“My father was the greatest driver to ever race at Indianapolis,” insists Bill Vukovich Jr., son of the iconic two-time 500 winner and an accomplished Indianapolis competitor in his own right. “If I could’ve won three or four 500s to his two, I still wouldn’t consider myself as good as he was.”
Considering the source, such a declaration might be regarded as simple bias were it not for the fact that the Vukovich legacy remains as strong among fans and racers as it was when Vuky won his second consecutive Indianapolis 500 60 years ago.
A.J. Foyt is an admirer and says that the reason he chose No. 14 for his cars was that it was Vuky’s number. Eddie Cheever, the 1998 Indy winner, has a copy of the often published photo of an exhausted Vuky on his garage workbench following his 1954 win hanging in his office. Penske Racing President Tim Cindric has the same photo.
The late Scott Roembke, the former COO of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, was such a fan that he owned the original doors from Vuky’s Indianapolis garage. And Helio Castroneves, speaking to former Vuky mechanic Jim Travers in the Penske garage on a recent May afternoon, remarked, “Vukovich, of course, everyone knows about Vukovich.”
That respect from racers — some not even born when Vuky died in 1955 — speaks volumes about the impact of his achievements. Such admiration is not ordinarily given lightly.
Vuky’s spectacular Indianapolis record certainly contributes to that high regard. In the four 500s from 1952 through ’55, he led 75 percent of the laps he drove. He won from the pole and from mid-pack. He led all but five laps in his 1953 victory. He won two consecutive 500s and with a slightly different twist of fate could’ve easily won four consecutive. In an era of giants, he stood heads above all others.
Even more, however, than what Vuky accomplished statistically, it was how he went about obtaining his success that commands such awe. With nearly superhuman desire, talent and courage, accompanied by a unique disdain for the media spotlight, Vukovich dominated what’s considered the world’s most demanding race.
There’s no better example of that than his 1954 victory. Vuky was within eight laps of victory in 1952 when his steering failed. He should’ve won that one. If there was a 500 he shouldn’t have won, it was 1954.
“We struggled all month with the damn engine,” recalled Travers, co-chief mechanic with Frank Coon on Vuky’s famed Fuel Injection Special. “We’d done a lot of experimental work on it in the offseason, particularly with injector tuning, and saw as much as 50 extra horsepower on the dyno.
“But when we got to Indianapolis we were way down on power and speed. We were losing as much as 1,000 rpm down the straights. We went through all of our new, trick parts and kept cracking blocks. We even had to have another one shipped in from California.”
It was a precarious situation — more so than what most knew at the time. They didn’t get qualified until the second weekend and then strictly through the force of Vuky’s indomitable will and an aggressive piece of driving.
Vuky described the run as “the sloppiest four laps I’ve ever driven here.” It was good for 19th starting spot.
It wasn’t until after Carburetion Day that Travers and Coon narrowed the problem down to the grooves on the pistons. The pistons were of a new design and hadn’t been machined correctly.
Coon regrooved them by hand the day before the race. Without a chance to test them on the track, Coon remarked that he gave the engine a couple of “whump, whump, whumps” and buttoned it up.
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