A special relationship

Dan Gurney was essential to Jim Clark’s victory at Indianapolis in 1965 – and to far more beyond this seismic year in ‘Brickyard’ history
Writer Gordon Kirby

The 10 years from Dan Gurney’s rookie assault in 1962 to his All-American Racers’ Eagles breaking the 200mph lap speed barrier in ’72 would be the apogee of Indycar racing’s role in contemporary US culture, as dramatic increases in downforce, tyre grip and engine power led to performance levels raised beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.

And it was all triggered by Dan inviting Colin Chapman to Indianapolis in 1962.

That year Gurney made his rookie start, in the only rear-engine car in the field, in front of Chapman, whom he’d flown over from London. The Lotus boss could have witnessed the history he himself would later make, had Gurney’s run in Mickey Thompson’s John Crosthwaite-designed, Buick stock block-powered car lasted to the chequer. “If it had run properly I bet we could have won the race,” Dan says. “It was that good. We had a lot of fun and surprised some people with that car.”

He qualified eighth and ran with the leaders until the transmission failed, but the experience convinced him rear engines were the way to go at Indy, just as in Formula 1. Most Indy experts believed Jack Brabham’s run to ninth place in the 1961 Indy 500 in a Cooper F1 car fitted with a stretched 2.6-litre Climax engine was an insignificant event. Gurney was not among them.

His experience in Europe convinced Dan that the best candidate to tackle the USAC establishment was Chapman. “You had to have an inquisitive mind like Colin had. He had an infectious presence. He was a leader and had followers who believed in him, and that included drivers. He made one mistake after another, but you never knew when he would make another seismic breakthrough.

“I could see the Lotus cars had the ability to go quickly because they were light, they were slippery and the basic building blocks were good. The way Chapman knitted them together was a step up on the other guys. I watched from a distance as I was driving for Ferrari, then BRM, then Porsche. Lotus progressed and evolved more rapidly than the other guys. They were light, maybe too light, definitely fragile, but clean and aerodynamically pretty darn good. Colin had thought a lot about drag and had it sussed. There was no downforce yet, but drag-wise they were among the best.”

On successive weekends in mid-summer Gurney won the French GP at Rouen and the non-championship Solitude GP in Germany in a flat-eight Porsche F1 car, and the following weekend Dan and Chapman were in Detroit for a pivotal pitch to Ford Motor Company.

“We had an audience with three key Ford guys, Bill Innis, Bill Gay and Don Frey. Chapman essentially convinced them that there was a chance that with only 350 horsepower Ford could have a car that could win the Indy 500. They had a 289 cu in rocker-arm V8 engine and they said they thought it could make that much power.”

But Ford’s buttoned-down executives weren’t impressed with the supremely confident Chapman. They thought him arrogant and contemptuous of American ways. Thankfully, Dan’s charm and amiability saved the day.

The dominant Offenhauser-powered USAC Championship roadsters remained largely unchanged from the basic precepts laid down before World War II. But the sleepy days of the 1950s at Indianapolis were about to get blown away by the Lotus invasion of what had long been a strictly American preserve.

Chapman’s plan was to mate Ford’s 260 cu in push-rod V8 to a lightweight, aerodynamically clean Lotus chassis and beat the Offy-powered roadsters on weight, handling, reduced drag and fuel consumption. By running the Ford engine on gasoline rather than the alcohol mixtures preferred by the Offy engine men, Chapman calculated a Lotus-Ford could run the 500 miles on one pitstop compared to two or three for the roadsters. “In those days,” Dan adds, “you could practically run any fuel that you wanted, and for qualifying you could run a mixture that was too volatile to go the distance in the race.”

The chassis and running gear of the Indy Lotuses had to be substantially stronger than the company’s successful F1 cars. “Chapman knew this was another step in terms of both power and reliability,” Gurney says. “Even though 350hp wasn’t that much, it was more than F1 cars were making at the time so they knew there was some fragility there. It was also heavier and carried more fuel [than an F1 car], so the loads were higher. Plus sustained turns like those at Indianapolis are hard on wheel bearings and suspension. You’re also talking about a 500-mile race, so that again required more durability at the expense of weight and quickness.”

Dan’s biggest worry with Chapman was his insistence on making his cars as light, or even lighter than seemed possible. “He was a brilliant engineer, but there was a cavalier outlook because if you talked to him about failure he’d say the best car would be one that fell apart as you crossed the finish line. If you’re a race driver, you don’t know if you would survive that.”

Len Terry was assigned by Chapman to do the actual drawing and design work on the Lotus 29 Indy project. Like Chapman, Terry had built his own small sports cars and was an assiduous engineer, but their approaches to life were almost diametrically opposed. Terry and Chapman rarely agreed and Terry would leave Lotus in 1965 to join Dan’s burgeoning new All-American Racers operation in California to design the first Eagle F1 and Indycars.

While the first Lotus Indycars were built, the engines were developed at Ford in Detroit, Gurney testing an aluminium 260 cu in V8 in one of Carroll Shelby’s new Cobra GT cars at Riverside, California. Shelby took it to Daytona in February to race-test the engine, but it gave trouble and was changed for a normal 289 V8 for the race. “We had our share of troubles, but it didn’t deter us,” says Dan. “We were very enthusiastic about pioneering and making this thing happen. It was a lot of fun.”

With his limited rookie experience to draw on, Gurney was the Lotus team leader in coming to grips with the Speedway. “It was a formidable place,” he says. “Each corner was subtly different from the other, but there were places in Europe that were just as fast, like Spa.

“Trying to come to grips with those turns at Indy helped me in Europe. Jimmy and I talked about it. Our feel for the car was almost exactly the same and we were pretty open with each other. He had this God-given talent and he loved doing it. He was quiet, but he loved the fact that he was as good as he was.

“Jimmy was very human. He was game, he was adventuresome and he wasn’t inhibited. He would jump into almost anything, which is something that some of the guys that came along later wouldn’t do. They were afraid, in my opinion, to take a chance at looking bad. But Jimmy wasn’t. He knew he would be able to look good.”

Their time together at Indianapolis cemented a growing bond that had taken shape from regularly racing each other in F1 and sports cars. “Jimmy and I developed a mutual respect that lasted for the rest of our careers. It meant a great deal to me.”

In 1963 they learned together how best to attack the new challenge. “You’re exposing yourself to a fair amount of unknowns, so Jimmy and I were pretty focused,” Dan says. “We were trying to get the most out of the car all the time, and oval racing was new to both of us. We had a lot of respect for it. I know Jimmy did.

“It’s just so different from road racing. You’re up against an evolutionary process that has trained American drivers and designers into the nuances of these various circuits. People harboured their speed secrets and no one expected them to help you.”

Clark and Gurney qualified fifth and 12th in 1963, and Clark finished second to Parnelli Jones in the race with Dan making it home seventh. The following year they ran into tyre trouble after Chapman insisted on running Dunlops rather than the Firestone rubber preferred by Ford. Clark led the race but less than a quarter of the way into the 500 his left rear tyre threw a tread, breaking his car’s rear suspension. Meanwhile, Gurney was never happy with his car and Chapman pulled him into the pits and out of the race after Clark’s tyre problems.

Following the ’64 500 Ford insisted on buying the Type 34s from Lotus and selecting who would drive them in any other USAC races that year. Ford wanted Foyt and Jones in the cars and, sure enough, at Milwaukee in August the pair of USAC superstars were aboard the factory Lotuses. Clark and Dan were busy that weekend at the Austrian GP and Jones won the race after Foyt hit gearbox trouble at the start. The cars appeared once more that year, at Trenton in September: Jones won again while Clark dropped out because of a holed water radiator.

At the end of the year Bobby Marshman crashed his Hopkins Lotus and was badly burned while testing at Phoenix. He succumbed to his injuries seven days later. Eddie Sachs and Dave MacDonald had lost their lives in fires during the opening laps of that year’s 500 and in response USAC made some serious rule changes for 1965. Gasoline was banned in favour of methanol, fuel tank capacity was restricted to 75 gallons, and crushable aviation-type fuel cells specified. Two mandatory pitstops were required for a 500-mile race and pressurised refuelling was banned.

At the beginning of the new year Dan formed his own team, All-American Racers, with backing from Goodyear. Chapman was happy to sell Dan one of the new 1965 full-monocoque Lotus 38 Indycars.

Clark and Bobby Johns drove the new factory 38s on Firestone tyres with Dan in his own AAR entry on Goodyears plus AJ Foyt and Parnelli Jones in the previous year’s Lotus 34s. Foyt took the pole from Clark and Dan so that Lotus swept the front row for the first time. Only six front-engine cars made the field.

Clark went on to score a dominant win leading all but 10 laps, beating Parnelli Jones by almost 2min after Foyt dropped out with transmission failure. Gurney ran third in the opening laps behind Clark and Foyt, fighting an ill-handling car. He was soon passed by Jones, then his timing gears failed, halting him after only 42 laps.

“To some degree we got caught up in an effort to do Lotus one better by running more crossweight in the car to help a ‘loose’ condition instead of putting a bigger bar on the front. It was a nightmare. I couldn’t blame the Lotus guys. It was my own team and we just got outfumbled.”

Gurney raced his 38 in two more races that summer at Milwaukee. He finished third in a 150-miler in August, then dropped out of a 200-mile race due to engine failure. Of course, in 1966 Gurney debuted his own beautiful and very effective Eagle F1 and Indycars. He won the ’67 Belgian GP in his superb Eagle-Weslake V12 and went on to finish second at Indianapolis in ’68 and ’69 and third in ’70, his last start in the 500. Eagles would win the 500 in ’68 and ’75 with Bobby Unser and in ’73 with Gordon Johncock.

Dan looks back on his involvement in the historic Lotus-Ford Indy effort with considerable pride. “I wouldn’t have missed it for anything,” he says with a grin. “You felt like you were making history, and that’s always good.”

“When we got out it was a piece of cake”
Mario Andretti was new to rear engines – and to Indy. Yet in an untested car he nearly made pole…

Mario Andretti started racing Indycar roadsters for Clint Brawner’s Dean Van Lines team in the second half of 1964. But at Indianapolis the following year Brawner rolled out his first rear-engined car, based on a Brabham chassis. Powered by a Ford V8, it was the first rear-engined car Andretti drove.

Back then there were three weeks of practice at Indianapolis, with the track opening on May 1. But the brand new Brawner/Brabham wasn’t ready until the middle of the second week. Pole Day in 1965 fell on May 15, and Mario didn’t run until May 9 when an engine failure cost more time. “I’m a rookie and I’m waiting for my new car,” Mario recalls. “I’ve never sat in it, never driven a rear-engine car. I mean, I was dying. But when we got out there it was a piece of cake.”

First Mario had to complete his rookie test, which he cruised through. That left only two days before Pole Day, yet by the end of that week he was as quick as anyone. “I was lucky because the car was so good. It really didn’t need any serious sorting. The more I learned, the more I enjoyed it.”

Andretti set new one- and four-lap records in his rookie qualifying run, averaging 158.849mph for the four laps. But right away he was beaten by Jim Clark, and then both were beaten by AJ Foyt in a 1964 Lotus-Ford he had bought from Colin Chapman. Before the day was over Dan Gurney made it an all-Lotus front row, knocking Andretti back to the inside of the second row.

“I was 40 horsepower down,” Mario says. “Most people were running 10 per cent nitromethane in their methanol in the races, but I couldn’t get Clint to do that. He was afraid it would burn the engine down. The other guys were running 20 per cent nitro for qualifying. If we had done that, maybe I could have sat on the pole in my first year. Brawner [above right] was always so conservative. He didn’t want to spend the money.”

Mario’s goal in his first 500 was to make the finish. He let the leaders go early on and fell back a few places, but later realised he could run a little quicker and was soon back to fifth behind Clark, Foyt, Gurney and Parnelli Jones. And that was where he ran for the rest of the race. Clark dominated, running away to win easily in his third start at Indianapolis. Foyt and Gurney dropped out with transmission and engine problems respectively, while Jones kept Mario at bay despite running out of fuel as he took the chequered flag.

Brawner tried to get Andretti to go after the fuel-starved Jones in the closing laps but he was too exhausted to try. Their inexperience with the new car had caught up with them. “What killed me in the race was the car getting looser and looser, because it was burning all the fuel from the left side tank first,” Mario says, “So when I was midway through the fuel load the car was bicycling because I had all the weight on the outside.”

At the end of the race Andretti’s hands were badly blistered, and he was completely exhausted. The car’s cockpit was poorly ventilated so that he overheated. “Too bad we didn’t know the beast better, but we still finished third. It was a miracle that thing ran all day with no experience at all.”

But Mario had won his share of $42,500 for finishing third and earned the race’s ‘Rookie of the Year’ award. He was leading the USAC Championship going into round four at Milwaukee the following weekend and scored his first USAC Championship win aboard Brawner’s rear-engine car at Indianapolis Raceway Park in July. He went on to win that year’s USAC title and took the championship again in 1966. A third title would follow in ’69 as well as his first – and inconceivably what would turn out to be only – Indy 500 victory.

A switch of direction
Bobby Johns was making a name in NASCAR when he got a call – fancy being Jim Clark’s team-mate for Indy?

A NASCAR driver at Indy… how come? I saw the track for the first time in 1948 and it just stuck in my mind. My father [called Socrates, but known to all as ‘Shorty’] was into open-wheel racing and competed in Midgets on dirt ovals – but stock cars were all the rage by the time I was old enough to race.

Lotus Powered by Ford in 1965 wasn’t your first experience of Indy… No, I’d driven ‘Smokey’ Yunick’s ‘capsule car’ [the wild Hurst Floor Shifter Special] in 1964. He got a lot of press because of it – some of it favourable – but I was just asked, “Are you nuts?” I replied, “No, eager.” Its chassis was nice, but we had lots of engine problems. Running fast enough to qualify, I got a little bit hot into Turn One. I clamped on the brakes – and bent the pedal. I went in, tail first.

When I returned from my check-up at the clinic, Mickey Thompson asked me to try his car; Masten Gregory had walked away from it. I was pumped and did a blistering lap. I rolled back in and Mickey told the guys to fill it with gasoline – it had fuel tanks all over the place – and that’s when I said, “I can’t do a job for you.” I didn’t like the way it drove. Whenever you got out of the throttle it wanted to spin. Something was wrong with its Posi-traction diff, too, because it was lighting up its inside rear wheel on acceleration. Plus I’d cooked the brakes within nine laps.

I realised that this was not a good long-term situation for me.

Finally, still on the same day – Bubble Day – Lindsey Hopkins offered me a ride in his roadster. I was vibrating with excitement and accepted. But it developed a magneto problem and that was that.

How did the Lotus offer come about? ‘Smokey’ and Colin Chapman’s garages were next to each other [in ’64] and the Lotus boys were interested in our car, so we got to know each other pretty good. I also got on real well with Ford and was driving for its number one NASCAR team, Holman Moody. I was doing OK with them but wasn’t happy.

I was due to drive the Charlotte 600 when I got this call from the blue sky: I was gonna drive for Lotus at Indy.

When John Holman warned me that this wouldn’t be good for my career,

I replied: “Even if I never drive another stock car, I’m going.” I’ve never regretted it. Lotus was aware of my background and must have trusted me. They called me.

What was the Lotus 38 like to drive? Fantastic. So light. We were simulating pitstops when they put the jacks under and bent the front suspension. I must have had my foot on the brake as they lifted because the tyre didn’t roll forward and the strain was in a direction not normally under load. The guys strengthened and brazed it – where would you Brits be without your brazing torches? – and it wasn’t an issue during the race.

What was the team like to work with? Our gearbox guy, an Australian [Jim Smith, who was also Jim Clark’s mechanic], was so funny: his stories, accent, attitude and mannerisms. [Chief mechanic] Dave Lazenby was the only one that I held tightly to, though. He was the man for getting things done, not Chapman. I was a bird dog keen to get all the answers and the mechanics appreciated that.

And what was Jim Clark like as a team-mate? I never really got to know many racing drivers because it caused problems when you had a job to do on the track. But I had a couple of dinners with him and it soon became clear that he was great to spend time with. His conversation tended towards the light side. I knew some drivers so wrapped up in trying to win that they were uncomfortable to be with. Jim was the opposite.

He was far superior to me as an open-wheel driver. When he lapped me I tried to hang on – but we were in different races. It wasn’t just me: he scorched the whole field. But I was on no economy run. The Lotus needed to be run hard and that’s what I attempted to do. I chased Don Branson to the chequer and beat him on the line for seventh place [from 22nd on the grid].

I was either going to pass him or crash trying. I was in way over my head.

What happened after Indy? I’d run well with Holman Moody in the first part of the year, but at Atlanta after Indy I was 3mph slower than before. I was inside the top 10 in the race when the engine exploded and put me in the wall. I coasted in, gas, oil and water pouring out. The team didn’t even lift the hood: “What’s the matter now?” I was as mad as hell. They’d created a situation to get rid of me. And I was glad to go.

In truth, I wanted to be back racing with Dad again. He was a little guy with lots of energy. He loved racing and was always thinking: he designed those clevis pins that keep hoods fastened; he ground his own cams… That’s how we went racing. I have a photo of him from Indy ’65 and his chest is stuck way out. He could not have been prouder.

Tragically, he was murdered in a robbery-gone-wrong in 1970. Students from a nearby school, all on drugs, started shooting the place up. Dad’s business was already taking over my career… He’d established it in 1937, and by now we had a block-and-a-half of warehouses. We had a good thing going. Sure, I got out of racing before I wanted to, but it is what it is.

Is it true that Lotus asked you to return to Indy in 1966? I may have had something from them, a letter perhaps – I lost my memorabilia in the Miami Riots [of 1980] – but nothing was firmed up. Money talks and bullshit walks. With a good sponsor already lined up I had the chance to make an early entry with a couple of established engineers – George Salih [a back-to-back winner in 1957-58] was one of them – with good credentials…

So how did Indy treat you after 1965? The Vollstedt I drove in 1968 was real good. I was hopeful of qualifying it but was the last to run. It was so dark that they called it off.
When I qualified JC Agajanian’s Shrike in 1969, I scraped onto the grid. Only afterwards did Firestone discover a bigger-diameter tyre on its inside wheel. Reversed stagger! It had been trying to turn right all the time. It was something we’d normally check, but it was a late deal and wasn’t our team. During the race a rear coil spring broke and went into the crowd. Then the turbo manifold busted. We lost time in the pits – but finished 10th in a real battle of attrition.

But NASCAR was your bread and butter? Indycar was a once-a-year thing for me; NASCAR was closer to home. I’d raced in it since 1952, and [founder] Bill France Sr was a good friend who helped me a lot when I started out. It was good to be in at ground level. Even when I was drafted in 1953 [for two years at the time of the Korean War] I was still able to race. I had a good knowledge of mechanics and the Commander at Fort Jackson asked if I’d like to be an instructor. I had my own garage, lived off post and had the US Army to help run my car.

And you almost won the 1960 Daytona 500… I was driving Smokey’s Pontiac that ‘Fireball’ Roberts had used to win the 1959 Firecracker 400. I was thrashing along during testing when Smokey called me in; he could tell from the engine note that I wasn’t yet into the secondaries on the four-barrel carb; the throttle’s return spring was so damn strong. I pushed it as hard as I could and the car was going sideways, spinning its wheels, and the cockpit filled with smoke: I ran 149mph; Fireball had done 144. It was a flying machine.

But when I was drafting and pulling 154mph the rear window popped out. The rear of the car lifted off the ground and I spun on the back straightaway. There was no wall and I almost went into Lake Lloyd. We checked: there were tyre marks in the mud.

I’d had a 30-second lead [with eight laps to go] but Junior Johnson was long gone by the time I’d sorted it all out. That was the biggest race I ever lost – and the biggest race he ever won: all those stories about him inventing drafting. But I’ve had a great ride in racing.

I made some decisions that I was not exactly on top of, but that’s how it goes. And I’ve met some great people with heaps of talent. Lotus at Indy was the cream of that crop.

Interview by Paul Fearnley