SWC75
Bored Historian
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This race is primarily remembered for the Tom Sneva crash, which looks nearly as bad as the Swede Savage disaster of two years before but which Sneva survives. One wonders if some of the safety changes in those two years might have helped, although Sneva’s crash looks as if it might have killed anybody:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN2ShIGGqF8
But Tom walked away and into a great career at Indy. It may have helped him that the car’s momentum sent it flying down the track and kept the flames behind him.
It was another rain-shortened Indy, although they might have completed it without Sneva’s crash. Bobby Unser won his second Indy to tie brother Al but it might have been a great finish between Unser, Johnny Rutherford and AJ Foyt, three guys who wound up with 10 Indy ins between them from 1961-81.
The highlight tape begins with a tribute to some Indy old-timers:
- George Souders, the 1927 champion who only competed that year and the next, (when he finished third) and who died in 1976 at the age of 75
- Jimmy Jackson was second to George Robson in 1946. U-Tube used to have a highlight film of that race but it’s dropped off. Jimmy ran the race from 1946-50 and 9154. He died in 1983 at the age of 74.
- Babe Stapp ran at Indy from 1927-40 and finished in the top 10 five times, including second to Louie Meyer in 1936. He’s shown revisiting gasoline alley, saying it hasn’t changed much over the year, just the faces. Some of them remember him. Babe died in 1980, at the age of 76.
It’s fun to realize that competitors of past eras lived to see the race decades later. You wonder how much they wanted to try out these cars with the new-fangled wings. This is the Indy they knew:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uvRAjJYjZs
The race was now dominated by “the usual suspect”. It was an expensive proposition to run at Indy and it required the support of a well-financed racing team. And those teams weren’t going to take too many chances with unknown drivers. But there were some driver snot previously mentioned:
- Bill Puterbaugh finally made the field in his 7th attempt and finished 7th. He would also be in the race the next two years but didn’t do as well.
- Tom Bigelow was at Indy from 1970-89, qualifying from 1974-82. His best finish was 6th in 1977, his only time in the top ten.
- Billy Scott was at Indy four times. He only qualified once, in 1976 when he finished 14th.
- Jerry Sneva was Tom’s little brother. He was Indy five times but never cracked the top 10.
- Eldon Rasmussen was at Indy six times from 1974-79 and qualified every other time but never finished above 13th.
Here is ABC’s full race coverage, this time with Keith Jackson instead of Jim McKay. It’s interesting to hear Keith’s rather clipped but dramatic style of speaking at that stage of his career, (or perhaps for this event), compared to his laid-back, folksy style for NCAA football in the years to come.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lufus0I8Mo
