Twenty-nine years - an ice age in automobile racing -- had passed since Tom Sneva sat in the Penske Racing car that broke the 200 mph barrier at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. source: indycar.com / Dave Lewandowski It seemed like yesterday when the driver and car were recently reunited. The blue and white No. 8 Norton Spirit McLaren/Cosworth had been painstakingly restored and joined other historic Indianapolis 500 cars on display at the Penske Racing Museum in Scottsdale, Ariz. Sneva, a resident of nearby Paradise Valley, was invited by Roger Penske to see the completed work. Memories flooded the 1983 500-Mile Race winner when he stepped over the velvet rope and placed his hand on the steering wheel. It didn't take much prompting by museum curator Pat Hozza for Sneva to slide into the cockpit. "I was surprised I still fit," said Sneva, 58, who is credited with being the first to officially post a lap around the 2.5-mile oval in excess of 200 mph. Gordon Johncock, A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti and Johnny Rutherford managed it unofficially on the recently repaved track, but no one achieved it in qualifications. A sun-baked crowd - the largest next to Race Day - turned out with expectations of hearing Tom Carnegie's booming voice announcing the milestone. "The 200 mph barrier was a big deal that year," said Sneva, who started from the pole and finished second to Foyt in the 1977 race. "A lot of the guys in Happy Hour were running 198s and 199s and picking on 200. But I was doing all my running in the early afternoon because I thought that would be closer to what conditions would be like when we qualified. I was 196 and 197." Sneva thought he had a shot at the pole position - and the lap record - but there were a number of variables. "You weren't sure," he said. "You didn't know what the weather would be the day of qualifying. "I was teammates with Andretti that year and he was running faster but doing it in Happy Hour. Thursday night, Penske decided that we should put Mario's set-up on my car." The modification had unsettling results in practice, which jeopardize not only Sneva's run to 200 mph but his qualifying for the 62nd race.
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