Wabash Clay Company of Veedersburg, Indiana, to produce and place enough bricks to cover the entire 2.5-mile oval. It was estimated that over 3.2 million paving blocks would be required to complete the job.
While most references to the bricks at IMS show the classic Culver Block (W.C.C. CO / PAT. MAY 21 1909), not all of the blocks are the famous Culvers. In fact, the Wabash Clay Company is believed to have supplied at least five different models of blocks, including the Veedersburg Block and Wabash Block. Additionally, the Wabash Clay Company also subcontracted orders to the Poston Paving Block Company of Crawfordsville, the Indiana Block Company of Brazil, IN, the Marion Brickworks Company of Marion, IN, and the Terre Haute Vitrified Company. Among those companies, there were at least 13 models of paver blocks.
However, I had someone well connected to the Speedway reach out to me last year when they knew of my quest to acquire samples of all known bricks that make up the original IMS track. During some work performed a few years ago, at least two more manufacturers and models of bricks were identified bringing the total known at this point to 15 different block models. Given that only a very, very small percentage of the original brick surface has ever been reexposed since covered with asphalt, it seems almost unfathomable that more types of bricks will be discovered.
However, it is accurate to say that a vast majority of the bricks found will be the famous Culver bricks so many people know. It is impossible to say exactly how many are Culver, but most people estimate between 80-85% of the original bricks are indeed Culver blocks.
Banned fuels and engines?
As rules have evolved over the years, more times than not they involve reducing the advantage one particular feature has and leveling the field. However, as years go on, that “reducing the advantage” often gets interpreted as the banning of whatever technology is being reined in. Two of the most prominent instances of this happen including the “banning” of gasoline after the tragic 1964 Indianapolis 500 and the “banning” of the Mercedes 500I pushrod engine after the 1994 Indianapolis 500. Neither of these technologies were banned – at least not immediately – but their distinct advantages did more or less render them ineffective going forward.
Regarding gasoline, many people just assume it was indeed banned following the horrific and tragic 1964 crash that resulted in the fatalities of Eddie Sachs and Dave McDonald. While USAC did indeed move to make changes effective for 1965, they did not specifically outlaw the use of gasoline. What they did was require a minimum number of two pit stops for each driver completing the 500 miles. Because gasoline allowed engines to get much better fuel mileage in return for sacrificing horsepower, the mandating of two pits stops for all cars removed main benefit of using gasoline. Methanol power cars, on the other hand, were already making two or three pits stops to finish the race in prior years, so there was little or no effect on those cars. In this way, USAC did not specifically ban gasoline, but by removing the benefit of its increased fuel mileage, the advantage of gasoline was nearly fully mitigated.
Perhaps more controversially, and fresher in the mind of many of today’s long-time IndyCar fans, was the “banning” of the Penske/Ilmor/Mercedes 500I purpose-built pushrod engine that was built in secret and dominated the 1994 Indianapolis 500. If you ask many race fans, you will hear that the engine led to the formation of the IRL and was immediately banned for use in the Indianapolis 500. Neither of those assertions are true.
I wrote about this extensively as part of a larger piece on MoreFrontWing.com many years ago. The reality is that any team could have used this engine for the 1995 race. Or perhaps more accurately, Ilmor could have allowed anyone to use this engine for the 1995 “500.” However, USAC had moved to reduce its advantage following Penske’s dominance in 1994.
The development of the engine has been well covered elsewhere, perhaps nowhere better than in Jade Gurss’s phenomenal book Beast: The Top Secret Penske Ilmor Engine that Shocked the Racing World at the Indy 500, so I need not repeat that entire saga here. What is important to note is that USAC moved to immediately reduce the advantage of the purpose-built pushrod engines by reducing the boost levels from 55 inHg (inches mercury) to 52 inHg. This reduction would have certainly reduced the 500I’s massive horsepower advantage but would have left enough incentive for Ilmor to still have a competitive edge.
However, when USAC got word a couple months later that Ilmor would still very tightly control access to the engine by selecting only a few teams amongst the already select number of teams using the standard 2.65L Ilmor D engine AND charge those customers an additional $1 million just for their Indianapolis-only engine, USAC moved again and really laid the hammer down. USAC, rightly or wrongly, saw this as Ilmor essentially determining who would be able to buy a shot at winning the 500. In response, their technical team moved again and reduced the allowed boost for the second time in three months, this time reducing the allowed boost from 52 inHg to 48 inHg. With this reduction, the purpose-built pushrod engines no longer had an advantage. Given their questionable reliability and the extra expense that would have been required to maintain a Month of May-only engine, Ilmor abandoned the project, and the power Beast engine never ran again.
As a footnote, where were other engine manufacturers who tried to make their pushrod engines work as well. Most notably, Peter Greenfield had a car entered for Johnny Parsons in 1994 with his version of the pushrod engine. He had less success than Roger Penske did and could not get his car fast enough to qualify. Even with the reduced boost, he again fielded a car in 1995, this time for Michael Greenfield, but the boost reduction made the car uncompetitive and the car was never able to find the speed needed to qualify.
