INDIANAPOLIS — The best part of any Indianapolis 500 is the history that’s walking around the joint.
Why, look: It’s Johnny Rutherford, talking with Bobby Unser. There’s A.J. Foyt’s golf cart, slowing down so A.J. can shake hands with Parnelli Jones. And that slow-moving cluster of fans is a signal that, in the center of the scrum, Mario Andretti is signing autographs.
This month I look forward to seeing all of those legends and to seeing four more who won’t be there.
One of the delights of Mays gone by was catching a glimpse of George Bignotti, the storied chief mechanic who played a role in seven Indy victories: 1961 and ’64 with Foyt, ’66 with Graham Hill, 1970 and ’71 with Al Unser, 1973 with Gordon Johncock and 1983 with Tom Sneva.
That said, spotting Bignotti was not easy. In his later years, he was quiet and unassuming, almost blending into the crowd. But if you did happen to see him, you’d find it hard to look away.
What intrigued me about Bignotti was that his curiosity remained bright. Even in his 80s, you’d catch him eyeballing cars as they were towed past him. I always knew that even when we were both looking at the same car, I was not seeing what George Bignotti saw. Genius has its own lens.
Now, there was nothing unassuming about Smokey Yunick, and certainly nothing quiet. Depending on the weather, he’d be wearing either his trademark white work uniform — “Smokey’s: Best Damn Garage in Town” — or a charcoal-gray duster, the kind of coat only he and Wyatt Earp could pull off. The outfit was completed by his ancient wide-brimmed hat, its sides turned up.
Years of races and dyno pulls had blasted away Smokey’s hearing, which made it difficult for him to hear others. But because he had no grasp of his own volume, no one in Gasoline Alley had any problem hearing Smokey.
You could eavesdrop from 50 feet away and get his colorful, profane opinions on, well, everything. Lucky fans could brag that they’d gotten the scoop from Smokey himself, even though they’d never met the man.
As an Indianapolis mechanic, Smokey’s imagination was both a blessing and a curse. Unlike Bignotti, who endlessly refined the tried and true, Smokey’s brain would not let him stop tinkering. To hell with refining the ideas of others; Yunick rarely bothered to refine his own.
He’d show up in May with these oddball creations, and their frequent troubles increasingly left him to employ journeymen drivers rather than superstars. He went to victory lane after just one 500, the 1960 edition captured by Jim Rathmann. But Smokey was so outraged at being labeled merely the winning team’s co-chief mechanic (with Chickie Hirashima) that he hated discussing his greatest day at the speedway.
Andy Granatelli, on the other hand, could talk forever about his own greatest day at Indianapolis. That was May 30, 1969, when the STP president and master marketer finally got to see one of his cars take the checkered flag first.
Mario Andretti was its driver, and the celebratory kiss that Granatelli planted on Andretti’s right cheek remains one of the 500’s indelible images.
But Granatelli may be better known for losing the 500 than for winning it. His quixotic early-’60s attempts to win with the roaring Novi are part of speedway folklore, as are his 1967-’68 heartbreaks with turbine-powered cars.
Still, his fingerprints are all over the record books. He gave Bobby Unser his rookie ride in 1963 and sponsored Gordon Johncock’s winning car in 1982. And he was a shameless self-promoter; sure, dressing his crew in “STP pajama” uniforms embarrassed the mechanics, but it guaranteed his company logo would grace every newspaper in the country.
Andy loved the speedway, and it loved him back, even if that too seldom showed on race day.
If Granatelli had a spiritual peer as a car owner, it was Joshua James “J.C.” Agajanian. From his first 500 in 1948, when he had Johnny Mantz as his driver, Aggie’s No. 98 always had top talent in its seat: Walt Faulkner, Tony Bettenhausen, Chuck Stevenson, Duane Carter and Johnnie Parsons all drove for him. But he’ll forever be aligned with youthful Troy Ruttman, who won for Agajanian in 1952, and Parnelli Jones, the ’63 winner.
Aggie was a flamboyant dresser — sharkskin suits, Stetson hats — and at the track he wanted to be close to the action. On one occasion that got him in trouble, and on another it nearly killed him. In 1964, a pit-stop explosion blew the filler-cap assembly from Parnelli’s roadster right past Agajanian’s head.
And after the ’65 race, officials fined him $50 for sitting atop the team’s fueling rig. Aggie jokingly groused that the fine was excessive, because not even the most expensive race ticket cost that much.
It’s a strange thing: I can’t say I knew Bignotti, Yunick or Granatelli very well, and I never got to meet Agajanian, yet every May they feel like family. All four have been gone for a while; Granatelli and Bignotti passed away in 2013, Smokey shuffled off in 2001, and Aggie died way back in 1984. No matter. I’ll be seeing them in Gasoline Alley for years to come.
Some tracks and sanctioning bodies make a big deal out of issuing lifetime credentials. Reach the top at Indianapolis, and your pass is eternal.