Oilpressure

Back in the old days, when there was a ton of IndyCar bloggers and we all knew each other – one thing that was never, ever discussed was how much web traffic we all got on our respective sites. There is not a ton of etiquette between bloggers; but to ask a blogger how many daily hits they got was akin to asking them how much money they made or quizzing about the bedroom activities between them and their spouse. You just didn’t do it.

Nowadays, there are so of us left – site traffic and hits are not as important as they used to be. Still, you want to see traffic continue throughout the year just to make it worth your while.

There is not a whole lot of IndyCar news to comment on during this time of year, unless of course you consider yesterday’s bombshell that dropped – that PIRTEK had been named as the Official Hose Supplier for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. A friend texted me yesterday that I should be able to get at least two weeks of content from that news drop.

Traffic to this site is usually at its low-point from mid-November, through the end of the year. Just after New Year’s Day, interest (and site traffic) picks up considerably. Momentum builds from Jan 1 through the end of the Month of May, before it slightly tapers off to more moderate levels through the end of the season. Things start slowing down in October and taper off to the level where we are now.

I have decided that I am going to reward those who come here during the offseason. From time to time, I will drop a few nuggets for those that come here during the holiday doldrums. For those that take part in the annual Oilpressure.com Indianapolis 500 Trivia Contest each May, these nuggets will be questions on the contest next spring. You won’t even have to look for the nugget or wonder if some random tidbit will show up next spring as a question. I’m going to tell you that it is a certain piece of information will be on next May’s contest.

How many times will this happen? I have no idea. Many of the questions that show up each May, have been mentioned in earlier posts. Now I’m just tipping the winter readers off ahead of time. There are thirty-three questions for each contest. I can tell you that I have already started collecting questions for next May. I’ll just do it whenever.

My reason for doing this is two-fold; I want to keep traffic coming here in the offseason and I want to make it more appealing for readers to enter the trivia contest. The number of readers that come here on days that I post in November and December is only about a third of the amount of visitors that come here each day in May. This may not increase the amount of readers I get in the winter months, but I can at least reward the loyal readers that come here each day when there is no racing going on.

I’ve also noticed that fewer people have entered the trivia contest the last couple of years. Some have told me that it’s just too hard. While I like to think that’s what sets it apart, I want people to feel like they have a chance. Perhaps if you jot down each nugget you see over the next few months – that may be enough to put you over the top on next May’s trivia contest.

So here is the first nugget that I can promise will be covered in next May’s trivia contest:

Who was the first woman to drive alone in a race car around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway? What was the date and what was the type of car?

Paula Murphy was born in Ohio in 1928. She is probably best known as a drag racer. Her racing career spanned a twenty-year period from 1956 to 1976. She had a long-standing relationship with STP, and was also longtime personal friends with Andy Granatelli, who befriended her on a number of occasions.

One of those occasions was when he let her drive one of his Novi-powered roadsters at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The date was November 11, 1963 – long before women were allowed in the pits or the garage areas. The pole speed by pole-sitter Parnelli Jones was 151.153 mph. There are no exact lap times posted from Murphy’s laps in the Novi, but it is reported she lapped well in excess of 100 mph. While today’s caution period laps at Indianapolis are not much slower than that, it was a very credible feat for a driver at that time, who had never turned laps at Indianapolis before.

Paula Murphy is still alive today at the age of ninety-three. She was inducted into the Drag Racing Hall of Fame in 2017. She is also the very first woman to drive alone in a race car at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. There’s your nugget for the day.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on November 19, 2021 at 4:03 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.