Word: lotuses
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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...
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...
...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...
...through Monte Carlo's narrow streets at a record average of 72.6 m.p.h. to beat the U.S.'s Richie Ginther by one lap and win the 195-mile race for the second straight year. Scotland's Jimmy Clark, the 1963 champion, was forced to abandon his Lotus when it lost oil pressure six miles from the finish...
...mile course was part road, part track; in the infield, it snaked through a series of sharp hairpin turns; then it swept onto Daytona's ultrafast, banked stock-car oval. In the lighter, more maneuverable Lotus, Gurney picked up valuable seconds on the turns; Foyt got the seconds back by blasting around the oval flat-out at nearly 185 m.p.h. By the 20th lap, both had lapped the entire field. But neither one could shake the other. Sixteen times in the first 38 laps the lead changed hands, while both drivers nursed their cars carefully, hoping for a break...