Editor’s Note: In a nod to our 90 years of history, each week SPEED SPORT will look back at the top stories from 15, 30 and 60 years ago as told in the pages of National Speed Sport News.
15 Years Ago — 2009
News: With an eye toward the future, officials representing the Indy Racing League unveiled the Road to Indy driver development ladder program during the Performance Racing Industry Trade Show.
The program, which is designed to give drivers and teams an advancement system through the open-wheel ranks, will start with the newly revived U.S. F2000 National Championship Series, followed by the Star Mazda Championship and Firestone Indy Lights.
The eventual goal, of course, is to develop future stars for the IZOD IndyCar Series.
“In creating the Road to Indy; we are trying to bridge the gap between the premier open-wheel racing divisions and the entry level open-wheel series by creating a clear career path for aspiring drivers,” said Brian Barnhart, the president of competition and racing operations for the Indy Racing League.
“With the Road to Indy, a driver has the opportunity to hone his professional racing skills at an early stage of his or her career and has a chance to build upon those skills in a professional environment while driving similar-style open-wheel racing vehicles on similar tracks at every step,” Barnhart added.
Roger Bailey, executive director of the Firestone Indy Lights, said the creation of the Road to Indy program will help fill a developmental void created when Champ Car merged with the IndyCar Series in2008.
“The unification of the two main series created a huge void in the steps below IndyCar as we know it today,” Bailey said. “In the past, 15-year-olds would look at their career and say, ‘Well I can go to Europe or I can go to NASCAR.’ In the end it didn’t matter where they went, the short story is that once they’d gone, we’d lost them.”
Winners: Once again the IndyCar Series championship came down to the last race of the year, and a fuel mileage gamble gave Dario Franchitti his fifth victory of the season and his second series title by a mere 11 points over Target Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Scott Dixon.
It was the third time in series history teammates finished first and second in the final standings.
Together Franchitti and Dixon won 10 of the 17 races with Franchitti, who previously won the title in 2007, becoming the third driver (Dixon and Sam Hornish Jr.) to win multiple IndyCar Series championships.
Returning to the series after a year away as he tried his hand at stock-car racing, Franchitti led the series with 15 top-10 finishes in 17 events.
30 Years Ago — 1994
News: Toyota Motor Sales, Inc. finally formally announced it will enter Indy car racing as an engine supplier in late 1995 or early 1996.
There is a kicker, however.
“Toyota plans to enter the PPG Indy Car World Series when our engine reaches satisfactory performance and reliability levels and all other elements are in place,” said TMS Group Vice President of External Affairs Jim Olsen.
This approach is almost the exact opposite of Honda’s entry into the Indy car series last season. Honda developed its engine for a year prior to entering the series and debuted at the Surfers Paradise race early this year.
“We’re extremely pleased with the progress of our research and development program,” Olsen said. “Based on the information Toyota has been able to gather during the past 11 months, we believe that it’s appropriate to continue preparing for a competitive race program.”
The AAR team has tested extensively this year with drivers Juan Manuel Fangio and P.J. Jones in a Lola chassis powered by a V-8 engine built by John Judd of Britain. It is expected the 2.65-liter Toyota powerplant will be initially tested in the team’s Lola until the first new purpose-built AAR
Eagle is completed.
Dan Gurney, principal of All American Racers, Inc. and one of Championship Auto Racing Teams’s founding fathers, will continue as Toyota’s research and development team. Gurney left Friday for Japan to continue discussions on the project.
Winners: The Formula One year was unforgettable but, sadly, for all the wrong reasons. It started with an anticipated season-long battle between Michael Schumacher in his Mild Seven Benetton Ford and Ayrton Senna in his Rothmans Williams Renault, but it quickly turned into a season of tragedy, controversy, sudden rule changes, questionable officiating, bickering and politics.
Above all, the Grand Prix season will be remembered for May 1-the day Ayrton Senna lost his life at Imola. That tragedy happened just 1 day after Roland Ratzenberger died after crashing at 180 mph. The fatalities-the first during a GP weekend since 1980-shook the F-1 world and served as the catalyst for immediate and long-term changes to the sport.
After 6 years with McLaren, Senna had switched to Team Williams. Yet it would be Schumacher and Benetton that ruled the first race and most of the season. Ironically, Senna would never finish a race In the Wllllams.
Senna’s teammate Damon Hill took up the gauntlet and, aided by Benetton’s troubles later in the season, managed to take the championship down to the season finale in Australia. For the third time in 6 years, a crash between the championship contenders decided the title as Schumacher and Hill dueled until they collided.
Schumacher won the crown by 1 point over Hill and became the first German to win the modern F -1 world championship.
Assisted by the returning Nigel Mansell as well as rookie David Coulthard, Williams Renault beat Benetton Ford for the constructors championship. Still, this was the first time since 1983 (when Nelson Piquet won in a Brabham) that a McLaren or Williams driver has failed to win the title.
60 Years Ago— 1964
News: Definitions for engines to be used in cars racing on the 1965 NASCAR Grand National Circuit were mailed to all owners by the stock car sanctioning body last week.
The permissible work, by make engine, was stipulated and internal modifications shown. A minimum weight of 3,990 pounds was announced. The car must meet the weight figure with gas, oil and water, ready to race, but without driver.
Hemi and Hi-Rise engines were specifically outlawed but no mention was made of wheelbase minimums. The original announcement of the 1965 rules stipulated that a 119″ wheelbase would be the minimum permissible on the four super-speedways or NASCAR, with 116″ wheelbase cars permitted on the shorter tracks and road courses.
It had been rumored that in order to induce Chrysler back into the NASCAR fold, the wheelbase rules would be changed to permit the 116″ cars in the prestige speedway races.
When NASCAR announced that the Chrysler Corp. hemi-head engine the Ford Hi-Rise engines would no longer be allowed, the Chrysler Corp. announced their withdrawal from NASCAR’s 1965 program.
The bulletin stated that 1965 cars would be allowed in the 500-mlle road race at Riverside, Calif., on Jan. 17th and at the Daytona 500 and preliminary races on Feb. 12 and 14.
Winners: Dodging numerous spinouts and crashes, Nick Thomas raced his claiming stock car into the winner’s circle in the 50-lap Race of Champions Figure-8 stock car racing program at California’s Ascot Park Speedway.
Thomas raced his claimer into the lead on the 26th lap and led the balance of the race finishing well ahead of second-place Ed Fero. Art Mulford finished third, trailed across the line by Ron Carmen and Jim Penny.
It was the final race of the season at Ascot.