True story: Jackie's old F1 boss and car designer, Ken Tyrell, always thought of drivers as just another part of his creations, much like a lug nut. In the early 70s he discovered that he could reduce aerodynamic drag by moving the brake rotors inboard into the foot box of the car. The problem was that the rotors, which were only inches from the drivers feet, heated up to a constant red color, turning white hot under hard braking. Ken's first solution was to outfit his drivers with asbestos driving boots but for some reason the drivers whined about it. He finally decided to replace his drivers with "men of far less than average height"! At least he didn't try to cut off the drivers feet at the knees!
This was the pinnacle of American open wheel racing, from the late 80s to the split. Sleek machines powered by glorious engines piloted by charismatic and fast drivers.
LOL, JYS is no poser...I have heard him interviewed many times, he always speaks in a amatter of fact manner, telling the whole story, and to him the trip to the US was part of the story.
Thought Jackie was being very tactful and respectful in his comments here. He quite clearly thought it was an impressive machine but not up to much compared to F1 but didn’t let that cloud his descriptions, a class act
Weird, when it gets into the mid to high rpms, it sounds like it is not turbocharged, and like it is revving very, very high, like 15, 000 rpm. I never noticed that indy cars from this period sounded quite this high pitched. It sounds glorious.
When indy cars looked and sounded the best. I barely remember Jackie Stewart as a kid but knew he was one of the greats. Wish he was racing during the Senna, Mansell, Schumacher era. He was a lot of fun and great to listen to when he was a commentator for the CART racing series around the late eighties.
A big reason for the suspension travel was Mid Ohio itself. All the cars ran without anti rollbars there, as it was always faster. Can't blame the cars for being behind technology just for that reason.
I think thats something most people dont remember is that CART prior to 2000 had cars that were very close to F1 cars in Technology, they costed 10s of millions of dollars to develop, you just didn't see it on the team budget like F1.
@@chumleyk no, that's wrong. The cars were very close up until about 2000 in terms of technology. That's when cart essentially halted development. Indys environment necessitated larger, faster cars and F1, quicker an nimble. F1 made a huge deal about their budgets as it's part of their image, while in Indycar it was always a massive point of contention and for the most part was hidden since actually car development wasnt part of a singular teams expenses, regardless Lola's, Reynard's and Penskes cost tens of millions to develop, along with the engines. I suggest you look up collectors that are lucky enough to own examples of both as they almost always bring up how close in sophistication they both are. It's important to note that CART made significantly more money than F1 in the late 80s and early 90s,so if you think the money wasnt there, you're wrong. The American market is just far superior to anything else. To this day the three most valuable leaves on earth are the NFL ,NBA and MLB in that order.
What a wonderful video - thank you for putting it up! Now daydreaming of JYS driving these cars in the eighties up against Mears, Uncle Emmo, Al Sr. and Sullivan.
The turbo lag (delay) he is talking about is similar to the one that the Brabham (and later other teams) drivers experimented between 1982 ~ 1988 with the 4-cyl BWM engines. Berger and Patrese described the lag being between 1 and 2 seconds, depending on the throttle pressure applied.
I think he probably preferred this car to any other he tested at the time (bar the Williams), a smooth and tractable engine, a spacious cockpit, and a relatively smooth ride with a great deal of suspension travel. When I used to race, I used to prefer watching CART, instead of F1 - but that was the late 90s...
I heard Jackie mention that the single turbocharger on an indycar takes a couple of seconds before it kicks in. This is where I think Kevin Cogan blew the start at the '82 Indy 500 by failing to anticipate the amount of low end torque an indycar turbocharger can produce in a lower gear when he hit the gas.
Watkins Glen was supposed to be his farewell GP drive. But his teammate hit a guard rail, which tore the car in half. The car exploded and burned. The team withdrew. I only saw Jackie testing that weekend. Another sad day. They year before, a German died at the toe of the boot. That one I witnessed. I love hearing Jackie talk!
insomniac Yes. And thanks. It's a good thing I didn't try to spell his name, too! That's one name I remember, but I'd never spell it right. I went to the Glen for 2 GP races, and saw 2 drivers die. (OK, Francois died just before we arrived. And not at a part of the track we would have been at). What horrible times. Thank you, Jackie, and the (few) others that demanded safety. But Helmut - I was at turn 6, opposite the toe. All we really saw was a car going off. I don't think we found out he died until after the race? And I don't remember them stopping the race, but they must have. And it would have taken a long time to remove the car from between the armco rails. Plenty of time to walk down to see what was going on. I have a feeling they just kept on racing! Anyone remember?
@@jondoe8889 You're welcome. Of course I only read about it on the Internet. Apparently they put a blanket over his car with him still in it. No one knew about the accident except the Surtees team who then withdrew their other driver. I suppose the title fight between Emmo, Regazzoni and Scheckter was more important. And it's such a shame those two talented drivers lost their lives at the Glen. Such a beautiful track, but for some reason the organizers didn't properly install the armco barriers which caused two of the most horrific accidents in F1 history. Koinigg's crash in particular was so avoidable. He wasn't even going that fast when he crashed. I often wish I was born earlier to see the golden age of F1 and those beautiful cars and tracks, but at least today people don't get cut in half anymore..
The race was definitely not stopped when Koinigg had his fatal crash. The wreck of his car was covered with a tarpaulin, because he was decapitated by the barrier, I believe. Cevert's car one year before did not explode nor burned, but the poor Frenchman was sliding upside down along the barrier and literally cut in half with his Tyrrell 006. Two of the most horrible letal accidents in F1 history for sure. R.i.P.
This driver 'Jackie Stewart' is one of the greatest open wheelers of all-times. He won three World Titles and when not doing that, had the 1966 Indy 500 in the bag when he lost oil pressure. He then comes back and was running in top three of 67 Indy 500 when mechanical gremlins again, took him out. That is amazing talent folks!
I prefer the looks of that old Indy car to the modern F1 car with 20 wings everywhere. The original Indy Lotus is another classic look. Yes, I know the new F1 cars are incredibly faster.
I thought Indy cars for oval tracks had chassis designed asymmetrical with offset wheel tire combos in order to make it easier to turn left. That would make a miserable road course car, unless of course this wasn't the Indy 500 winning chassis as described, but rather its road course racer counterpart.
Of course, but from what I understood they used to build-up a different chassis for ovals than road courses. I remember reading somewhere that's why we don't see a lot of older IndyCars at vintage road course races because so many of them had a chassis setup for oval circuits. I got the feeling that it's not so easy to convert older chassis from one setup to another.
tscooter22 Some of the older era IndyCars used to be built much like a silver crown sprint car with shorter suspension arms on the left hand side but that was pretty much pre 1960's, the Lotus win in the early sixties pretty much killed the similarities to sprint cars found in IndyCars. By this time in the 80's CART ran on way more road courses than ovals so the chassis were built the same for road course or oval, they were set up asymetrically for Ovals but the chassis work was even and could be set up from ovel to road course and back, then the wings would be changed out from the low downforce oval wings to the high downforce road course wings. The problem is finding all these pieces to switch the car from oval to road course ready. It's not so much that the cars were special built for one or the other, its one thing to find an old chassis, it's another to find the many different sets of wings, spring, and damper sets that went into prepping one car from one to the other. That's why you tend to find that the old ones out there are set up for one or the other.
Sad how unnecessarily complex and heavy the F1 cars are now. Had to put 180 hp electric motors and super soft tires on them to get, only recently mind you, track records.
Not sure how it's funny but I kind of see what you're getting at. The way I see it is both organizations are headed in very different directions. F1 is more of updating the technology for car to go faster. IndyCar is more focused on the racing in the drivers. Luckily though F1 is on the right path for better racing
@@landonbeamer1097 F1 cars are beautiful and absolutely amazing in this day and age of cost cutting, i love watching clips of the races on RU-vid but an entire F1 race is like an elephant tranquilizer, its not in the same stratosphere as Indys racing product.
@@penskepc2374 Someone needs to help Indycar from going borderline bust because of the great racing. Did you go to any races or pay for the TV broadcasts? No.
@@MrMiD.Life.Crisis It sounds like as of now Pocono is back on the schedule but texas is still up in the air. Indycar wants to race at Circuit of the Americas in Austin and the owner of Texas Motor Speedway, Eddie Gossage is kinda a stupid asshole and wants to keep a clause in the contract for their race that doesn't allow other races in the state. Texas is such a huge state that that doesn't make sense as the two tracks are about a four hour drive apart. If Indycar goes to COTA Gossage may lose his race purely out of arrogance and a refusal to sign a new contract.
+C moore It absolutely was designed to turn right. The car he was driving is designed to run on both road and oval, they would just use a low down force aero package on the ovals. He was running the road course configuration in this video (obviously). In fact, 9 out of the 15 races in the 1988 season were at road courses.
+C moore Nobody outside of NASCAR ever really had separate cars for road and oval courses, a simple setup change is quite enough to have a car work well on both
+C moore Nobody outside of NASCAR ever really had separate cars for road and oval courses, a simple setup change is quite enough to have a car work well on both
"Road course" is such an odd term, specifically American. A race track is a race track, and a road is a road. A "road course" if analysed accordingly, would imply a public road temporarily used as a race track, but is instead hi-jacked by the American language as a course that has more than just left-hand corners in it. I twitch a little every time I hear a nonsense Americanism such as this one. Don't even get me started on "Railroads" instead of "Railways".
If you are talking about an american car at an american track, you need to be ready for american words. In the US, there are a lare number of different kinds of race tracks from road courses to dirt tracks, to drag strips. They are all different.
Get Volume Booster. I can barely hear a thing at full volume. Jackie Stewart is a shrimp, as are most F1 drivers. Mansell was the tallest at a litlle over 6' Ford owns a large stake in British Leyland (Jaguar)
rcby525 ended his life when he finally realized his judgements on the world were actually his judgments on himself, and he could escape his self negativity. RIP.
