Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Gardner
Considering I was 2 years old back in 1973... It is pretty interesting to see that qualifying times haven't changed that much. Do you remember what the track conditions were like?
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In may of that year conditions were usually not the best. One day I tried to go to Indy for practice from Cincinnati on a little Honda 175cc motorcycle. I made it to the Sunman-Milan exit. and stopped. The wind blew me everywhere but the lane I intendeed to drive. I turned around to go home believing that it was a much better choice than to risk becoming a grease spot on the expressway.
May seemed to be windy most of the entire month. The Indy cars in 1973 still had the huge rear wings that spanned from centerline to centerline of the rear tires. We went to pole day and it was windy and somewhat overcast, something repeated several times that month. There was a snafu to get in the track and they had us reroute to 16th street east of the track right past the vicinity of Gene Whites garage almost a mile away. While inching our way toward turn two practice had already started. Art Pollard who had been quick all month hit the short chute wall and wound up upside down in turn two. By the time we parked our car inside the track Lou Palmer announced Pollard's passing whiched cast a pall on that day. My guess is he caught a gust of wind and with that huge wing he was along for a fateful ride. Conditions didn't improve much much of the month and I'm sure the wind might have been a factor in the Savage race day accident.
As for 1973 short track, what Marv said. There are those who said USAC made a huge mistake and effectively cut the route to Indy. It may have done that but it was no mistake at all. Had this continued it would have changed the course of sprint car racing to eventually being part of a Super V, Formula 2000 or Atlantics series but that's my opinion. Unlike Marv I thought the Rohrig victory at Tri County Speedway was kind of exciting. But it eventually was like listening to a record on the radio you like. Once it hit number one and played 500 time you got sick of it. Once Carl Gelhausen got the old rear engined Huffaker figured out and put super mod driver Tom Sneva in it they couldn't be beat. Then road course racer Jerry Hanson reworked one of his Formula A Lolas to USAC specs and won a feature. USAC didn't make a mistake. the bowed to the wishes of their fans who were tired to the rear engined sprinters. Back in April the rear engined sprint cars were interesting but harmless oddities that had many a driver scratching their heads. The leffler sprinter had a bunch of drivers including Weld, Dickson, JP and I think Ziggy.
But of course the local scene was very good. No Larry and Gary show but we did have what seemed more or less like the Dick and Butch show, at Lawrenceburg at least. I'm sure Butch could elaborate.
Gary Bettenhausen on 4/29. My guess is Roger Penske may have clipped his wings on order to get ready for Indy.