These pics bring back a lot of memories for me. First, the Indy cars raced at the Dayton Speedway (OH) once a year back in the 50's. It was very exciting to see the speed of these on a 1/2 mile high banked track. Very fast with the drivers head and shoulders above the body of the car. A simple rollover could be fatal. The Sprint cars were slightly smaller and slower than the Indy cars and we saw many a serious injuries and a few deaths in them. It is really great the advancements they have made in driver safety, and the races are still just as exciting.
In the 60's I lived in Indianapolis for a few years, but never made it to a race, but went to many practice sessions and was priviledged to see Jimmy Clark drive. He was breaking in an engine running around the center of the track, out of the groove, doing 150 mph while that pole speed that year was in the 160's. What a great time for open wheel cars.
As a lifetime car enthusiast, I find it very interesting to thoroughly look over old race cars on display when attending professional motorsports events. It's fun to see the motor and chassis arrangements from back-in-the-day. The display plaques usually give a nice summary and brief history. I recognize many of the cars, but can't identify them by name.
I also agree that providing more history and background on these vehicles would be interesting. And I am certain that most of the owners could provide a whole lot of words, far more than this blog is intended to support. So there are undoubtedly major logisic ocstacles to implementing that suggestion.
About race car safety: If you want safety, stay at home on your couch and read a dull book!
(at this point I deleted a major rant about safety)
For some reason this reminded me. Does anyone remember when taking a drive was ok. Like on nice sunday just go take a drive. Not thinking...we can't afford a sunday drive! Damn.
Very interesting presentation Sylvie. Were you that lucky person who got to out there and see these cars live? It's really quite amazing the technology that was developed with a slide rule.
The first thing I think about when viewing these beauties is how far safety has come on the cars, pits, and track. You had to be a brave soul to drive these things at top speed!
Yes, these DN blog slideshow are always so tantalizing, and ultimately so disappointing, since they are tiny pictures that you can't get big versions of, and they come with no supporting data at all. There has to be a better way to put these pictures together for engineering minds, who typically want to know more, more, more.
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