Old Indianapolis question

[marcus]

Ok forget the CART/IRL split I was watching an old Indy 500 over the weekend and have a question.

as this was still a CART sanctioned event i thought I would ask it here.

The Menard team used to run only the Indy 500 with Buick engines i believe (a V6 perhaps?)

why didnt the team or mainly the engine run any other rounds of the championship , was it to do with Boost or something , I think they were alowed more boost at Indy than other tracks?

Just an interesting question that this engine combo only came up once a year and was very quick at indy as well.

or have I missed the boat completely and they did run other races??


CHEERS
Marcus

[gttouring]

I thought the V6 Buick Turbos were run for the season, CART wasn't V8 spec then it had a few engine configurations i think

[Mantom]

Originally posted by marcus
Ok forget the CART/IRL split I was watching an old Indy 500 over the weekend and have a question.

as this was still a CART sanctioned event i thought I would ask it here.

The Menard team used to run only the Indy 500 with Buick engines i believe (a V6 perhaps?)

why didnt the team or mainly the engine run any other rounds of the championship , was it to do with Boost or something , I think they were alowed more boost at Indy than other tracks?

Just an interesting question that this engine combo only came up once a year and was very quick at indy as well.

or have I missed the boat completely and they did run other races??


CHEERS
Marcus

The Indianapolis 500 was sanctioned by USAC, not CART. CART teams just happened to dominate.

The Indy 500 was the only race on the CART schedule that allowed non-turbo powered engines. That's why Menard only showed up at Indy, and partly why CART doesn't race at Indy anymore.

[rush1]

Originally posted by marcus
Ok forget the CART/IRL split I was watching an old Indy 500 over the weekend and have a question.

as this was still a CART sanctioned event i thought I would ask it here.

The Menard team used to run only the Indy 500 with Buick engines i believe (a V6 perhaps?)

why didnt the team or mainly the engine run any other rounds of the championship , was it to do with Boost or something , I think they were alowed more boost at Indy than other tracks?

Just an interesting question that this engine combo only came up once a year and was very quick at indy as well.

or have I missed the boat completely and they did run other races??


CHEERS
Marcus

what race (year) was the event?

[blueflagger]

The local scuttlebutt was that, at the time, Menard really didn't have enough bucks yet to field a team for a whole year and that he didn't like the CART organization. CART was a pretty tight organization and Menard likes being a big fish. That pond already had a lot of big fish in it.

Still, he brought in Piquet as a driver. Poor Nelson; that was a nasty accident he had.

[marcus]

it was 1992 , the year Roberto Guerro (can never spell his name) had pole and spun on the warm up lap.

I didnt realise the Buicks werent Turbo's , i guess I gotta do some more study on the history hey

thanks for ya help anyway guys

[Mantom]

Originally posted by marcus
it was 1992 , the year Roberto Guerro (can never spell his name) had pole and spun on the warm up lap.

I didnt realise the Buicks werent Turbo's , i guess I gotta do some more study on the history hey

thanks for ya help anyway guys

The Menard's were turbos.

Because Indy was sanctioned by USAC, it was the only race where non-turbos were allowed on the CART schedule along with a few other loopholes which Penske exploited in 1994 with his secret Mercedes 204 cubic inch pushrod special.

I guess I should rephrase my earlier quote to say that Indy had enough leeway in it's rules to allow Menard to design/use an engine that otherwise wouldn't be competitive on other CART circuits. Indy allowed more boost for the V6's than for V8's.

[gttouring]

the buicks were turbos-the cosworth v8 turbo kinda like we have today was available in the 70's and won the 500 in 78 and the championshp until 87
then of course came chevy ilmor- which in 94 became mercedes-ilmor penske...
but yes the V6 turbos were a big deal, they didn't do too bad but clearly ford/Cosworth was the motor to have for like 10 years.
In the mid 1980’s Buick made serious efforts to compete and win the Indy 500 using its development work on the turbocharged V6 engines. The Buick Indy engines were acknowledged to be at or above the top of the class at the Speedway as far as raw horsepower was concerned. Its “stock-block” turbocharged V6 Indy cars won the pole position and second spot in qualifying for the Indianapolis 500 in 1985, the first time since Duesenberg in 1931, that an American production based car (block) had won the Indy Pole. Where the Buick turbo V6’s encountered difficulty was in reliability over the long haul of the 500 mile
as these could run more boost to make up for lack of cylinders than the V8
these engine also gave rise to the 3.8 litre twinturbo Trans-Am and notably really fast the Buick GNX (Grand National)- which is a monster that would make almost anyone pee their pants if they rode in it.
http://www.musclecarcalendar.com/new_page_9.htm

[evo]

I believe Guererro ran a Buick V6 at long beach in 92. I think it's main problem on the road courses were it's tiny power band. Great power at the very top end worked for Indy, but not the street course in Long Beach. And yeah, they were unreliable, just like push-rod engine

[Lee Janotta]

Okay, most of you guys are _so_ wrong (except the last two!)

Please, do yourselves all a favor and read this page! http://www.lenfrank.com/indytech.htm

As an addendum to it, Roger Penske led the team owners who forced the low boost levels on the Buick engine in CART competition. So thanks Roger.

And yeah, the engines were extremely fast at Indy... And tended to blow sky-high right around 400 miles.

[gttouring]

that's what I thought

[Lee Janotta]

Oh, and while it's damn near impossible find info on CART before the split over the net, I do distinctly remember some Buicks running at Mid-Ohio, Elkhart, and other courses over the years... But at the back. The engines were very cheap thanks to a heavy subsidy from Buick, but the low boost levels that CART forced on them throughout the season made them hopelessly uncompetitive.

For many years, the subsidy at the Indy 500 was such that the engines ended up being free, so long as you slapped a Buick logo on your car and brought back as many pieces of the motor as you could pick up off the track after the race. And they were really fast! If they'd had the reliability they needed, they'd probably have half a dozen Indy wins to their credit.

Naturally aspirated engines _were_ allowed at Indy during the USAC period, BTW, and teams were still getting into the field with big valved, big cammed aluminum small-block Chevrolets into the mid-80s. They weren't even close to being competitive, though.

More than tossing CART out, Satan... Er, sorry, I meant Tony George... Well, more than tossing out CART, he ruined the variety we used to see every year at Indy... The nailbiting of bubble day, the backup cars being hastily prepped, the wheeling and dealing (and begging) in the garages... It's nowhere near the same.

[Mantom]

Okay, most of you guys are _so_ wrong (except the last two!)....

Naturally aspirated engines _were_ allowed at Indy during the USAC period, BTW, and teams were still getting into the field with big valved, big cammed aluminum small-block Chevrolets into the mid-80s. They weren't even close to being competitive, though.

According to the stats you've pointed out, my information is correct. Why are you saying I'm wrong?

[Lee Janotta]

I said "most". Chill out, we're friends here. Most of the time.

[macdaddy]

The first race I ever attended, MIS in 1992, featured three Buicks in the field. The top finisher was Buddy Lazier, P7, fourteen laps down. Other drivers were Jeff Wood and Ross Bentley. But by the next year, there were no more Buicks to be seen.

[indycool]

Best finish ever at Indy for the Buick was by Al Unser (3rd) for Menard in 1992.

[racer69]

The bottom line really is that the Indy500 was a USAC sanctioned event, ran to a different set of regulations, nothing to do with CART (it does make you wonder though why it counted for the CART title).

The USAC rules gave the stock blocks an advantage, it's just that until 1994 (when Mercedes gave a stock block a go with a proper budget) that it's advantage was shown. They slightly changed the rules regarding that engine for 1995, but Menard powered cars still qualified 1st and 2nd in 1995, and on pole in 1996.


1992....the good 'ol days (considering the current open-wheel situation)

[gttouring]

CART could have still held the option to hold Indy for points, and have all the teams attend. the IRL guys wouldb'e been shut out. but now as the IRL field is mostly ex CART teams the situation is a bit more ambiguous.
so the only NA motors at indy during this period were big chevy's? as the buick were turboed
now were these buicks Twin turbo like the GNX
-or not.

[indycool]

Single turbos......and (short explanation form) PPG made the Indy 500 part of the PPG Indy Car World Series and CART was placed in the position of honoring it.

[rush1]

Didn't a South American rookie die in practice in 1992? It was a violent year at indy. The last shootout between little Al and Goodyear was incredible, but that race was more like a sweepstakes than a race to the finish. Keep you car off the wall, away from the crash debris and pray it lasts 500 miles.

[indycool]

It was Jovy Marcelo from the Phillipines who died in practice in '92. Race Day was very cold and drivers kept lighting up tires on restarts and crashing.

[Lee Janotta]

Well, the Chevy's weren't _that_ big. NASCAR-derived small-blocks of, IIRC, 6.3L maximum displacement. Mike Mosley gave the engine it's last real glory at Indy when he put his Chevy-powered AAR Eagle in the middle of the front row for the '81 race. Other guys qualified Chevy-powered cars in '82, '83, and '85. But that was the last time the motor was able to make the grid. The free Buicks might have had something to do with that, though. Why pay money for an inferior engine when you can walk over to Lee Brayton's trailer and pick up a highly competitive (if unreliable) engine for practically nothing?

gttouring, just thought I'd point out... The GNX was a one-year, extremely limited edition version of the Buick Grand National, made only in 1987, the final year of the car's platform, as a special going-away present before the Buick Regal moved to a front-drive design, and brand got out of the high-performance business permanently.

The standard version of the engine was available throughout the mid-80s in upscale models of the Regal, in all models of the Grand National (which was a styling and luxury treatment on the Regal), and in 1989 only, in Pontiac's 20th Anniversary Trans-Am (which also paced Indy that year).

[Tim Northcutt]

I didn't read the link that LeeJanotta posted, but this is the story in a nutshell (since the responses in this thread have been all over the place), and I know this to be fact...one of the IRL guys that I know very well was with Team Menard for many years, but now is with another team...

If this repeats someone's argument, I apologize...but I'm making it concise...

A 'stock block' configuration could run 45 inches of boost under Indy (USAC) rules, the same boost as the normal "racing V-8s" that the usual CART teams ran...but under CART rules (they have NEVER sactioned Indy, only competed there) that "stock block" engine had to run lower boost....Menard ran a couple of CART races and realized that he could not compete with the V-8 race engines under CART rules...so he only ran Indy, and ran lots of cars there....

Penske exploited that rule with his Mercedes engines by building a powerplant that conformed in structure to the rules...and the rule was tightened up to avoid "Purpose-Built Race Engines" like the Mercedes...

The final year before the split was the only time I can remember a Menard Car finishing the Indy 500 on the same lap as the leader of the race....Arie Luyendyke was the driver, and he unlapped himself on the final straightaway to get back on the lead lap...

The Turbo Buick V-6 (later known as a "menard" engine because they really took it to the next level and did the building and developing of the engines in the 1990s) had a great top end and was a powerful engine, but it was not as strong or as fast at getting up to speed as the racing V-8s on re-starts...they lost spots after every yellow light went back to green...

Hope this helps...

[Tim Northcutt]

I jst got back from lunch and re-read my post...It has a GLARING ERROR in it that I must apologize for...sorry!!!!

The "stock block" or "pushrod" engines like the Buick V-6 were allowed to run 55 inches of boost under USAC rules, but had to run 45 inches under CART rules, the same as the Ford, Honda, "racing V-8s" raced under at both places....

That is why Penske built the "Purpose-Built Mercedes pushrod V-8" that met the same criteria as the Buick V-6 under the USAC rules, but cranked a lot more power than the Buick, which gave him a huge advantage over everyone.. the Penske engine was reported to create nearly 1,000 horsepower....

USAC cut the boost on that engine in 1995 due to Penske's use of the loophole in the rule.....but the rule change did not affect the Buick engine as dramatically...I can't remember specifics, but I believe it was boost levels for a V-8 (Penske Mercedes) were set differently than for the V-6 Buick/Menard in 1995 (I'd have to look that up to be sure, but that is how I remember it)....

BTW... Roberto Guerrero's wreck from the pole on the pae lap was due to cold tires and him getting into the throttle in a low gear....If I remember correctly, that was the "Coldest" Indy 500 I have ever attended!!!!...temps in the low 50s with a brisk wind and overcast skies....tons of cautions due to cars wrecking when the green flag came out because it was impossible to put heat in the tires....the concession stands ran out of coffee and hot chocolate and sold almost no beer at all that day....

One last Note:

The fastest "official" One-Lap record and the fastest Four-Lap Qualifying Speeds were both set by Buick/Menard V-6 engines....

I believe Luyendyk holds the one lap record of 237 m.ph. and it is either Luyendyk or Scott Brayton who holds the four-lap record....

It was the last year that they ran Turbo engines at Indy...the year before the new IRL regs and chassis came into being....and the same year that CART ran their "US 500" the same day as Indy in Michigan...

[Tim Northcutt]

One other error that I didn't emember until now....Al Unseer Sr. drove for Menard and finished third one year...I think it was 1991 or 1992...

Sorry again....