1994 Indy 500 run for the pole by Al Unser Jr. Listen to the roar of the crowd as Al Jr. goes faster and faster with each passing lap! Paul Page, Danny Sullivan and Bobby Unser show how it should be done in the broadcast booth as well!
Just listen to the sound of that engine. The first time Tracy/Unser/Fittipaldi really got it up to full speed in practice, I bet there was more than a few people up and down pit road thinking "Yep, we're screwed."
Loved this era of AOWR, and the engine competition at Indy: The Ford XBs and the normal Ilmors almost screamed The Menards / Buicks emitted a low-pitched, powerful growl The Mercedes 500i, at 10,000rpm produced that gorgeous roar Fabulous.
@@robminmonaca Totally agree. Tony George is the Devil incarnate. A series that could have potentially taken on F1 was destroyed by that moron. Indy Car still suffers today from his selfishness with spec chassis and boring, gutless V6 engines. Lets hope under Penske they can bring back high revving V8's and different chassis manufacturers. The current Dallara chassis looks terrible and severely dated.
THE BEAST!!! God, how I miss the days when the rules allowed for innovations and open interpretations. So glad I was able to enjoy it when it happened. Great memories.
I live in Reading PA Home of Penske Racing for over 30 years they built the engines in total secret next door in the Penske Plaza truck shop in a empty bay on Riverfront Drive man those were great days I miss Penske Racing
We were sitting above the flag tower and he just wasn't on it quick enough.The Mercedes was monstrously strong and when Lap 2 came in me and my Dad just looked at each other knowingly.......I think Al and Emmo WERE sandbagging that year in practice.
Jade Gurss' book about these cars that Penske brought to Indy that year is a fantastic read if you get a chance. Just listen to the sound of that engine. It sounds like a plane ready to liftoff.
This was the last Indy 500 I had an interest in from a technical standpoint. I went to qualifying that year just to see and hear the Ilmor 500i run. It was a unique mechanical creation built to take advantage of the higher boost pressure allowed for pushrod engines. Of course, the Speedway outlawed it for next year's race, but not immediately. Ilmor thought they would be able to run it again in 1995, and had manufactured about 30 new engines before the rules change was made. Wonder if I could find one of those engines and put it in my Camaro?
@@douglasgantt9548 They ran the DOHC Ilmor Mercedes...pushrod engine had nothing to do with it. Apparently they tried a different anti-roll bar configuration which worked at a Phoenix test or something but was liquid dogshit at the Speedway. Later in the year during a test they tried a more traditional configuration and would have easily been near the top of the field.
They were sand bagging that first lap, I don't think he meant to go that slow though. Those Penske cars had so much more power than the rest of the field that year. They were trying not to show just how much more. That car could compete today.
Noting snoring that engine Penske during qualifying, he by far somewhat resembles turbo current Indy. What do you think? Or is close to the IRL engines used between 2001 and 2007?
To think they couldve even went faster with that fantastic (ilmore? Dont know if I spelled it right) and Mercedes engine. They were even sand bagging on pole day! From what I've heard, when they finally opened that engine up they were running almost 250 down the front and back straights
Interesting saga this engine is surrounded by. An incredible technical achievement whose political ripples would grow into the wave that eventually split CART and IndyCar clean in two. Was it worth it, Roger? "Absolutely." - Roger Penske, probably.
Alex Fitzpatrick It did get faster but two years after this they changed the engine rules and slowed the cars down and made them safer after Scott Brayton died.
@@Jam5zW They didn't do it because of Brayton, they had already planned it beforehand, for the second year of the IRL, to try to dumb the cars down and get everyone to drive far more similar, and thus far more similar performance, cars. The advent of 1997 was nothing less than the imposition of socialism on American open-wheel racing.
the Buicks didn't have 1000 horsepower now that the book is out on "The Beast" they finally revealed the dyno numbers, it had 1084 Horsepower as compared to Indy Chevys and Cosworths 750. It was stated in the book Emo once said "I looked down the track after I got out of turn 4 and wasn't looking what "car" i wanted to pass next but what "group" or cars! You can do that when you have 330 horses more!
Never "bent any rules" GM actually lobbyed to have the word "stock block" taken out of the rule book. That was the only change. They ran 209 cubic inches, and 55 inches of boost instead of 45 for the Double Overhead Cam engines
FGM11 that’s exactly what people said about the PC23 in 94, yearning for roadsters, flatbottom cars etc etc. Racing should always be about the cutting edge.
Wrong: It was a V8 with a single camshaft. A loophole in the regulations (of the Indy 500, not the CART series) allowed engines with that layout greater displacement and higher boost. Penske did not cheat, they simply build the best engine allowed under the 1994 Indy 500 regulations.
Cheated? Not hardly. Everything Penske and Ilmor did were 100% within the rules that USAC made. John Menard (who has a net worth nearly 7 times that of Roger Penske) could have easily done the same thing, but Penske beat him and everyone else to it, and did it flawlessly.
They didn't cheat but they screwed themselves for the following year. Because this car had so much power they really didn't have to focus on making it handle and turn like the rest of the teams. As a result, after the rules change forcing them to use a regular engine for the '95 500 they couldn't even qualify a car for the race. They didn't have any development in the chassis. Remember, Penske had its own chassis, unlike the rest of the field with their Lolas. It was sad - they didn't qualify a single car the following year...
