1975 Indianapolis 500

Taking advantage of ESPN Classic's Indy 500 week of brodcasts, here's a classic for ya. One of the more memorable 500s ever. Enjoy!

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• motor
• speedway
• cart
• irl
• indycar
• indycars
• car
• cars
• tom
• sneva
• flip
• rain
• bobby
• unser

[cjs3872]

@brdtrk

Here's an interesting point about Billy Vukovich driving away from his spin. Doing so and finishing the race actually gained him two positions in the finishing order. When he spun out, he was running in eighth place, but being able to cross the finish line actually moved him ahead of Bill Puterbaugh and George Snider and into sixth place. In fact, the fourth, sixth, seventh, and eighth place cars all spun out in that deluge, and only Vuky actually finished under his own power.

[RRaquello]

@Zoomer30

We were driving thru Indiana once on a nice sunny day. Within two minutes it turned black as night and we were being pelted by rain, then hailstones and the car being blown all over the road. It lasted about a half hour & I bet 2 inches of rain fell in that time. After that half hour, it was bright and sunny again. I'm from NY and we have our share of bad storms, but I never saw nothing like that. I thought, "man, this must be what turns into a tornado".

[brdtrk]

"...and he's driving it away!!" God Bless Jackie Stewart!!

[VWatch07]

@HollywoodSheen Aw, come on, don't you know that now they have to hold the three-abreast rows only until after Turn 3? From this point on, it's Green Flag already.

[LB1973]

@Zoomer30 umm Malaysian GP couple of years ago, but even if you go back to when Stewart was racing Silverstone 1973 leaps to mind

[cjs3872]

As you can see late in the video (and the race), when Wally Dallenbach burned a piston, that set off perhaps the wildest final 13 laps in the history of the event. You not only had Dallenbach's problem, but Gary Bettenhausen breaking a suspension piece, Tom Bigelow dropping out, a fire breaking out in Dick Simon's pit, Bobby Unser passing A.J. Foyt under caution, and of course, the race-ending monsoon.

[cjs3872]

@altfactor

Not to mention Economaki's own facial injury, which occurred either late in the race, or actually in victory lane.

[Zoomer30]

Wonder what Jackie thought of that "thunderrain". Must have been a shock to so it go from nothing to just an absolute deluge in a matter of seconds, you don't see that on the F1 Circuit (you see rain but not that just sudden downpour like that)

[Zoomer30]

Anyone else terrified seeing those cars scream it the pits at full speed :)

You could tell it was gonna storm, just kept getting darker the whole race.

[indyblimp]

Oops. I meant "annually SING" the song. :-)