This is when I was really into Indy. I think I have a bunch of these on VHS. Great to see these. Thanks. Makes me feel good because this reminds me of some good days in my life.
Doesn’t get any better than this .... Pure, unadulterated racing, using powerful hard-to -drive beastly machines, that can only be tamed by the most daring and talented gladiators.
It's such a shame that Raul Boesel (or Dick Simon for that matter) never won a CART/Indycar race. I have a model of the Duracell Lola on my desk at work, it was a beautiful livery
senorsoupe Tell me about it, I was watching the 94 Michigan 500 and was absolutely heart broken for Simon & Boesel when their engine blew during the closing laps of the race :( They were so close yet so far towards a victory.
I watched a fair bit of this race yesterday and have only just realised how hectic it was passing the backmarkers, as the speed differential in some cases was crazy. I'd also forgotten just how strong Mansell was here and have only recently appreciated the sheer amount of bad luck he had in 1994. While it's probably true that Nigel probably let his head drop at times, he definitely should have won a couple of races that year and was probably deserving of 4th place in the Standings, rather than his eventual 8th.
Mansell drove really well for a lot of 1994. After mid-season though, he concentrated on his return to F1. You’re right about his chances, at Surfers, he spun three times, at Phoenix, he made a mistake out of the pits - when he was probably the fastest car on the track, at Toronto😊 he had a puncture, Michigan, his throttle stuck when a butterfly in the plenum chamber stuck, (again, he looked totally dominant) and at Vancouver, he dropped from 1st to 9th after a yellow came out at the wrong time for him. He did whine a lot, and refused to test after Toronto, but he drove pretty well (Phoenix, Long Beach, NH and Cleveland for example) and the Penske chassis was massively superior to his Lola. The Lola was a difficult car to set up apparently, it had too fine operating margarine compared to the Penske and the Reynard.
Interesting to hear arnie an European talking about why they have rolling starts on ovals due to safety …… but I’ve always thought 1. Standing starts are fairer and 2 if you’re really worried about safety on ovals I still think it could be sorted out with either better anti stall systems like f1 cars … 3 really good yellow flag systems at the back straight to slow cars coming round to lap cars stuck on grid and/or 4. Most American oval pit lanes are so wide why not have 4 warm up laps (like Indy ) before field comes into pit lane which also has the starting grid lines in it ? Only means pit crew stand behind the wall and obviously no speed limit in pit lane but only for this “starting lap” either way I would have thought due to the high top speeds on ovals that the “gaps” between all the gears would be far wider between them then say f1 cars (when f1 was still 6 gears) which would mean everything else being equal would mean slower acceleration and thus less starting grid crashes then you get in an average f1 race 🤷♂️?
Quite frankly, it was going to be extremely hard to top the previous year's race here, which was arguably the greatest non-500-mile race oval race in AOWR history, but this race almost did. *ALMOST.* Too bad, tho, that Penske had to dominate again and finish 1-2-3.
11:35 race start and first yellow flag 17:14 second green flag 17:33 second yellow flag 20:39 third green flag 20:54 third yellow flag 30:09 fourth green flag was given off-screen 1:00:15 fourth yellow flag 1:03:33 fifth green flag 1:32:36 end of the race
29:30 So, Scott Sharp said the exact same thing that Katherine Legge said over a decade later after her huge crash at Road America (which was even worse than this, and if you don't believe me, I suggest to search for it on here), but yet Derek Daly didn't even comment on Sharp like he did with Legge. Interesting. Anyway, just goes to show you there is a difference between the amateurs and the pros.
I think it was Miller, his primary sponsor, who said that they might pull away in ‘95 if Rahal went with Honda in ‘95. So they went with the Mercedes engine instead, and the Lola chassis. The Honda-Reynard combo was the one to be on from ‘96 onwards, but Miller were a bit short-sighted.
@@leegraves8878 - apparently he did say to Miller that they should stick with Honda in ‘95, but they wouldn’t have it, and as you say, he complained about it, as the Mercedes engine wasn’t the one to have
