![]() “The late ’60s and early ’70s were a really horrific time to be a race-car driver, but I think it all came to a boil in ’73 and it changed everything. I was 12 years old, so it hit a little closer to home. Payment Methods Bank cards icon free download as PNG and ICO. cash-payment-icon - Mario Andretti Racing Experience. “I was a Boy Scout, he was sponsored by the Boy Scouts and I met him at the (Indiana) state fairgrounds the winter before the ’73 race. Money, dollars, Finance, purse, pay icon. “Art Pollard was the first Ind圜ar driver I ever met,” said Tim Baughman, Ind圜ar’s senior director of track safety. Serious injuries now often lead to immediate attention as lessons from that tragic month 50 years ago loom large. Four took the lives of Ind圜ar drivers - three in Indy 500 practice, the last being pole-winner Scott Brayton in May 1996, and the fatal test crash of rising star Tony Renna in October 2003. Seven deaths have occurred on Indy’s 2-5-mile oval in the half-century since that deadly May. Of course, risk always exists when cars are turning laps over 230 mph. “I’d have a lot better legs if the cars were as good back then as they are today,” Johncock said. Better car designs reduced energy inside the cockpit, too, lowering the risk of serious injuries. HANS devices, which stabilized heads and necks of drivers, became mandatory, as did tethered tires to prevent them from flying into the stands and more recently, head-protecting aeroscreens. Ind圜ar introduced the world to traveling safety teams in 1981 and SAFER barriers in 2002. “It was an inflection point for safety,” speedway president Doug Boles said when asked about the impact of 1973.Įventually, cockpits were repositioned to protect the legs and feet of drivers and tubs were made of stronger, safer materials. ![]() (Foyt) and I have lost so many friends in the business.” “I don’t know what the rest of the guys thought, but I thought, ‘Let’s just get this damn thing over, you know, this has not been good,’” Rutherford recalled. The 60-year-old partnered David Brabham and Jan Magnussen in a strong outsider entry, the pair having. And roughly a dozen spectators were burned when Salt Walther’s fuel tanks ruptured as his spinning car destroyed part of the catch fence. 36 years after his professional debut, and six years after he had retired from full-time competition, Andretti got behind the wheel of a Panoz LMP1 Roadster S to take on Le Mans one more time. In the chaos after Savage’s wreck, pit-sign board holder Armando Teran was fatally struck by a safety truck. David Savage died from injuries sustained in a terrifying race-day crash. Rutherford won the pole with a record-breaking, four-lap average speed of 198.413 mph and Johncock wound up with the first of his two Indy wins, but it was a grim across the rest of Gasoline Alley.Īrt Pollard was killed in a pole day crash. INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Johnny Rutherford and Gordon Johncock delivered spectacular results at the 1973 Indianapolis 500 that were overshadowed by perhaps the worst month in the history of the storied race.
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