Rhubarb at Indy

Each asphalt-covered brick at Indianapolis' Motor Speedway is a tombstone for a dream--the kind of dream that makes men recite the words on the Statue of Liberty and sing paeans to the New York Mets. For the Brickyard is the place where the underdog never wins.

The men who drive at Indy are rough hombres. They won their spurs on dirt tracks where only the winner gets to eat, and grease clings to their fingernails. But now their brokers phone regularly, their names are printed in big block letters on the sides of their cars--and they owe it all to a 500-lb. hunk of aluminum, nickel and cast iron that is just as tough as they are: the Meyer-Drake Offenhauser engine. Force-fed by fuel injection, the Offy gulps methanol (wood alcohol) at the rate of one gallon every four miles. It has only two gears--low and high--and four cylinders, but it turns out 100 h.p. for each cylinder, and it can propel a racing car at 180 m.p.h. In 29 years of rattling its pistons in the Indy 500, the Offy has lost only three times; every car that finished the 1962 race had an Offenhauser under its hood.

Tea & Crumpets. Yet the Offy never wants for challengers. Last week a new one showed up--as out of place at Indy as a diamond cutter in a coal mine. Great tea and crumpets, the English! Sitting in the Speedway pits, Colin Chapman's tiny green Lotuses looked like go-karts next to the burly Offies. They weighed only 1,130 Ibs. compared with nearly 1,400 Ibs. for the lightest Offy. Their power plants were Ford Fairlane V-8s--souped up to 376 h.p., but with carburetors, yet--and they got their nourishment from the good old Esso pump. Their drivers: Scotland's Jimmy Clark, 27, and the U.S.'s Dan Gurney, 32, veterans of the European Grand Prix circuit, greenhorns at the Brickyard. Their chances? "It's nice to see them in the race," said two-time winner Rodger Ward nearsightedly.

But ah, the qualifying trials! Jimmy Clark blazed around the 2 1/2-mile Indy oval at 149.7 m.p.h., announced "I'll take it," and scooted back to Europe for some real racing. Trying to crack 150 m.p.h., Dan Gurney plowed into the Speedway wall and demolished his Lotus. Climbing out unhurt, he borrowed a spare and clocked 149 m.p.h. That was enough for Britain's race driver turned reporter, Stirling Moss: he picked the Lotuses to win, began taking bets around the pit area.

Only a few of the Offies were markedly faster. Fastest of all was a roadster owned by J. C. Agajanian, a California garbage man ("Call me a used-food collector"). Driven by Parnelli Jones, 29, the Agajanian Willard Battery Special screamed around the 2 1/2-mile oval at 151.1 m.p.h.--a record, and more than enough to win him the coveted pole position at the start. Obviously, Clark and Gurney could not hope to match Jones for pure speed. But they hoped to keep within striking distance by boring through the turns at 140 m.p.h., pick up precious seconds by making only one pit stop for gas and tires. Jones's heavier Offy, they figured, would burn fuel and rubber faster, probably need three visits to the pits.

Whish! Whish! The starter's flag fluttered, 33 snub-snouted racers gunned past the grandstand--and Jones was in the lead, whirling round and round, averaging a blazing 150 m.p.h. By the 24th lap, he was already lapping stragglers. On the 64th lap, he pulled into the pits, picked up three new tires (the left front tire was still unworn) and a tank of methanol--all in 25.1 sec. But whish! whish!, there went the Lotuses. Short as it was, Jones's pit stop had cost him the lead. After 75 laps, Clark and Gurney were one-two; Parnelli Jones was third, 18 sec. behind. Now, all the Lotuses had to do was hold on. Could they do it?

With the leaders so tightly bunched, a break could win the race, any mistake would surely lose it. On the 93rd lap, Gurney pulled into the Lotus pit for a routine tire change--and lost all chance of victory. A nervous mechanic misplaced his hammer; Colin Chapman finally found it and kicked it over to him. The delay cost Gurney an insurmountable 42.2 sec. Clark fared only slightly better: his one pit stop, on the 95th lap, took 32.3 sec.--and Jones shot back into the lead. Blocked by heavy traffic, Clark was unable to capitalize on Jones's second pit stop; at Lap 150, he trailed by 43 sec. On the 162nd lap, Parnelli pitted for the last time. It was a good one--21.2 sec.--but when he streaked back onto the track, Clark --in the open now and pressing--was only 11 sec. behind. Suddenly, with 25 laps to go, Parnelli ran into trouble: his Offy sprang an oil leak. To conserve his shrinking supply, he eased off the throttle. Now Clark was 5 sec. behind, and 300,000 fans were screaming.

"Just Test Me." Before the race, Chief Steward Harlan Fengler had warned drivers that any car spraying oil would be "black-flagged" instantly. "If you don't believe me," he said, "just test me"--and, sure enough, he banished Jim Hurtubise's leaky Novi on the 101st lap. But now, with Jones's Offy laying a coat of slippery oil all around the track, Fengler seemed not to notice. The flagman did: after Eddie Sachs skidded wildly on Lap 188 and smashed into the retaining wall, he grabbed a black flag and started to wave it at Jones. Fengler rushed up and told him to put it away. That set off an arm-waving argument between Agajanian and Chapman--in full view of everyone. On Lap 195, with third place sewed up, Roger McCluskey hit an oil slick, lost control, and spun out. Once again, for the ninth time in the race, the yellow caution light flashed on--"slow down, hold position, no passing."

It stayed on all the rest of the way. Jimmy Clark, his last chance of catching Parnelli Jones gone, reluctantly obeyed orders. At the checkered flag, Jones was 34 sec. ahead.

"A Little Slippery." "I can't believe it, I can't believe it," mumbled Jones as he climbed out of his car. In winning, he had averaged better than 143 m.p.h. for 500 brutal miles--breaking the 1962 record by nearly 3 m.p.h. But he barely had time for a victory kiss before his competitors were hollering foul. "Don't use my name," said one, "because they'd never let me come back here again. But it was a dirty, cheating victory. There was oil all over that goddam track." "I had to wipe the oil off my goggles every time I came down the straightaway," complained McCluskey, tossing off a tumbler full of booze. "They had the black flag out, but Agajanian talked them out of it." Said Eddie Sachs, who was driving in his seventh 500: "This is the rottenest victory I've ever seen. The Lotus-Fords were fantastic; they should have won easy." Sachs was still so mad next day that he picked a fight with Winner Jones and got black-flagged himself.

The calm men were Lotus Designer Chapman and Driver Clark, who had been forced out of the Grand Prix of Monaco four days before with victory in sight (see Who Won). "Just like Monaco," said Clark. "You know, another moral victory--so near and yet so far."

Except for busting Sachs in the snoot ("He called me a liar") and admitting that the track did seem "a little slippery," Parnelli Jones carefully steered clear of the rhubarb. A balding, broken-nosed Californian who began racing at 18, Jones had something else on his mind: deciding how to spend his share of the $148,513 winner's purse.

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