1961 Indianapolis 500 Film

No copyright infringement is intended with this, or any other video I upload. The purpose of uploading this video is for the viewing pleasure for those that watch it. This is the 45th Indianapolis 500, run on May 30, 1961. This race, which marked the Golden Anniversary of the first Indianapolis 500 in 1911, marked the beginning of two eras and the end of another. For many years, the majority of the main straightaway at Indy had still been paved with bricks after the rest of the track had been paved with asphalt, but 1961 would be the final year of the brick main straightaway. The final straw for the brick main straightaway may have been the crash that killed Tony Bettenhausen, Sr., as the car he was testing for long-time friend Paul Russo broke a suspension piece, quite possibly due to the rough surface of the brick straightaway, and the car ended up upside down in flames, between the wall and the catch fencing. However, two eras began with this race. The first was the Foyt era at Indianapolis, as he and Eddie Sachs, who won the pole for the second straight year, engaged in a day-long battle that would be decided by mistakes. The first came on Foyt’s final scheduled pit stop, when his refueling mechanism failed, resulting in his car not getting any fuel on that pit stop, and causing him to make an extra pit stop. Not knowing this, Sachs ran harder than he needed to (mistake #2), and with a substantial lead and three laps to go, the cord was showing through his right front tire, and Sachs decided to play it safe rather than to gamble, and lost the race when he made an extra pit stop (mistake #3, according to many who were there), which handed Foyt the first of four Indianapolis 500 wins. The second era that began in this race was that of the rear-engine car. John Cooper entered Jack Brabham in a rear-engine car that handled far superior due to it’s much ligther weight. But it was so far down on horsepower that it only beat one other car that finished (he finished ninth, and only ten cars were running at the end). The irony here was that, from 1950-’60, the Indianapolis 500 counted toward the World Championship, which Brabham won in 1959 and 1960 (he won it again in 1966), but 1961 was the first year that the Indianapolis 500 did not count toward the World Championship, yet Cooper decided to enter Brabham at Indy anyway. Nobody knew it at the time, but the era of the roadsters at Indy was about to come to an end. All credits go to SPEED (SpeedVision, the predecessor to the current SPEED channel, originlly aired everything seen in this video), the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, USAC, and Championship Racefilms. If there are any others who I’m forgetting, please let me know so I can add them to the list of those to credit.