Ford on the Pole

It was the biggest crowd of the year to attend a U.S. sporting event. At Indianapolis' Motor Speedway last week, 250,000 spectators jammed into the stands to watch the world's fastest racing cars blast around the 21-mile oval. Who won the race? There was no race. The Indianapolis 500 isn't until this week, and these were merely the qualification trials. But they pitted a new breed of rear-engined racers against the reigning kings of the Brickyard, the burly front-engined Offenhausers that have won every 500 for the past 17 years. No auto buff within driving distance wanted to miss any of the fun.

Everyone remembered last year when three tiny, British-built Lotuses powered by rear-mounted Ford engines showed up to challenge the Offies. They looked like go-karts, and their drivers were sports-car types, not Indy men. But then Grand Prix Champion Jimmy Clark, 28, drove one Lotus to second place, the U.S.'s Dan Gurney put another in seventh, and a roaring argument exploded over what might have been if Parnelli Jones's leading Offy had not dumped half its oil in front of the fast-closing Clark 25 laps from the finish. Now the rear-engined boys were back to settle the matter once and for all.

Records All Around. Clark and Gur ney were both on hand with new Lotus-Fords--along with seven other drivers with Ford engines behind them. Nor were these the same souped-up versions of the old family Fairlane engine that raced in 1963. For this year, Ford had a brand-new, strictly racing engine with an aluminum block, double overhead camshaft, and a fuel injection system that cranked up close to 420 h.p.

First out of the pits was Clark, his exhaust winding up in a high, thin scream. For four laps, he howled around the track, and dockers stared openmouthed at the time: an average 158.8 m.p.h. per lap, an astonishing 7.7 m.p.h. faster than the track record set by Jones last year. Then came Bobby Marshman, 27, an Indy veteran and an ex-Offy man now driving for Lotus-Ford. In practice, he had roared around the track at an incredible 160.1 m.p.h. He settled for an average 157.8 m.p.h. during the qualification trials. Next was Roger Ward, still another old Offy man who brought out his new Ford-engined car and qualified at 156.4 m.p.h.

By dint of superb driving, those two old front-engine diehards, Jones and A. J. Foyt, pushed their standard Offies into fourth and fifth starting position, but then Gurney, taking it cool, slipped into sixth position in a Lotus-Ford. The qualification runs go on until this week, when the top 33 cars are chosen to compete on Memorial Day. There is always a chance that someone with a hot engine, front or rear, will rack up an even more spectacular time. Offy itself, after a year of experimenting, has a rear-mounted engine, and 14 of the 61 entries at Indianapolis were running with Offies behind. But they seemed far slower than the Fords, and the best a rear-mounted Offy could do by week's end was 153.8 m.p.h. to qualify in 8th position.

Big Question. The trials are not the race, and Offy partisans concede nothing. They point out that the Fords, for all their speed, are new engines, and the 500 is a machinery-destroying grind. But at the start at least, it looks as if the pole, the entire three-car first row, and four out of the first six positions belonged to Ford-in-the-rear. Growled Parnelli Jones: "Those Fords are pushing us Offy boys pretty hard."

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