Indianapolis 500 Notebook : All Crawford’s Men Put His Car Together Again

Jim Crawford will not have to move to the back of the field for the start of Sunday’s Indianapolis 500, thanks to a major effort to repair his car by the Lola factory in England and an equally major effort putting it back together by his crew here.

Crawford qualified the Lola-Buick fourth, at 221.450 m.p.h., then crashed in a practice session last Friday when a part of his suspension broke.

Damage was extensive but if Crawford had switched to his backup car, he would have had to qualify it, accepting a poorer starting spot, or move to the 33rd spot without qualifying it.

Owner Kenny Bernstein, a former drag racer, chose to get it repaired. He sent the car’s main component, the tub, back to the factory, where it was fixed, then shipped back to the United States. It arrived at Crawford’s garage at 9 p.m. Wednesday and Crawford’s crew spent the rest of the night making it a race car again, borrowing liberally from the backup.

Crawford drove it Thursday in the final practice session before the race, as required by the rules, and proclaimed himself satisfied.

“It was very nearly perfect,” he said. “I went 215 with a full tank, so it can’t be too bad.”

The car left a little to be desired aesthetically, though. The repaired tub was left unpainted--dull black fiberglass, which contrasted strikingly with the shiny red, white and yellow of the engine cowling and wings--but carried the usual complement of decals.

The great Andretti-Unser feud apparently is over, without bloodshed.

In the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach last month, Al Unser Jr. ran into Mario Andretti as they dueled for the lead late in the race, knocking Andretti’s car out of commission.

Unser continued and won the race, after which an angry Andretti accused him of careless driving at best, and calculated opportunism at worst. Andretti, in fact, wanted a piece of Unser immediately after the race and had to be restrained.

A chagrined Unser sort of admitted to sloppy driving but denied any purposefulness and said that when Andretti cooled off, he would try to set things right.

Said Little Al the other day: “I went to Nazareth (Pa., Andretti’s hometown) for the IROC (series) race and went to see Mario. Whatever there was to be squared away was squared away.”

Andretti has not been discussing the situation but his publicity people put out a release earlier this month, saying that all is well between the two, and spokesmen for both drivers said that Unser’s visit to Andretti’s home was a cordial one and that there were no lingering hard feelings.

Drivers like to impress people with the difficulty of their jobs in this age of high-tech racing, but Kevin Cogan maintains that high tech has made the driver something of a supernumerary.

“The driver is almost a dyno,” he said, referring to a dynamometer, an engine-testing machine. “You just put your foot down and hold it down.”

Cogan’s teammate, Rich Vogler, on safety at more than 200 m.p.h.: “The race cars are as safe as they can be and as a driver, I do my part about keeping safe. And yet, can you say a race car is really safe? If you hit the wall at 200 m.p.h.? I don’t think about that.”

Vogler, again, on his familiarity with the 2 1/2-mile Speedway track: “I know there’s four or five corners here, or however many there are.”

How has the repaving of the track affected drivers’ capabilities to actually race? Take your pick from the thoughts of two former winners.

Said Gordon Johncock, who won at Indy in 1973 and again in ‘82: “You can pass now. It’s not a one-groove track, like it usually is.”

Contradicted Danny Sullivan, the 1985 winner: “It’s very hard to pass anyone. The track is a lot smoother, but it’s still a one-groove track.”