The STP team was astonishingly unlucky. Not only did they have cars in successive years lay down and die when victory seemed certain, in 1968 they lost two contracted drivers to fatal crashes before the month of May (Jim Clark and Mike Spence).
Jones was accused of "sandbagging" when he qualified 6th, but the STP team always practiced under race conditions, with brim-full fuel tanks, as opposed to everyone else only using enough fuel for a few laps and often adding nitro to boost their speeds. Jones set a lap speed record early in the race with nearly a full load of fuel that stood for several years.
Indy fans of the time were downright reactionary when it came to innovation, and most fans hated the turbine car, just as many had hated the rear-engine cars when they first became competitive. And other car owners were apoplectic. After two near-misses for the turbines, the sanctioning body gave fans and car owners what they wanted by creating rules which rendered the turbine cars uncompetitive.
Not really surprised Graham Hill was so positive about Granitelli's Paxton Turbine..he had only recently run two Le Mans in the Rover BRM turbine and finished in both!
In ’67, when Foyt kept whining “It’s just a damn ol’ airplane!” I hope someone asked him if that meant that an internal combustion powered airplane was actually a car. And regarding the comment below about Unser outrunning the turbines because Jones wasn’t in the race, the restrictions USAC slapped on the air intake (in violation of its own rules that any design was to be allowed to exist for 3 years before any change was required) drastically reduced the horsepower of the Lotus turbines compared to #40’s, which was a big reason why Jones wouldn’t drive one.
Introducing hydrogen into the combustion chamber Lowers the flashpoint & gives a more complete burn of the Primary fuel... be it kerosene, gasoline or crude oil.(see videos per Roy McAlister ) P.S. He shows how & why the engine runs cooler with hydrogen ;)
JBofBrisbane The dark "V" shaped area above the number 40 on the hood is the air intake opening. It seems small for the amount of air the turbine might be required to use. I attended this race and the turbine sound was quite amazing, so different from any thing before it or since. The NOVI supercharged engine also had an amazing sound to it.
Why do they talk about bearings, and not the fact that they tried to kill the guy (drove him straight off the track earlier), I understand why he got the hell out of Indy. If you threaten the whole industry of ford or other big ones, making the teams go to airspace for their engines, "accidents" will happen... Turbines are superior - the weak link is the rest of the drivetrain, piston engines at 20.000rpm is just not durable, still because of stupid economic reasons, this is the way they want to go today. Turbines are gone from F1 in these days the challengers are in formula E and super capacitors/ultra light battery tech. Electric motor 4WD will outrun the gas engines in the future.
A.J. Foyt said the turbine car had "twice the horsepower" and they were using kerosene. what if they were using Jet fuel? Maybe it would beat today's cars!
