With all the rumor, speculation and semi-informed talk floating around about a possible merger of Champ Car and the Indy Racing League, and with the 91st running of the Indianapolis 500 scheduled for 1 pm on Sunday, we thought it might be fun and/or instructive to set the way-back machine to the last time a "unified" series competed at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. source: champcarworldseries.com That would be May of 1995. It was, to say the least, a very strange month of May. Where to begin? How about with the fact that storm clouds were gathering around the sport. The previous year, Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Tony George announced his intention to start a new "oval-based" open wheel series that, by the time the Champ Car World Series regulars began practicing for the '95 Indy 500, had taken shape as the Indy Racing League and was expected to commence competition the following season. Later, the fact that mighty Marlboro Team Penske somehow failed to qualify for the race emerged as one of salient features of the 79th edition of the Indy 500. Until a set of even stranger events unfolded on race day, the struggles of Al Unser, Jr., Emerson Fittipaldi & Co. to "Make the Show" were (along with the brewing split in open wheel racing) the lead story for the month of May. Hard as it would be to imagine Roger Penske's team struggling to qualify for any Indianapolis 500, it was particularly amazing to see them thrashing in '95 given the fact that Little Al and Emmo had utterly dominated the race the year before. Recall that '94 was the year of the Mercedes Benz 500I V-8, the "Indy special" developed in secret by Mercedes, Ilmor Engineering and Penske to take advantage of United States Auto Club (which sanctioned the Indianapolis 500 way back when) equivalency rules affording stock block/push rod engines 55" of turbo boost as opposed to the 45" allowed for "pure" race engines. Penske and Mercedes-Benz unveiled their program at the last moment, then came to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in May and completely controlled the proceedings. Although Paul Tracy retired early from the race with a broken turbocharger, Fittipaldi and Unser were in a, ummm, league of their own. '89/'91 Indy 500 winner Fittipaldi led most of the way and was trying to apply the coup de gras to his third Indianapolis win when he crashed trying to lap the second-placed Unser. With Fittipaldi out, Unser cruised to his second Indy victory.
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