Oilpressure

Long before the days of You Tube, I started taping races on VHS tapes. In those days, it was considered quite the luxury to go back and re-watch something you had already seen a few days before. Whether it was a program you had set the timer for, or something you knew you wanted to keep indefinitely – the world of the VCR was the cutting edge of technology that quickly went mainstream.

Most know that I am a huge Tennessee Volunteers football fan. In the late 80s, it was still a rarity for the Vols to be on national television. Most games were still only accessible by radio. For the few games that were televised, I liked to tape them. It wasn’t so I could go back 40 years later and watch, but I would get so wrapped up during the live telecast, I would miss a lot that was shown on TV. I would watch the game live on Saturday, then the following Tuesday or Wednesday night – I would go back and watch it in a much more relaxed fashion.

In 1991, I started recording races. The first was the 1991 Indianapolis 500. I found myself watching that race over and over, and it is still one of my all-time go-to races to watch. I started recording a few other races later that season. Including the Michigan 500. That was an excellent race. Like Indianapolis a couple of months earlier, the pole and the race were both won by Rick Mears. I found that re-watching races was a great pastime of mine. I might be doing something around the house, but I would have races going as background noise.

It soon became regular practice to record every single IndyCar race and save them for posterity. I still have a handful of races from 1991. In 1992, I began recording each one, labeling it and storing it on a shelf. To this day, I have a recording of every IndyCar race of the season from 1992 through 1995. If only I had a VCR to play them on.

While the 1991 race is one of my favorite re-watches, the 1995 race is vastly underrated as a race to go back and watch. There was drama, intrigue, suspense, controversy and just about anything else you could want in any given Indianapolis 500.

1995 was the first season of the most recent tire war between Firestone and Goodyear. Since the 1975 season, Goodyear had been the sole tire supplier to USAC and then CART. In 1993, Firestone announced their intentions to return to IndyCar racing. They used the entire 1994 season to test, with Scott Pruett driving a new Lola for Patrick racing during race weekends, but not in the races. They were ready for their debut at the beginning of the 1995 season, with Pruett and a handful of other drivers from smaller teams going with the new, but unproven tire. By the end of the 1999 season, Goodyear left open-wheel racing for good.

The 1995 race also featured two distinct chassis – Reynard and Lola. It was the second season for Reynard, who was on its way to becoming the chassis of choice in the series. 1995 would be the first Indianapolis 500 win for the upstart chassis manufacturer. Normally there would have been a third chassis type, but the Penske chassis was absent due to the fact that Marlboro Team Penske failed to qualify their two cars for the race. That race is now thirty years ago, but I still consider that one of the biggest upsets at Indianapolis in my lifetime.

With the absence of Penske’s Emerson Fittipaldi and Al Unser, Jr., along with many notable retirements in a couple of years leading up to 1995; there were only three former winners in the race – Bobby Rahal, Arie Luyendyk and Danny Sullivan. There were also four future winners that would start that race – Jacques Villeneuve, Gil de Ferran, Buddy Lazier and Eddie Cheever.

There were four different engines in the starting lineup; Mercedes-Ilmor D, Ford Cosworth XB, Honda HRH and Menard V-6 (the former Buick engine). Honda made great strides from their debut a year earlier, when Bobby Rahal and Mike Groff both abandoned Honda prior to qualifying in 1994. It was an embarrassing moment for the proud Japanese manufacturer. They came back much stronger in 1995 with Steve Horn’s Tasman Motorsports Group, with drivers Andre Ribeiro and Scott Goodyear.

Ten different drivers led the 1995 race. Eventual winner, Jacques Villeneuve, only led 15 laps but was penalized two laps early in the race for passing the pace car. Mauricio Gugelmin led 59 laps – more than any other driver – and finished sixth. Michael Andretti led the next most, but he slapped the outside wall coming out of Turn Four, while trying to make his way into the pits on Lap 77. He broke his suspension and his day was done. Scott Goodyear was credited with leading 42 laps, but he passed the pace car on a late race re-start while leading. After he ignored the black flag to serve his penalty, USAC stopped scoring his car – even though he was still in front at the end.

The race was marred by a frightening opening lap crash that started in Turn One. Five cars were taken out, including Gil de Ferran, Eddie Cheever and Stan Fox, who caught the worst of it. The Fox car had the front-end sheered away. Fox was unconscious as his legs were flung freely in the open air with the nose no longer there for protection. I was sitting in Turn Four that day, and I did not see the crash take place. There were no video boards in those days. But a couple of the cars were able to limp around back to the pits. I remember seeing de Ferran’s car with severely damaged suspension. From the looks of things, it was apparent the crash was as bad as Tom Carnegie had described it.

Word spread through the stands that day that Fox’s injuries had been fatal. Although that turned out to be false, he faced a long rehab for a brain injury and those that knew him said he was never the same. He lost his life in an automobile accident in Australia five years later.

Villeneuve won in only his second start. It would be his last start until a fairly forgettable start in 2014 that saw him start twenty-seventh and finish fourteenth.

Of course, there was a large dark cloud hanging over The Speedway that month. If no agreements could be worked out, it would be the last year that CART and its stable of top drivers to race in the biggest race in the world. It was in the back of my head, all through the month, but I was certain an agreement would be reached and all of the big-name drivers would return in 1996. It didn’t happen.

Bobby Rahal never raced at Indianapolis again. Neither did Emerson Fittipaldi. By the time Al Unser, Jr. and Michael Andretti returned in 2000 and 2002 respectively, they were well past their prime. Two-time CART champion Alex Zanardi never turned a wheel in the Indianapolis 500. Nor did the great Greg Moore.

On a personal note, 1995 was the first Month of May that I bought bronze badges and attended both qualifying weekends, as well as the race. I had never been to the second weekend of qualifying before. It certainly turned out to be historic, as Marlboro Team Penske failed to make the race. It was especially notable, since they had won the race the year before in dominating fashion.

The 1995 race had it all, yet it is seldom mentioned as even one of the better Indianapolis 500s. It is mostly remembered for Scott Goodyear passing the pace car, and that’s about it. If you have time, go back and watch the race in its entirety. It is one of the more entertaining races from the entire CART era, in my opinion; and is certainly one of the most underrated and underappreciated races in the past forty years. And it happened thirty years ago this month.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on May 6, 2025 at 4:02 am and is filed under Indianapolis 500. 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.