Andretti Is Latest to Set Indy Mark

Just before the track was closed Friday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Mario Andretti blistered the pavement with a lap at 215.600 m.p.h.

This put the capper on a week of dizzying speed that will be culminated today when qualifying begins for the May 26 running of the 69th Indianapolis 500. Thirty-five drivers have exceeded 200 m.p.h. in practice since last Saturday, and only 33 can qualify.

“If the track conditions are good, like they were today, it might take four laps at a strong 214 to get the pole,” Andretti said. “Then again, it might take more.”

One thing is certain. The track records of 210.689 for one lap and 210.029 for four laps, set last year by Tom Sneva, are sure to fall.

Fourteen drivers have bettered Sneva’s one-lap record. One who didn’t, however, is Sneva, who has been able to coax only a 209.996 from Dan Gurney’s Cosworth-powered Eagle.

With Sneva, a three-time pole-sitter, having his problems, the favorites to win the pole and its nearly $90,000 in bonus money, are Andretti, Bobby Rahal, Roberto Guerrero and defending 500 champion Rick Mears.

Mears, who missed the Long Beach Grand Prix because his feet were still ailing from an accident last September in Canada, is making his first start since the accident. Despite having missed testing earlier in the year, Mears had a lap at 213.371 and has consistently been among the fastest drivers.

Guerrero, a former Formula One driver from Colombia who was last year’s Indy 500 Rookie of the Year, believes it will take 215 for the pole.

“It’s going to be so competitive that someone will do it (215),” Guerrero said. “We’ve all been driving around with the foot all the way down, so it’s up to the crews now to make the right aerodynamic adjustments.”

Andretti said his crew had found the “right adjustments” late Thursday, which led to his hot laps of 215.600 and 214.285 Friday.

“We made some changes that brought us another mile an hour,” said the 1969 winner and two-time pole winner. “We’d been having our troubles before this week. I’d had only four hot laps, at four different times, before today. We lost a lot of time because our engines weren’t working. We had some other things we wanted to try, but we didn’t get them done. We’ll have some more tricks for Michigan (the next 500-mile race)

“Right now, all we’re looking at is four laps tomorrow. To get up to 215 for four laps, you’ll have to white-knuckle it. That’s the only way it can be done. We’re playing with such a fine line. A tenth of a second is worth a mile an hour, and it’s a lot easier to lose a tenth than to find how to save it.”

Andretti said he expects Rahal, who ran his best lap of 214.183 on Thursday, to be his toughest rival.

“I think Rahal has shown more than Mears or Guerrero,” Andretti said.

Don Whittington, stepping into Pat Patrick’s March-Cosworth after Gordon Johncock’s surprise retirement earlier in the day, became a pole possibility when he posted the fifth fastest lap of the week at 212.715. Whittington has driven only three IMSA sports car races and no Indy car races since mid-1983.

“I’ve been too busy building 300,000 square feet of hangars at the Fort Lauderdale airport,” Whittington said. “It’s been a seven-day-a-week job for the last 18 months and didn’t leave any time for driving. The car is so perfectly balanced that 212 seemed easy.”

Herm Johnson, of Eau Claire, Wis., who drove in the 1982 and 1984 Indy 500s, was injured seriously when he lost control of his car in the first turn and crashed into the outside retaining wall with a heavy impact. He suffered multiple chest injuries and a broken right arm and was flown by helicopter to Methodist Hospital, where his condition was listed as serious but stable.

Rookie Rich Vogler, Indianapolis, a former U. S. Auto Club sprint car and midget car champion, knocked his car out of the race when he spun in the second turn and smacked the outside wall before sliding into the infield grass. Vogler was not injured.