Mercedes Hits Gasoline Alley : Indy 500: Partnership with Penske and Ilmor puts two cars on front row.
In the last six Indianapolis 500s, Chevrolet Indy V-8 engines, designed and built by Ilmor Engineering of Brixworth, England, have powered the winning car.
This year, Chevy is gone, having taken its name and its bow-tie insignia from the nameplate of the Ilmor engines. Its one-quarter partnership in Ilmor with Roger Penske and engineers Mario Illien and Paul Morgan went up for sale.
Mercedes-Benz, seeking to expand its luxury car market in the United States by participating in the world’s largest single-day sporting event, bought in.
The immediate result? The silver star nameplate is on two-thirds of the front row for Sunday’s race. Al Unser Jr. is on the pole and defending champion Emerson Fittipaldi on the outside of the front row.
The widely predicted sweep of the front row by Penske’s red-and-white cars failed to materialize when the third driver, Paul Tracy, crashed on May 13, the day before qualificationruns began, and was unable to participate in pole qualifying. He will start 25th.
Although Chevrolet and Mercedes-Benz have taken the glory, the operative names in the engine programs are Ilmor and Penske.
Penske put together the original Ilmor team in 1984, with financial support from General Motors, and he came up with the idea of building a one-race engine for this year’s Indianapolis 500, an idea he sold to Mercedes-Benz.
The concept of a one-race engine can be traced to Indy car racing’s separate governing bodies. Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) sanctions all Indy car races except the Indianapolis 500, which remains under the control of the U.S. Auto Club (USAC). So when it comes to the Indy 500, the rules are different. One Indy 500 rule allows stock-block engines 10 more inches of manifold pressure--called boost--from the turbocharger than conventional double-overhead cam racing power plants.
In recent years, Buick, with its V-6 power plant, had demonstrated that stock-block engines were fast, having put Roberto Guerrero and Pancho Carter on the pole with record speeds. But those engines had shown a distinct lack of reliability over 500 miles. Only once has a Buick completed 500 miles, when Al Unser finished third in 1992.
The Buicks had been highly modified versions of passenger car stock-block push-rod engines, put in racing trim by Jim Wright of Brayton Engineering in Coldwater, Mich.
Penske, known for seeking the “unfair advantage” since his early days with engineer-driver Mark Donohue, decided to go one step farther. He would have Ilmor design and build a push-rod engine within USAC regulations for the Indy 500 only.
“We (Penske, Illien and Morgan) sat down after last year’s race and discussed the idea of building a push-rod engine for this year’s race,” Penske said. “We knew we would be taking a calculated risk--Indy has not been kind to new engines--but we felt the potential to gain an edge was enough to take the risk.”
Rule 1107 in the USAC regulations, allowing a 209 cubic-inch displacement stock-block push-rod engine, had been in the books for three years.
“Looking at the rule and knowing that we had companies such as Honda and Toyota and certainly Ford going forward in this business, (we knew) there was going to be an innovation and someone had to get there first,” Penske said.
Cloaked in secrecy, the project went from the discussion stage to drawings to castings and onto the dynamometer--a device that measures an engine’s power--in 25 weeks.
“When we started work, it was imperative that word not get out or one of the other manufacturers might have followed suit,” Penske said. “I sat down with the team in small groups and said, ‘Guys, if you talk about this to anyone, it’s just like cutting a piece of your paycheck off.’ They got the message.”
Work on the castings started last September and the first engine was fired up on the dyno in January. In midwinter, the engine was tested in a chassis at Penske’s Michigan and Nazareth, Pa., raceways.
At that point, there was no Mercedes-Benz involvement. Although Chevrolet had been part of the Ilmor team when the project was started, the GM company had no interest in it because the decision had since been made to drop out of Indy car racing.
Mercedes got into the picture--although not the stock-block project--last November, through Formula One. The German Sauber team hired Ilmor to produce a V-10 “Mercedes” engine for this year’s Grand Prix season. Then when Mercedes-Benz assumed General Motors’ one-fourth equity in Ilmor Engineering, it also meant that the German nameplate would be used on the four-valve Indy car engine to be built by Ilmor for the 1995 season.
Seven cars--driven by Arie Luyendyk, Teo Fabi, Stefan Johansson, Bobby Rahal, Mike Groff, John Paul Jr. and rookie Adrian Fernandez--will be powered by Ilmor racing engines in this 500. Two other Ilmor-powered cars, driven by Fittipaldi and Unser Jr., were winners in CART-sanctioned races at Phoenix and Long Beach, respectively. Last year, they would have been called Chevrolets. Next year they will be Mercedeses. But in this transitional year they are Ilmors.
Early last month, Penske went to Mercedes-Benz headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, and convinced CEO Helmut Werner that his company should be part of the 1994 push-rod project and on April 13 it was announced that Penske, Ilmor and Mercedes-Benz were jointly launching a program for Indy.
The words were barely out of Penske’s mouth when the howling started.
“What a brainless idea that is (to allow Penske such an advantage),” said Nigel Mansell, the PPG Cup Indy car champion who nearly won last year’s Indy 500 in his first try. “I mean, how the hell can you give them 10 inches more turbo boost. That guarantees them 150 to 200 horsepower more.”
When the three Penske cars were running 230 m.p.h. or close to it during the first week of practice, it was widely speculated by other teams that they were holding back, sandbagging, until the time trials.
Even after Unser’s 228.011 m.p.h. was the best speed they could muster on qualifying day, there were rumors that Penske was still not showing his hand, waiting until race day to unleash all the new-found power.
“I don’t think the rule was put in to create a prototype, and that’s what Penske has done,” car owner Derrick Walker said. “Roger is the only guy on the pit lane who has the resources to develop a project like that. The rule is absolutely the dumbest thing we’ve got.
“The Penskes will be running a mile or two faster than the rest of us in the race. I know it’s the first race for the Mercedes engine, but Roger wouldn’t be putting all his eggs in it if he weren’t sure of its reliability.”
To ensure the reliability of running 500 miles at 200 m.p.h., Penske and Ilmor have pushed the project to its limits. On May 8, the day the Speedway opened for practice, Unser was at Michigan, running a 520-mile full-race test under the watchful eye of Penske.
“We run what we call a ‘probe test,’ ” Penske said. “That’s where you run something harder than you have to run it in a race. We’ve run the new engine in probe testing many times over 400 miles. When Junior ran those 520 miles at Michigan with no yellows--you fill it up with fuel and run full tanks down to empty and just keep doing that until you finish it--that’s pretty tough on the motor, and it came through it perfectly.”
Fittipaldi raised a few eyebrows last week when he had a trap speed of 245 m.p.h. during a lap of only 226 m.p.h. It even raised Fittipaldi’s eyebrows.
“Two forty-five?” he said with a surprised look. “That’s faster than I ever expected to go. Please don’t tell me what it was in kilometers. It might scare me.”
The defending 500 champion then explained the problems faced by the Penskes.
“It’s very important, the handling,” he said. “The engine is very good and the horsepower is there, but the power is good only if you can get it through the corners. There has been so much attention paid to the motor that now we must find the perfect chassis.”
The 1994 Penske chassis had already been developed when it was decided to build the push-rod engine. Because of different engine configurations, the chassis had to be modified and a different transmission built to handle the 209-c.i.d. engine.
“We could come out of here with some pretty long faces come race day,” Penske said. “But I’m proud of what we’re trying to accomplish. I’m not sure we’ll win the race but we’ve got a plan. That’s where we want to be.”