the UK's premier dragstrip,
and have seen both the jet powered Rover and boat at London's Science Museum, but until now I did not know that a jet powered car was raced at the Indianapolis 500, but one was!
the 1967 STP-Paxton Turbocar, originally designed by
engineer Ken Wallis, the jet car concept got the cold shoulder from racing
greats Dan Gurney and Carroll Shelby before it found a home with Andy
Granatelli, they called Granatelli “Mr. 500.” The small Pratt & Whitney
turbine power plant might have otherwise found itself in a helicopter or a
corporate jet, instead it sat side by side with driver Parnelli Jones, it
produced more than 550 horsepower delivered through an innovative
all-wheel-drive system, “People forget how well it handled,” Jones says now,
but what people talked about and fought over was the smooth, linear power it
made,
Jones built an insurmountable lead—until a $6 transmission bearing burned up just before the finish, Jones coasted to the pit entrance while friend and rival A.J. Foyt went on to win, the crew pushed the broken jet car behind the wall. “It hurt Granatelli worse than it hurt me,” Jones says now, the part may have broken when he accelerated away from the final pit stop. “I went too hard, I still blame myself, but you’re a racer—it’s hard to do something less than full-bore.”
other manufactures made inroads into jet powered cars and for a full run down on them, this is the article to read, jets at Indy, I never knew.
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