PENSKE'S WARP ENGINE! The Story of the 500I 'BEAST' 

Penske never gives up. They flat out didn't qualify. Emerson Fittipaldi did have a run fast enough to qualify for the race in one of the Rahal cars, but Roger Penske waved it off because he didn't think it would hold (he was wrong). Penske's thinking was that if Fittipaldi got bumped, there wouldn't be enough time remaining in qualifying to get through the line for another attempt. So he waved off the run and immediately got back in line confident they had figured things out. They had their opportunity in the closing minutes of qualifying, but Fittipaldi wasn't able to duplicate the effort and missed the cut. I know one of the cars Penske tried to qualify was a '94 model, not a '95 model. Whether it was one of the Rahal cars or somebody else's I cannot remember.

I found this very cool myself.

when you consider what sauber wanted for a bottom pack f1 team, penske got the speedway , indycar series , indycar broadcasting , all the rights assets and sposnorships for not much more . bargain .

Setup Scales were incorrect in the garage, all the cars went across those scales, and they all sucked.

So sad they sold. Was such a big deal in my hometown

I thought you meant the Pilatus PC24 for a minute there

@@Thegrizzy321 - And also according to Al Unser Jr. in his biography, Paul Tracy ran a 231 in a 95 car with a 94 floor. He also discovered that no one thought to put a softer front anti-roll bar to free up the front end. Penske was a bit of a mess in 95 and drove into the gutter in 97 thanks to Goodyear tires.

@@F-Man is now I guess, this guy is the modern Shakespeare

850

How about you quit using unnecessary capital letters - “planes” is not a proper noun.

@@F-Man Sorry

Cosworth was never exclusively Ford, Cosworth had history with GM in the 70s... It's basically always been Ilmor vs Cosworth with manufacture badging.

Not sure I entirely believe that - they would have needed good lighting to work to a high standard.

I said it was for a bigger engine in USAC.

@@AidanMillward he's mostly right though...the advantage wasn't in the displacement...it was in the extra boost. For several years the Buick push-rods would smoke qualifying but would have to turn down the boost to even attempt to last 500 miles. Even then, most of them threw a rod long before the end of the race. Penske's challenge wasn't finding the horsepower, it was finding a way to make the engine last 500 miles at maximum boost.

I would like to launch a conspiracy theory that F1 paid Tony George to f-up CART. If that is not it then its just that TG was enough of a douche that when CART sometimes said "no" to him he was the child who takes his baseball and goes home. Now, no one cares about US open-wheel spec-car racing, no one is even sure if they still run the Indy 500, and he is flipping burgers after losing his family half a billion dollars. I would pay to see him on an episode of "This Is Your Life."

@@ElsinoreRacer nah that given fia to much credit. Tony was just an ego has played off his position. There always has been a fight between indy500 and the series.

NASCAR, the true winner of the split, had much more to do with this than Bernie. They also gave Tony a sweetheart rate for their ISC owned tracks for 10 years that made Cup season ticket holders buy IndyCar tickets when they raced at an ISC track. Al Unser Jr. biography that came out a month or two ago pitched the most decent defense of George being scared CART was going to take off and ignore Indy. It still doesn't work because George instagated a Self-Fullfilling Prophecy that made his fear come true.

I was at that race - infield stands, Turn 2 exit. It was zingg zinggzingg zingg WOOM zingg zingg WOOM

Like everything else.

DL is just a click baiter, half his videos are just him making outlandish claims that end up being wrong.

Quali laps are listed by mph... But it is timed just like everyone else.... They just list the average mph rather than the actual lap times because saying "pole position is 225mph" instead of "pole was set with average lap time of 39.429 seconds" is more impressive to someone who doesn't follow racing. It's just to gain attention... Listing off a lap time doesn't show the average non racing fan how incredibly fast those cars were. Most people have no idea what a fast lap time is, but they know that 225mph is REALLY fast. Closest example I can think of for comparison is the "fastest lap in f1 history"... Always at monza of course... But when you heard or read about that record, whether it was Juan Montoya or most recently Lewis setting the new record, they almost invariably listed the average mph of the lap along with the time... Basically it's just more impressive to say Lewis averaged 163.274 mph (or whatever it was) than saying he did a lap time under 1:10 because a random time doesn't mean anything, in and of itself, but 163mph or 225mph is very obviously an incredibly fast car. Anyways yet another good video, and as an American and Indycar fan it's nice to see brits and other nationalities talking about Indycar racing. Indycar has a very rich history and has all the drama and bufoonery as f1 or any other racing series, it's just not as popular worldwide because they don't race internationally. In the 80s and 90s Indycar racing (CART at the time) was gaining in popularity, the cars were almost as fast as f1 cars, and they had international superstar drivers like The Nigel and Mario Andretti... Bernie was VERY concerned about the rising popularity and looked at CART as a direct competitor to f1. Actually - that would be a really cool video Aiden... Look up how Bernie interfered and got stuck into "THE SPLIT" bc he knew that breaking Indycar into 2 bodies would weaken it while f1 was going strong as ever. Bernie and Tony George (founder of the idiotic and terrible IRL) were absolutely in bed together, but Bernie was as cunning and manipulative as ever and he burnt both ends of the candle. He would snuggle up with literally anyone who helped serve the purpose of making f1 bigger and bigger. Bernie was a big supporter of Tony George and repayed Tony by giving him the rights to the USGP to be held at Indianapolis. Because the George family owned the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It all went pretty deep and there was a lot of back stabbing and false promises, as well as bribes and black mail. Everything necessary for a full drama of epic proportions, and the CART/IRL split was a fuck up of major proportion. Indycar still hasn't recovered, but it is definitely getting closer. The Indycar engine regs coming into play soon are going to mean that Indycars have comparable power to f1 cars, and 1,000hp is a realistic number. That includes the hybrid boost, but the cars are about to get MUCH faster, louder, and there are bigger and bigger names coming into Indycar now.

@@csonkaperdido Indy doesn't do "lap times" because speed is the attraction at oval tracks. F1 wouldn't use "lap speed" as a rule, as even the record Monza lap speed isn't impressive when compared (in a vacuum) to the lap speeds of entry-level stock car beaters on a mid-sized oval track. Reading your account of Indy, I wonder what "really" happened to Can Am racing?

@@xxxYYZxxx yep exactly.. That's what I meant about saying "pole position is 200mph" instead of "pole position is 30 - whatever seconds"... Obviously anything that can average over 200 on a closed circuit is an absolute monster of a race car. I beg to differ about the monza vs stock cars though... In my opinion, and you know what they say about opinions and assholes lol... But you gotta remember that 160-ish mph average includes the first chicane, which is taken at literally 30mph... And the 2 Lesmo turns which are definitely quick, but they are not flat out by any means. 4th gear corners, which is equivalent to a 2nd or maybe 3rd gear on any car with a 6 speed rather than the complex 8 speed trannies of the F1 cars. The acceleration those cars are capable of is just astonishing. Stock cars also have banking to help the speed, which is a slightly artificial way to go faster. If Daytona and talladega were not banked at 30+ degrees even Cup cars would struggle to average the speeds of the F1 car at monza. Don't get me wrong - the fact that ANY 3500lb car can turn laps at Charlotte, or Atlanta and average in the 180-190mph range is absolutely awesome - but the banking really jumps the speeds up. As far as the Can Am series goes, it was well before my time. But I am in love with the Porsche 917 and the fact that Porsche managed almost 1500hp from an AIR COOLED, turbo engine is just an engineering feat of unequaled awesomeness. Turbo engines are just massive heat pumps and the fact that they could keep it cool enough to not have detonation problems, and be as reliable as they were in race trim pushing 1100ish hp is just incredible. The McLaren cars with the 600ci big blocks are awesome as well... Not anywhere near the engineering feat of the 917, but still just brutally fast. I saw one of the early 70s McLaren Can Am cars - I believe it was called the M8 or maybe MC8... Something with an 8 in the name I'm pretty sure.. And dude it was TINY! Literally just an engine with a roll cage and a steering box covered by the thinnest, most flimsy fiberglass I'd ever seen. But they were absolutely awesome race cars. My thought is that the oil embargo spelled the end of Can Am... But I could be wrong. They tried multiple times to use the can am name... First with F5000 cars with added bodywork that were absolutely the ugliest racing cars ever... Then in the 90s they tried using the Can Am name again, but they were just World Sports Cars.. Aka Le Mans prototype cars. Close in spirit to Can Am cars which were the original "prototype" cars - but the series was a mess and the name didn't stick because it was 20+ years after the real Can Am series died off and the name was just a marketing gimmick. They were known was WSC cars to everyone and the regulations were called World Sports Car so rebadging them as Can Am was kinda stupid. I wish there was still a "run what you brung" series... But the new FIA regulations for the Hypercar class is really, really interesting and by far the most open set of regulations in any racing series today. Wanna run a twin turbo V8? Go for it... Wanna run a high revving, small displacement 4.2L V8 screamer? Go for it! Wanna run a hybrid that makes 1000hp? GO FOR IT! I am super excited about 2024-onwards, because Le Mans is the greatest race in the world and the cars are about to become the most diverse in the world. I don't care for Nascar bc there's no actual link between the race cars and the road cars they're based on - supposedly. When someone shows me a 5 speed, rear wheel drive, pushrod V8 powered Toyota camry I'll think about changing my mind - but Nascar just doesn't excite me at all. Far, far too many BS gimmicks with the plate racing, the stage racing, and the utterly ridiculous playoff system... I just can't take it seriously. The cars are identical except for the stickers on the front, the engines are identical, and it just doesn't do it for me.

Also one of the most awkward 500’s ever with The Split about to happen

@@WyldStallion-bs9oo al jr. lost it because penske failing to make the 500 flipped a switch in his head where he went into prime tony adams alcoholic mode. he's still not over it. then there was firestone coming back to indycar and dusting all the Goodyear teams and since roger owns a bunch of goodyear distribution centers he was obligated to keep running goodyears. then there's the general problem of the fact that they all of a sudden sucked at building a chassis. they didn't become good again til they gave up and got the reynold/honda package that won 4 straight titles with ganassi and were forced onto the firestones once goodyear quit open wheel racing.

I never said it was. All I said it was an off the shelf engine.

Minardi was bought by Paul Stoddard and became European Minardi. Stoddard then sold the company to Red Bull with the proviso that it remain in Italy or no deal. The team remained Toro Rosso until last year, when it was renamed Alpha Tauri after Red Bull's clothing company. And a loyal cadre of fans who still see them as the underdogs from Faenza

Penske's history with Porsche is far longer than his with Mercedes. Remember the 917 Panzers that basically ended the Can-Am series? That the first IROC cars were 911 Carrera RSes fresh off the production line? Porsche went to Penske to run their LMP2 program, and with the next generation at LeMans they're teaming back up again

@@arthuralford 917+oil crisis=series ded.

And the speed with which your dad left to get milk was still faster than that!

@@F-Man ...even in his work boots!

I wasn’t a maths teacher, I taught music 🤫

Aidan in every other video: excuse my maths, I'm bad with numbers Now this comment.... Are people even watching the videos or just throwing dice to figure out bollocks comments??

@@matzemunz2827 I tend to listen to the main content and filter out the other stuff, but I recall picking up on him being a teacher.

From what i remember from a video i watched before, they used to slow down alot more going into the turns in indy500. The fact that current indycars can run near or at the 230mph average in quali is due to higher cornering speeds and much more advanced aero and tire technology.

In the early seventies, they were running Offy engines with 1000 horsepower on unlimited boost. Which didn't last long because a) the cars were going way too fast for the chassis at the time and b) the engines were blowing up faster than they could be rebuillt. Still, it was an era where drivers like Bobby Unser were gods

The regular Illmor and Ford Cosworth 2.8L Turbo V8s were making about 750 horsepower. CART eventually got to that level of power about 5 years later. Check out the 2001 CART race at Texas Motor Speedway on how brutal those CART beasts were. And IndyCar also gets higher qualifying speeds now because for qualy weekends they give the teams the short oval boost for the engines (625 ish horsepower) before putting them back to super speedway boost (550 ish horsepower).

The very best part of reading the book is I can say I was at Indy during testing for the 1994 race, and I heard the 209's roar.

Also because they all really run the same qualifying line on a track designed for as little breaking as possible, and thus they can't complete the lap that much faster unless they just have a lot more power.

It's a lot easier to say an average of 231.034 instead of pole being 41.02340 and 2nd being 41.02341.

As it clearly has you wound up, I’ll keep it.

No, it was single cam in block, 2 valves per cylinder, sort of a hemi combustion chamber. I'm sure you can find images of it on Google. The pushrods were longer than 2".

​@@andyharman3022not hemi , copy of BMW 2-valve combustion chamber.

Mario and Marco (who bought his dad Michael's house), yes. Michael I believe lives in Indianapolis now...

@@F-Man sorry, typed that out while sitting on the toilet, grammar faux pas.

@@EvanLoxley I know it’s at least those two, they live next to each other. Goals.

The Buick stock block had nothing common with the engine you could buy in any street car of the day. All of the major castings were race-specific. Stage II was Buick's race engine terminology.

@@andyharman3022 the block was the same configuration as the 3.8 Turbo the Grand National Regal had. Size and config were the same. But ya. All the bits and pieces were massaged and replaced and they ran that ridiculous boost which made power but it was a hand grenade before it got to half way most ,500's

I loved it.

Do you know who defined what a Horsepower is?

@@andyharman3022 Which horsepower: HP, CV, bhp or PS? And regarding you retoric question let me reply with a ironic trivia "Who came up with horsepower? Well it depends on the horse we are talking", and it isn't at all a joke.

@@festol1 It was James Watt that originally defined the Horsepower. The technical definition is 550 lb*ft/sec. The other units of power such as kW, CV, PS, BTU/sec, or whatever are all readily convertible into HP. None of it is right or wrong, they're just different numbers that measure the same physical quantities.