Rahal Takes the Drag Race and the 500

A huge billboard near the entrance to Indianapolis Motor Speedway has displayed the following message for two weeks:

THIS ONE’S FOR YOU JIM TRUEMAN

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Jim Trueman’s 51st birthday was last Sunday, the day the 70th Indianapolis 500 was originally scheduled to be held.

Bobby Rahal had to wait six days to give Trueman a birthday present, but when he did, it was a win in the twice-postponed 500 while driving Trueman’s Budweiser/Truesports March. Rahal edged Kevin Cogan and Rick Mears in the closest and most exciting 1-2-3 finish in 500 history.

Trueman is more than Rahal’s car owner. He has been his mentor and benefactor since the scholarly-appearing Rahal decided to become a racer back in 1973, when he was a student of history at Denison University in Ohio.

Trueman is also dying of cancer of the colon and is not expected to live until the next 500.

Rahal, who started from the second row, raced two-time winner Mears for the lead much of the 500 miles, but at the end he had to out-drag Cogan two laps from the checkered flag to take his first Indianapolis 500 in his fifth start.

A disappointed Cogan crossed the finish line 1.4 seconds behind Rahal, with Mears third, a car-length farther back. Roberto Guerrero of Colombia was the only other driver on the lead lap, although 15 cars were running at the end of the fastest 500 ever run.

Rahal averaged 170.772 m.p.h. despite running 33 laps under caution in the 200-lap race and making six pit stops. This was seven miles faster than Mears’ record of 163.612 in 1984.

The race, postponed by rain last Sunday and Monday, was run on a warm and muggy Indiana spring day before an estimated 300,000 spectators.

After Mears and Rahal had exchanged the lead for the entire second half of the race in a tense duel in which pit stops and yellow caution lights became as important as driving skills and car-handling, Cogan injected himself into the picture with a daring pass of three cars on Lap 188.

As Mears and Rahal came up behind rookie Randy Lanier, Mears was trapped behind the slower car, allowing Rahal to move into the lead. Seconds later, Cogan swept by them both, and with eight laps remaining, appeared on his way to his first 500 win.

Arie Luyendyk, last year’s rookie of the year from the Netherlands, became an important part of the race six laps later when he spun coming off the fourth turn and kicked up debris near the pit entrance.

Luyendyk’s travail brought out the sixth yellow flag of the remarkably clean race.

This seemingly innocent adventure turned out to be extremely significant. For one thing, it enabled Rahal and Mears to move up close behind Cogan for a drag race to the finish once (and if) the green light came back on. For another, it permitted Rahal to conserve his dwindling fuel, which was so close to empty that his red warning light was flickering.

And it set up a two-lap race among Cogan, Rahal and Mears that was more akin to stock cars than the fragile, open-wheel Indy cars.

Not since Gordon Johncock fought off Mears to win by 16-hundredths of a second in 1982 has the Speedway seen such a close finish.

When pace car driver Don Bailey swung his Corvette down pit road and the yellow light turned green with two laps--just five miles--to go, Rahal stood on the accelerator and pulled alongside Cogan. Before the two cars reached the first turn, Rahal had the nose of his red March in front of Cogan’s white-and-blue Pat Patrick-owned March, and they swept through the turn in that order.

“Cogan went a little wide on the fourth turn, and that gave me an opening down low,” Rahal said. “When the light went green, all I thought was go-go-go. I didn’t leave anything back, not with five miles to go in the Indianapolis 500.

“In a situation like that, the guy second in line, if he has his wits about him, has the advantage. He can see what the front guy is doing and he has the draft to help set up a pass.

“I was in a similar position in the Pocono 500 in 1984 and hesitated and finished third. It was a good lesson because it taught me not to hesitate this time. I went flat-out.”

Cogan, who won his first Indy car race earlier this year at Phoenix, admitted that Rahal got the jump on him at the critical moment.

“Bobby put it down to the floor before I did,” Cogan said disconsolately. “He got by me and beat me on the restart. I could have held on to win if the race had not gone yellow.”

Mears, who led for 77 laps and seemed to have the dominant car from the day he won the pole with a record qualifying speed of 216.828 m.p.h., never challenged during the final two laps.

“I just didn’t get a good jump on the restart, and Bobby did,” Mears said. “Also, I think he was in a better car. I just didn’t have any handling in traffic all day. If I had, Michael (Andretti) wouldn’t have been able to pass me and take the lead at the start.”

Andretti, at 23 the youngest driver in the race, roared into the first turn from his position on the outside of the front row and kept his blue-and-yellow Kraco March in front for the first 42 laps.

Late in the race, Michael was a lap behind the leaders but was directly in front of them on the race track and appeared to have the fastest car.

“I’m disappointed,” said Michael, who won his first Indy car race last month at Long Beach. “On the track we were as good as anyone. At the end, I was pulling away from Rick (Mears).”

Bad luck on pit stops (Andretti stopped under green-light conditions when the field was running at top speed, only to have a yellow light come out a lap later to slow the field to 90 m.p.h.) gradually deteriorated Michael’s early advantage, and he ended up sixth.

That was much better than Michael’s father, Mario, however.

The elder Andretti, who won here in 1969, was the first driver out of the actual race, stopping on the 19th lap with an ill-handling Lola that refused to run.

Although Mario was the first to stop during the race, another former winner, Tom Sneva, had a more embarrassing moment. Sneva crashed his car during the pace lap, causing a 35-minute delay of the start while crews added more methanol to the refueling tanks along pit row.

“I have no idea what happened,” Sneva said. “The car just turned left.”

And broke a wheel when it hit the second-turn wall.

This meant that when starter Duane Sweeney finally gave the field the green flag, there were only 32 starters.

Sneva’s embarrassment was nothing, however, compared to that of A.J. Foyt, the venerable old Texan who is the 500’s only four-time winner.

Foyt came in too hot for a refueling stop on his 135th lap, locked up his brakes and slammed backward into the pit wall--under the yellow caution flag. The impact knocked the rear wing off his car and put him out of the race.

“I wonder what A.J. would have said if that had been some driver he’d hired?” asked a driver, who immediately added, “Don’t ever let A.J. hear I said that!”

Foyt, who was in his 29th consecutive 500, was surprisingly calm.

“Something happened to the front-wheel brakes real early,” the 51-year-old legend said. “You may have noticed I tried to stay away from the traffic because I had to mind my P’s and Q’s.

“Finally, it bit me. I saw I wasn’t going to stop so I pumped the brakes and it locked up the rear wheels, and I spun.”

Lanier, a former sports car champion who won the 1984 Times Grand Prix of Endurance at Riverside, was the highest finishing rookie, in 10th place, just back of defending champion Danny Sullivan.

Lanier, a likely candidate for Rookie of the Year, was not blamed for his part in inadvertently aiding first Rahal and then Cogan past Mears.

“When I came up on Lanier, he went low and it killed all my momentum,” Mears said. “I don’t know if he knew we were all behind him.”

Lanier said he did, indeed, know they were behind him.

“I knew I was running with the three leaders, but I held my line,” Lanier said. “I wasn’t going to change my line. That’s the worst thing you can do. When they wanted by me, they had to race me and get around, which they did very cleanly.”

Cogan, trailing Lanier (four laps down at the time), Mears and Rahal, came up behind them at the opportune moment.

“It was a perfect opportunity to take all of them at the same time,” the Redondo Beach driver said. “There was plenty of room to do it. I went high on the wall to get around Lanier and found the room to get around the other guys, too.

“I’m just extremely disappointed in what happened a few laps later, but anybody would feel that way if they were in my position. It’s the biggest loss I’ve ever had.”

Rahal sympathized with Cogan, but only so far.

“I feel sorry for Kevin because he’s a good driver and I thought he took a bum rap from some of the other drivers here in ‘82,” Rahal said. “He suffered from that for years. I’d sure never want to hear people boo every time they heard my name, and that’s what happened to him.”

Cogan was involved in a pace lap accident in 1982 when the suspension broke on his car and he first hit Foyt, on his right, and then rebounded back into the path of Andretti. Both Foyt and Andretti, who was knocked out of the race before it started, blistered Cogan in print and on TV for the incident.

“As far as today is concerned, though,” Rahal said, “it would take the fingers of more than two hands to tell about the ones I lost in the last few laps. It’s something that happens. What else can I say?”

The win by Rahal, 33, who lives in a home alongside one of the fairways on Jack Nicklaus’ Muirfield golf course at Dublin, Ohio, and Trueman, the founder of Red Roof Inns and owner of the Mid-Ohio race track, was a popular one among the drivers.

“I’m happy for Bobby Rahal and Jim Trueman,” said a gracious Mears, whose sentiment was repeated by others. “I’m very glad Jim got the win because he has been so good for the sport. I feel like as long as I couldn’t win, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather see win. They did a great job.”

Rahal and Trueman met in 1973 when both were competing in amateur sports car races around Ohio. The following year, Rahal was preparing for a Formula Atlantic race at Watkins Glen, N.Y., and was short of funds.

“I told Jim I needed $500 or I couldn’t go to the Glen,” Rahal recalled. “He never hesitated. The $500 he gave me was $500 more than anyone else had ever invested in me, and I’ve never forgotten him for it.”

For eight years, Rahal drove in a variety of machinery, competing in Europe as well as the United States, but never making much of a splash.

In 1982, he and Trueman decided to enter the Indy car picture. Rahal won the fourth race they entered, the Cleveland 500 kilometer road race.

After showing his talents in Indy cars, Rahal was offered several lucrative contracts by rival teams, but his answer was to sign a multiyear contract with Trueman.

“When I was coming down to the finish line for the last time today,” Rahal said, “I looked over at my crew celebrating and I thought of all Jim had done for me over the years. He’s the guy who brought me to the dance. When I wanted a chance, he took a gamble on me. He’ll always be something special to me.”

Trueman, formerly a fine race driver himself, said his final words to Rahal before the race were to “do the best he could.”

Trueman said: “I think he drove the best race he’s ever driven. I’ve won a lot of races myself, but today was it . Bobby said it was my birthday present. I’m starting the paper work to change my birthday from May 25 to today.”