INDIANAPOLIS — More than any other American race track, Indianapolis Motor Speedway marks its milestones.
This coming 500 being the 50th anniversary of the 1972 race, you’re going to hear a lot about Roger Penske and Mark Donohue, and a fair amount about Bobby Unser.
It was in ’72 that Penske scored the first of his 18 victories as a team owner, and it was the only 500 won by his driver, Donohue. That was also the year that Indy cars spouted wings, and speeds soared. Unser, in Dan Gurney’s Eagle, told engine man John Miller to crank up the turbo boost, then broke the qualifying record by a mind-bending 17 mph.
So, yes, hooray for winners Penske and Donohue, and hooray for Unser, the speed king of a speed-crazy era. They were the start of the 1972 Indianapolis 500 and its Golden Anniversary commemorations will note that.
But spare a thought this Memorial Day weekend for those they had to beat. Because the romance of the 500 comes not only from those who conquered the great race; it also springs from the heroic triers who showed up every spring and left unfulfilled.
For every A.J. Foyt, there was a Lloyd Ruby. For every Roger Penske, financing terrific teams that won the 500, there was a Lindsey Hopkins, financing terrific teams that did not.
Donohue drove a brilliant race on May 27, 1972, and it’s fitting that his likeness graces the Borg-Warner trophy. But here I am, thinking about a couple of that day’s coulda-woulda-shoulda drivers, two of the all-time triers.
Gary Bettenhausen, Donohue’s teammate, was new to the Penske operation, but he quickly fit in. At Trenton, the race prior to Indy, he won by an astonishing four laps.
On the afternoon of May 27, it looked like the eldest son of Tony Bettenhausen was going to conquer the track that claimed his father in 1961. He dominated the day, leading 138 laps, unaware that a pinhole leak in his McLaren’s cooling system had turned his engine into a crockpot. After 182 laps, its innards were cooked, and Gary was out.
Bettenhausen’s fate has been well documented — how he was so close to winning Indy for his dad, for Penske and for himself. But there was another guy whose hard luck in that same 500 is too often forgotten.
Mike Mosley had made his bones driving sprint cars. Before his 20th birthday, he was winning in the Morales Tamale Wagon, one of the best West Coast rides, and upon his 1967 arrival in the Midwest he was driving for wizard mechanic A.J. Watson.
Watson campaigned sprinters for fun, but his day job was maintaining Indy cars for the Wilke family’s Leader Card team. High on Mosley’s natural speed, Watson slid him into a Wilke seat.
In his first three seasons, Mike bagged 13 top-five finishes. But, increasingly, Leader Card was being outspent and outpaced. With Penske and McLaren each running two cars, Vel’s/Parnelli Jones Racing running three, and owners like Pat Patrick spending more freely, the price of poker had gone up.
When 1972 dawned, the best car in the Wilke stable was a cigar-shaped ’68 Eagle. Compared to the sleek new Eagles and McLarens, it was downright ugly. Its traditional radiator placement required a gaping hole in its nose, and the big wings Watson hung on it looked out of place.
But who needs pretty when you’ve got a talent like Mosley in the seat?
In the season opener at Phoenix, Mike finished third, trailing only Bobby Unser and Mario Andretti. At Trenton he qualified second and led 37 laps before a piston broke.
Then it was time for Indianapolis. The speedway’s long straightaways were not kind to his blunt Eagle and Mosley qualified 16th. Come race day he marched forward, and as other contenders fell out — Unser, Peter Revson, Johnny Rutherford, Swede Savage — here was Mosley, playing cat-and-mouse with Penske drivers Bettenhausen and Donohue.
On lap 54, Mosley pounced, passing leader Bettenhausen in traffic. It was like Fred Sanford landing a jab to Joe Frazier’s jaw.
But after just three teasing laps up front, a broken hub threw Mosley into the wall exiting turn four. With flames from a fuel fire roasting his legs, he began climbing out of the car at well over 100 mph. He’d just about wriggled free when the car veered back into the wall; somehow, Mosley avoided smacking his head on the concrete.
His burns now screaming, he pulled himself from the cockpit, rode the wreckage like a jockey as it scrubbed off speed and bailed out while the car was still rolling.
Mosley’s accident handed the lead back to Bettenhausen, and, well, you already know how his day turned out.
Gary’s misery was still fresh when he and writer Robin Miller later visited Mosley in the hospital. Miller told me the story a dozen times: how on their way out of the crash house, Bettenhausen said, “If Mike was driving a McLaren, we’d have all been running for second.”
So, yes, remember Donohue this month. Celebrate Penske and all that he has accomplished since 1972. But don’t forget Gary Bettenhausen’s heartbreak, or Mike Mosley’s speed.
What they did at Indianapolis 50 years ago was golden, too.