The racing life and times of Jerry Grant

Part seven – the 1974 season

Early in 1974, Jerry Grant signed to drive for Phoenix Arizona tire magnate Robert L. “Bob” Fletcher for the 1974 United States Auto Club season (USAC) as a teammate to sophomore driver Jimmy Caruthers and rookie Duane “Pancho” Carter.

Caruthers was the Cobre Firestone Tire team’s primary 1974 USAC national championship trail driver, while Carter ran an abbreviated schedule of eight championship races as he (successfully) chased the 1974 USAC National Sprint Car title, and Grant ran just five races during the 1974 USAC season.  

Both Caruthers and Carter  both sons of famous racers came up the USAC open-wheel ranks, having driven midget and sprint cars. Caruthers won the 1970 USAC National Midget Championship and finished runner-up in 1971 to his brother Danny, while Carter won the 1972 USAC national midget championship.   

Among the three drivers, the Cobre team had four cars - one updated 1972 All-American Racing  (AAR) Eagle, one updated 1973 AAR Eagle, and at least two 1974-spec AAR Eagles chassis, all powered by turbocharged Offenhauser engines.  Racing historians have been unable to determine conclusively which Fletcher Eagle was assigned to an individual driver at a specific race. 

Operating out of the team’s shop on 32nd Avenue in northwest Phoenix, for 1974 the Cobre team had three chief mechanics; Jim McGee, who had started out in racing working for Clint Brawner was assigned to work with Jimmy Caruthers, while Mike Devin worked with rookie “Pancho” Carter, and Ron Falk, who had worked for the STP Racing team from 1963 through 1973, was assigned to work with Jerry Grant. 

Fletcher, whose Cobre Tires chain in the American Southwest was at the time the largest Firestone tire distributor in the United States, fielded his teams with major financial support from the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company.  Fletcher entered USAC racing as a car owner in 1973, but at the team’s third race, Art Pollard crashed fatally at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway the morning of the first day of ‘500’ time trials.

The Pollard crash destroyed one of the Fletcher 1972 Eagles, so the Cobre team operated for much of the 1973 USAC season as a single car team with Clint Brawner as the chief mechanic for Jimmy Caruthers. In September after the Cobre team received a replacement Eagle chassis to replace the car destroyed in the Pollard crash, Bob Fletcher hired Ron Falk with work with newly hired driver Lee Kunzman of Guttenberg Iowa beginning with the 1973 ‘California 500.’

Lee Kunzman in 1970

photo courtesy of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection

 IUPUI University Library Center for Digital studies.

 

 

Lee Kunzman’s blossoming career had been interrupted by a serious accident at I-70 Speedway in Odessa Missouri on June 5 1970 when the throttle of his sprint car hung open. The car tumbled over the wall and Lee received severe burns over 20% of his body as well as a broken neck and broken arm. 10 months later, Kunzman triumphantly returned to racing as he won a 40-lap sprint car race at I-70 Speedway. In 1972, Kunzman made his first Indianapolis ‘500’ start as he drove Myron Caves’s turbocharged Offenhauser powered Gerhardt chassis.

Kunzman joined forces with Coca-Cola millionaire Lindsey Hopkins for the first Milwaukee race in 1972 and completed that season and the first part of the 1973 USAC season with Hopkins. Lee was hired away by Bob Fletcher for the Cobre Firestone team beginning with the 1973 California ‘500.’ After a successful 1973 season which ended with two top five finishes, Fletcher, Kunzman, and Falk looked forward to the 1974 season.

On December 11 1973, during an off-season Firestone tire test at Ontario Motor Speedway, Kunzman crashed into the second turn concrete wall at an estimated 190 MPH, which destroyed the Cobre Tire 1973 Eagle and left Kunzman seriously injured for the second time in career. Initial news reports immediately after the accident indicated that Kunzman was in a coma with severe head injuries and paralysis of his left side. By Christmas, newspapers reported that Kunzman was awake and had moved his arms, but doctors thought he faced a long rehabilitation. 

On February 15 1974, Bob Fletcher hired Jerry Grant to replace Kunzman on the Cobre Firestone team for the California ‘500,’ as news articles at the time were optimistic about Kunzman’s return in time the 1974 Indianapolis ‘500.’ In fact, Lee Kunzman’s recovery from his head injuries took up the entire 1974 season. In August 1974 Lee had only regained 70% of the use of his left side, and suffered blurred vision. Jerry Grant was considered Kunzman’s replacement driver as Jerry drove the 1974 season with Kunzman’s previous car number, #55.    

The 1974 USAC championship car rules package reduced the size of the rear wings to a maximum width of 43 inches, and the wing could not extend more than 42 inches behind the center lines of the rear wheels and centered between the rear wheels.  For the first time USAC regulated the maximum “boost” level (turbocharger pressure) for Offenhauser engines to 80 inches of mercury (slightly more than 39 pounds per square inch) through the use of a pressure relief “pop off valve” mounted on the intake plenum. Additionally, to lower race speeds, the total fuel allowed to be used by each car to complete a 500-mile race was reduced to 280 gallons.

As outlined in a previous chapter, the financially troubled Ontario Motor Speedway and shifted the date of the ‘California 500’ which became 1974 season opening race but it came amid a nationwide crisis. The Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) instituted an oil embargo beginning in October 1973. The price of oil rose from $3 per barrel to $12, gasoline stations rationed their supplies, and the oil shortage triggered one of the worst economic downturns in modern history.

In response to the oil crisis, in January 1974, USAC announced a “fuel allocation formula” that also restricted the amount of methanol fuel that could be used in practice for Ontario to 200 gallons, 35 gallons for qualifying, and 55 gallons for the 100-mile qualifying heat races. It didn’t seem to matter to USAC that the race cars ran on methanol, not gasoline, their move made it appear to the general public that the club’s board was doing something.

In accordance with the recommendations of the National Motorsports Committee to reduce fuel consumption by 25 percent during the “energy crisis,” Ontario Motor Speedway for its part, cut back to four days of practice beginning February 26 with each practice session to last seven hours instead of the previous nine hours daily.  

After the completion of the March 3 qualifying heat races, teams would only have three hours of running time before the California 500 on March 10 1974. All these changes reportedly would reduce the California ‘500’ methanol use from 30,000 gallons to 23,000 gallons. “We feel this will make the race (the California 500) more competitive than it’s ever been before," Ontario General Manager Jim Cook told the Associated Press. “There will be less strain on the engines and combined with the milder March temperatures should keep more cars running longer.” 

Jerry Grant's official 1974 Indy 500 qualifying photo

courtesy of INDYCAR

During the final day of practice on Friday March 1, Grant lost control of the “Cobre Firestone Special” turquoise and copper colored #55 Eagle as he exited the fourth turn, executed a partial spin, brushed the inside retaining wall, and slightly damaged the left side suspension.  Grant was uninjured and the car promptly repaired for the next day’s qualifying session.

The start of qualifying for the 1974 California ‘500’ on March 2 was delayed five hours by rain, and lap speeds were indeed down as AJ Foyt won the pole position with a two-lap average speed of 190.617 MPH.  Foyt was the only car over 190 MPH, as second fastest qualifier Johnny Rutherford posted a 185.989 MPH average. Grant qualified tenth out of the twenty-nine qualifiers with a 183.150 MPH average speed. 

Grant was forced to run the 100-mile “heat race,” unlike 1973, when his front-row starting position allowed him the opportunity to sit out and preserve his equipment. On the positive side, whereas in 1973 the qualifying races paid no money, just USAC points, in 1974 the qualifying races offered a purse of $25,000 each, although the total purse for the California ‘500’ and the preliminary races remained at $300,000.

Grant started the second March 3 qualifying heat race from the fifth position but failed to finish the 40 laps, as the Offenhauser engine’s magneto failed on lap 14. That finish meant that Grant would start seventeenth in the middle of the sixth row between Gary Bettenhausen in the Penske Products McLaren and Gordon Johncock in the Patrick Racing Eagle.

In a local newspaper interview printed two days before the race, Grant told a reporter "we’re thinking that maybe things will swing around this time. The last two times I started from the front row, this time it’s the middle of the pack. Maybe we’ll break this spell I seem to be under.”  Grant said “I think we’re among the few cars that have enough mileage to finish the 500 miles. At the end of the race you’re likely to see a lot of people running out of gas.”

Drivers generally were critical of the USAC fuel cuts, as Al Unser told Bloys Britt of the Associated Press “they have finally cut the racing out of the race. All we do is go out and watch the fuel gauge.”  Eight cars ran out of fuel during the 100-mile qualifying heats, including Unser, Gordon Johncock, and Mario Andretti.

1974 California 500 race day program cover

The 1974 California ‘500’ featured seven yellow flag periods for a total of 39 laps, so fuel consumption proved not to be an issue. Pole position starter Foyt was out of lap 20 with a punctured oil tank, while Johncock and two-time USAC National Champion Joe Leonard were each eliminated in separate crashes. Leonard, who crashed after a left front tire failed, suffered a compound fracture of his lower left leg with his ankle was crushed and his foot nearly severed. It reportedly took rescuers nearly half an hour to extract him from the destroyed Vel’s Parnelli Eagle.  

At the finish of the 500 mile grind, Grant had moved up fourteen places from his starting position to finish third, one lap behind the brothers Unser, with his former teammate Bobby claiming the win. Grant’s new teammate Caruthers finished fourth a lap behind Grant who won $21,534 in prize money. The bad news was the reported attendance for the 1974 ‘California 500‘ was just 100,000 fans.

Joe Leonard missed the rest of the 1974 USAC racing season as he recovered from his injuries, and after eight months in a full-length cast, he attempted a comeback in March 1975 at age 41.  Before practice for the 1975 ‘California 500,’ USAC officials tested Leonard’s fitness and found that his left foot was not sufficiently healed as he could not fully depress the brake pedal of AJ Foyt’s backup car.  

Joe’s failed physical brought a sad end to his brilliant racing career that included three American Motorcycle Association (AMA) and two USAC national championships. Later in March 1975, Leonard’s attorneys James Boccardo and Bob Bohn announced to the Indianapolis Star newspaper writer Robin Miller that they had filed $1 million negligence suits against Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, Ontario Motor Speedway, Leonard’s physician, and Vel’s Parnelli Jones Racing, his car owner and employer at the time of the accident.    

Grant next raced in the ‘Trentonian 200’ at the New Jersey kidney-bean shaped one mile track nearly a month after the Ontario race. After he qualified twelfth, he officially finished in fifth place although the gearbox in his Eagle had broken and knocked him out of the race on lap 117 of the scheduled 134 lap race. Attrition was so high that April day at Trenton that only four of the original nineteen race starters were still running at the drop of the checkered flag.

As part of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s effort to address the nationwide fuel crisis the track did not open for practice until Monday May 6. The compressed schedule left teams with just five (5) scheduled 6-hour days of practice before “Pole Day” on May 11. Rather than the traditional four days of time trials, the 1974 schedule was reduced to two days on successive Saturdays.

In addition to the previously discussed changes to the cars, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway facility had changed. No longer was starter Pat Vidan stationed on a platform atop the wall that divided the racing surface from pit lane, instead Vidan was stationed on a platform attached to a new control tower perched high above the start/finish line on the outside of the track. The entry lane from the racing surface onto pit lane and the pit lane itself had been widened, the retaining walls around the track had been raised, and most importantly, the trackside seating on the outside of the main straightway had been removed.  

Jerry Grant’s #55 “Cobre Firestone Special” was scheduled to roll out fourteenth in the qualifying order on “Pole Day,” but after the typical scrambling with some cars pulled out of line, Grant’s Eagle was the eighth car out and he posted a conservative 181.781 MPH four-lap average. Shortly after Grant’s run, rain halted activity for three hours as the track dried. Five more cars qualified before rain fell again and closed the track for the day with 11 cars still guaranteed runs for the pole position. When the rain-shortened qualifying period was completed the following Saturday the 18th, Jerry Grant was slotted into the 17th starting position in the 33-car field, the middle of row six.

There were several controversies throughout and following time trials, the first of which concerned turbochargers and the boost limit. Patrick Racing team crew chief George Bignotti fitted the Offenhauser engines in his team’s cars with larger diameter turbochargers for qualifying, and intended to replace the larger turbochargers with smaller unit after qualifying.  

However, new Chief Steward Thomas Binford ruled that Wally Dallenbach’s and Gordon Johncock’s “STP” Eagles would have to race with the same turbocharger with which they qualified. Throughout the month many of teams publicly complained that the USAC-supplied “pop-off valves” opened before the 80 inches of Mercury pressure level was reached, and there were also numerous accusations of some teams “cheating” their pop-off valves.

As a result of the rain-shortened qualifying periods which further impacted the compressed schedule there eleven cars were left in line that had an opportunity to make a qualifying attempt when the final gun went off. Those teams were outraged as it had always been implied that everyone who wanted to make a run would at least just get a chance. Six of the wronged car owners threatened to file a lawsuit and in response, Binford offered to re-open time trials if the drivers of all 33 qualified cars agreed.  Binford’s compromise plan fell apart when Larry Cannon, driver of the Hoffman Racing “American Financial Special” the field’s slowest qualified car refused to sign the agreement.  

The lawsuit was filed which requested an injunction that will stop the 500-mile race from being held as scheduled. After a hearing held on Carburation Day, May 23, the following day Judge Frank A. Symmes of Marion County Superior Court threw out the suit and request for an injunction on the grounds that the plaintiffs had not exhausted all the available avenues in the USAC appeals process before they filed their lawsuit.

On Race Day, May 26, Grant and the Cobre Firestone Eagle, with injured teammate Lee Kunzman working behind the pit wall signaling on the signboard, struggled to a tenth place finish 25 laps behind winner Johnny Rutherford. Years later, it’s unclear what delayed Grant during the race, but the 1974 ‘500’ clearly was a race of attrition with a total of seven yellow flags displayed for 34 minutes and only twelve cars still running at the finish. Only second place finisher Bobby Unser was on the leader’s lap at the finish, 22 seconds in arrears.

To illustrate just how strange the 1974 ‘500’ was, the ninth place finisher, Lloyd Ruby, ran out of fuel on lap 187, and eleventh place finisher John Martin in the “Sea Snack Shrimp Cocktail Special” McLaren was six laps behind Grant, while the fourteenth place finisher Mike Hiss, the last car running, was flagged with just 158 laps completed.  At the ‘500’ Victory Banquet the next evening, Grant picked up a check for $21,266.06.

Two weeks after the Indianapolis ‘500,’ Grant and the #55 Cobre Firestone Eagle appeared in the Rex Mays Classic held on the Mile at the Wisconsin State Fairgrounds. In time trials, Grant circulated around the flat one-mile in 30.27-seconds which slotted him in eighteenth place in the starting field, while his teammate Caruthers qualified thirteenth.  AJ Foyt qualified for his second straight pole position start with a 27.91 second lap and then led the first eleven laps, but Johnny Rutherford, who spun on the seventh lap, dominated the later stages of the 150-lap race to score his second consecutive win. Jerry Grant finished nine laps behind Rutherford in thirteenth place and won $1375.00.   

Two weeks later, Jerry Grant was one of five drivers who failed to qualify for the ‘Schafer 500’ at the triangular 2-1/2 mile Pocono Raceway. Qualifications were disrupted by rain with the second day of time trials on June 23 was washed out and somehow, Grant did not make the 33-car starting field. Though his USAC season was over, Grant stayed busy as a member of the Champion Spark Plug Company Highway Safety Team that toured the county speaking to high schools on driving safety and in the light of the energy crisis, Grant also offered tips on economical driving. 

Any chance that Grant had to re-sign with Bob Fletcher for another season evaporated in August 1974 when Firestone Tire and Rubber Company abruptly announced that it was quitting racing at the end of the 1974 season. Firestone’s decision ended the 10-year “tire war” with Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company which had led to a massive increase in USAC racing teams’ budgets and expenses.

The withdrawal placed several key USAC players such as team owners Parnelli Jones and Bob Fletcher, as well as leading drivers such as Mario Andretti who owned Firestone tire distributorships in awkward positions. Furthermore it appeared that it would take several years to untangle the mess, as several racing teams and drivers had long-term contracts with Firestone that ran through the 1977 USAC season.  

Firestone which had supplied tires used by Ray Harroun in the inaugural Indianapolis 500-mile race in 1911 stated that their withdrawal was a business decision, as their return on investment in racing tires no longer made sense to the Firestone Board of Directors.  “Costs have skyrocketed in the last few years and there seems to be no end in sight,” said A. E. “Scotty” Brubaker, Firestone's vice president of advertising and public relations.  Bill McCreary, the company's director of racing, told the New York Times writer Michael Katz that Firestone spent $386,000 for tire tests in one six‐month period from November 1972 to April 1973.

Consider that during tire testing sessions, the tire company had not only the expense of the tires, but also the track rental, safety personnel, and the salaries and travel expenses of its employees. Added to those costs were the travel expenses for the driver and his crew, and the rental cost for the race car which included the provision of the reimbursement to the car owner for any damage during testing. Firestone had an estimated racing budget in 1972 that ranged from $3 million to 8 million a year most of which was funneled to teams, earmarked for driver and crew chief salaries and engine development programs.  

Firestone’s departure along with the nation’s economic problems led to a financial crisis for many USAC teams such as Fletcher’s which without any outside sponsors was dependent on the “tire money.” By 1976, Fletcher’s “Cobre Tire” team shrank to a single car effort. Firestone’s withdrawal affected both Firestone and Goodyear teams, as without competition Goodyear no longer had to provide their teams with stipends.  Through the following years, the entry lists at USAC championship events shrank.

Officials from both the tire companies involved in racing had pressured USAC officials for years to reduce the costs of racing with ideas such as the replacement of the highly-stressed and expensive turbocharged racing engines with cheaper stock block-based engines. As discussed in a previous chapter, USAC officials during this time were negotiating with the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) on a joint car/engine rules package. 

Firestone’s departure should have been a red flag to the officials of both clubs, but it apparently was not and eventually those negotiations collapsed in October 1976. If even if an agreement could have been reached it would have come too late for Firestone which remained out of IndyCar racing until 1995.

In 1995, Firestone and Goodyear once again engaged in a battle for supremacy; with Firestone coming out of top in the second albeit shorter war when Goodyear withdrew from IndyCar competition after the 1999 season. Since than Firestone remained the exclusive INDYCAR tire supplier, some of the original “tire warriors,” such as AJ Foyt, still fight the war.

Foyt, who was instrumental in bringing Goodyear to Indianapolis in 1964, went so far as use a black Sharpie® pen to obscure his name on the special edition Firestone tires that listed all the previous winners of the race on Firestone tires used by his team in the 2016 Indianapolis 500. 

In addition to his Champion duties, Jerry Grant closed out his 1974 racing season as he raced Frank Arcerio’s Lola T-332 in the final three west coast rounds of the SCCA/USAC Formula 5000 series. In the 100-mile 1974 “California Grand Prix” event at the 2.9-mile Ontario Motor Speedway on September 1, Grant was one of five Indianapolis drivers entered along with Rutherford, Mario Andretti, Mickey Rupp, and Lloyd Ruby who raced in a turbocharged Offenhauser powered Eagle. Grant qualified 17th, finished ninth in his 17-lap preliminary heat and finished sixth in the feature to earn $1800 before a crowd of just 28,000 on a day when the daytime temperature peaked at 99 degrees.

At the penultimate 1974 SCCA/USAC Formula 5000 round at Laguna Seca Raceway near Salinas California in mid-October, Grant qualified the Arcerio Lola/Chevy 23rd fastest in time trials. Grant finished eighth in the first 27-lap heat race and eleventh in the 50-lap feature, three laps behind back-to-back winner Brian Redman. 

At the end of October Grant raced in the final 1974 SCCA/USAC Formula 5000 race held at the Riverside International Raceway but was the first car out of the feature race on lap four and finished in twenty-second position, scored ahead of two cars that failed to start the race.  Grant wound up scored in a three-way tie for nineteenth place in the 1974 USAC/SCCA Formula 5000 season point standings.

 In our next installment we'll look at Jerry Grant's time with Fred Carrillo's team

The racing life and times of Jerry Grant

Part six –1973 season

USAC opened the 1973 race season embroiled in another dispute with the Automobile Competition Committee for the United States (ACCUS) the umbrella organization of United States auto racing sanctioning bodies to the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). USAC’s complaint was about the number of “Full International” events set aside for the other ACCUS members. The increasing number of “Full International” races eroded USAC’s control over its drivers and led to USAC’s threat to withdraw from ACCUS in 1974

Specifically, the USAC organization was irritated over the number of Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) events classified as “Full International,” which enabled drivers from ACCUS one club that held an FIA license to freely race with another ACCUS club.  The entire 1973 SCCA L&M Continental Series was classified as ‘Full International” if that event was listed as “Full International."

USAC then decided to refuse to allow driver interchange between USAC and SCCA during 1973, which led to Jerry Grant and Mark Donohue not renewing their USAC licenses, and in effect resigning from the USAC. In his April letter to USAC, Grant pointed out that he only had a ride for the three USAC “Crown Jewel” 500-mile races, and he had chances to race elsewhere and get paid.

Jerry Grant planned to compete in the opening round of the SCCA L&M Continental Series formula car series race at Riverside for car owners Chuck Jones and Jerry Eisert. Although it was one race deal, Dan Gurney and Grant planned to compete in the 1974 L&M series with a new All American Racing (AAR) Eagle creation.

Mark Donohue was scheduled to compete in the entire 1973 SCCA Canadian-American (Can-Am) Challenge series in the Penske Porsche turbocharged 917-10. Grant’s and Donohue’s resignation meant they could still race in the USAC FIA internationally-sanctioned 500-mile races at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Ontario Motor Speedway.  Despite the negative publicity generated by the defending Indianapolis ‘500’ winner, Donohue, and the first man to turn a lap at 200 MPH in a USAC championship car, Grant, quitting the organization, USAC officials remained intransigent.


 

Photo of Jerry Grant in 1973 courtesy INDYCAR

Grant was entered for the 1973 Indianapolis ‘500’ as the driver of Oscar ‘Ozzie” Olson’s #48 “Olsonite Eagle” as a teammate to Bobby Unser, with a third Eagle entered with no driver named. Practice at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway opened early on April 28, but Grant was at Riverside International Raceway in California for the L & M SCCA Formula 5000 race on April 29th.

Grant qualified ninth at Riverside but suffered unspecified mechanical problems during his qualifying heat but he still started the feature on a sponsor’s provisional. Grant’s ‘KBIG’ Lola T330 then fell out of the feature race after nine laps when the 475-horsepower Chevrolet V8 engine overheated and Jerry finished in the 24th position. 

On May 12, for the second year in a row practice prior to the first day of Indianapolis ‘500’ qualifying brought tragedy to an Eagle driver. Art Pollard in Bob Fletcher’s ‘Cobre Firestone Special’ customer Eagle crashed in the south short chute during morning warm-ups and Art died an hour later at Methodist Hospital.

Grant was the third car out on track from trials and qualified his white #48 car with orange and blue trim for his seventh Indianapolis 500 start with an average of 190.235 MPH, which would place him on the outside of the sixth row in the field of 33 cars.  As time trials progressed, Bobby Unser saw his year-old track one and four-lap track records smashed but he qualified his Olsonite Eagle in the second starting position behind Johnny Rutherford. Before qualifying was completed, the third Olsonite Eagle driven by Wally Dallenbach made the starting field. 

Race Day, Monday May 28 1973 dawned cloudy and cool with showers that delayed the scheduled start over four hours.  As the field of 33 cars accelerated and took the green flag from starter Pat Vidan, the McLaren of David “Salt” Walther who started alongside Grant in the middle of the sixth row, climbed the left front wheel of Grant’s Eagle. Walther’s car pin wheeled in the air over the top of Dallenbach’s Eagle and flew into the outer catch fencing.

Two of the support posts of the catch fencing were torn out as the front of Walther’s car was sheared off and burning methanol fuel and parts flew into the trackside folding chair seating area located just a few feet away. With a total of ten cars involved in the horrific crash, starter Vidan immediately displayed the red flag to stop the race.  

Salt Walther suffered third-degree burns over 25% of his body and nine spectators were hospitalized, two in critical condition. Before the clean-up of debris and track repairs could be completed, it began to rain again. The 1973 Indianapolis 500-mile race would completely restart on Tuesday May 29.

Overnight, all the damaged cars except Walther’s were repaired. On Tuesday morning it rained again which delayed the scheduled 9 AM start. During the delay there reportedly there was a stormy drivers meeting during which several drivers criticized race officials for the decisions which the drivers claimed led to the previous day’s conflagration.

After the track dried, the cars were started again to another start, but at the beginning of the second parade lap, John Martin in his own unsponsored McLaren pulled into the pit area and signaled to officials that it was raining on the course. Soon after, heavy showers settled in and by 2 PM, officials announced that the start of the 500-mile race was moved to 9 AM Wednesday morning. 

The small crowd present at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Wednesday saw a clean start as Bobby Unser in his Olsonite Eagle took the lead and held on for the first 39 laps, while many of his expected competitors, including AJ Foyt, Mario Andretti, Lloyd Ruby, and Peter Revson retired. On lap 48, the #62 Olsonite Eagle of Dallenbach retired with a broken connecting rod in its Offenhauser engine.

The red flag was again displayed on lap 57 due to Swede Savage’s horrific crash on the main straightaway, and during the delay, a clearly unnerved Jerry Grant was interviewed by ABC Sports. Grant, who had brought his Eagle to a stop just short of the Savage accident debris field, complained that he needed to run a different line to avoid driving through the oil on the track. Grant responded to the interviewer’s follow-up question about the safety of the track by replying “it’s making an old man out of me.”  Not surprisingly, Bobby Unser interviewed moments later by ABC Sports refused to agree with Grant’s assessment of track conditions.  

After one hour and ten minutes the race resumed. Grant’s Olsonite Eagle retired with the same malady as Dallenbach’s, a broken connecting rod on lap 77, and then Bobby Unser made it a hat trick when his car’s Offenhauser engine broke one of its four connecting rods at the halfway point. Mechanical attrition in 1973 ‘500’ was extremely high with just twelve cars still running with several of those cars more than seven laps down, when showers began to fall on the leader’s 129th lap.

When the rain intensified the race was stopped with the 1973 500-mile race’s fourth and final red flag on lap 133 with Gordon Johncock in the lead.  Moments later Johncock was declared the joyless winner of the 1973 Indianapolis ‘500.’  There was no Victory Banquet held, and though preliminary results listed Grant in seventeenth place, he was credited with a nineteenth place finish in the final official results and earned $16,675.

The public fallout from the circumstances of the 1973 Indianapolis 500-mile race, with the senseless death of pit worker Armando Teran, the injuries to nine spectators and the critical burns to two drivers (one of whom, Swede Savage would later die) was immediate.
 

STP Corporation President Andy Granatelli the sponsor of Savage’s and Johncock’s Eagles, stated that “all of us in racing must face the fact that we are simply going faster than our tracks and drivers can safely handle these flying missiles.” If changes were made promptly, Granatelli threatened to pull out of racing "This is not a demand for reform, but a sincere and sad plea to all of my fellow members of the racing community to assist me in obtaining this kind of reform," Granatelli said.

On Saturday June 2 1973, the USAC Board of Directors met in a special emergency session, and the Rules Committee and the Board quickly voted to make immediate rules changes. The allowable width of the rear wing on the championship cars was reduced from 64 inches to 55 inches. The allowable fuel capacity of all cars was slashed from 75 gallons to 40 gallons, with fuel bladders only allowed to be installed on the left side of the cars. To further reduce speeds, the total amount of fuel allotted for a 500-mile race was reduced from 375 gallons to 340 gallons.

Jerry Grant did not race again on the 1973 USAC championship trail until late August at the Ontario Motor Speedway for the fourth annual ‘California 500.’  In one year, the atmosphere at Ontario had changed dramatically, as the track was under new management but there were still serious long-term financial concerns.   

Originally envisioned in 1963, with ground broken in September 1968, the Ontario Motor Speedway was built at a total cost of $25.5 million. The completed project designed by Benham-Kite and Associates and built in 22 months by the Stolte Company Inc. featured a 2-1/2 mile oval modeled after the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but one lane (10 feet) wider, and more banking in the two short chutes with a flat infield road course.

The track had a unique public funding structure: the track owner, the Ontario Motor Speedway Corporation (OMS Corporation) was a non-profit entity created and controlled by the City of Ontario to issue the bonds for the purpose of raising the money required to purchase the 800 acres adjacent to the San Bernardino Freeway (also known as the “10”) and construct the facility.  

The Ontario Motor Speedway Incorporated (OMS Inc.) a for-profit company initially headed David Lockton and later by Ray Smartis, had a seven-year contract to oversee the construction and operation of the Speedway. A 1968 Market Support and Economic Evaluation Study by Economics Research Associates Inc. anticipated that over one million persons would attend events at the Speedway each year. The $20,000 study concluded that with that level of attendance, the Speedway would easily generate sufficient income for the track operator to pay the OMS Corporation rent, which would be used service the 7.5% interest payments on the bonds.  

A postcard drawing of the back side of the OMS main grandstand

The track opened in 1970 with 140,000 permanent grandstand seats and a five-story control tower building that featured a private “Victory Circle” VIP club with suites, restaurants, bars, and air-conditioned seating. Membership to the “Victory Circle Club” cost $250 annually and tickets to the inaugural California ‘500’ USAC race in 1970 ranged from $5 to $25. That first USAC race drew 178,000 fans, but then attendance dropped to a reported 130,000 for the 1972 running of the California ‘500.’

On November 29 1972, after just over two years of operation, the Ontario track was padlocked because the operator, OMS Inc. failed to make the annual rent payment of $2 million to the OMS Corporation to be used to cover the interest payments to bondholders. OMS Inc. claimed that it was impossible to pay the $2 million annual rent, which it said represented 60% of the Speedway’s annual gross revenue.

The track operator, OMS Inc., reported that it lost over $9.7 million since the track opened and took the position that the bondholders should accept a percentage of profits, rather than a fixed payment.  The OMS Inc. counter-proposal was rejected, and with the Speedway operator in default, the original agreement was terminated in December and the OMS Corporation began a search for a new track operator.

After a couple months of negotiation, a potential savior was identified - Western Racing Associates (WRA), which had offered a proposal to run the Speedway in 1968 agreed to lease the Speedway for 12 months. Allegedly backed by razor fortune heir William Gillette, the publicly identified officials of the company were Conrad Sprenger, the president of an Ontario radio station, Orange County contractor/developer Kent B. Rogers and as a recent addition to the group, former OMS Inc. general manager Ray Smartis.  

On Thursday January 4 1973, the five-member governing board of the OMS Corporation unanimously accepted the WRA proposal. However, a few days later just before the deal was set to be signed, WRA backed out of the deal. The Speedway remained shuttered as the OMS Corporation was forced to renew its search for a new track operator. For this third search round there were three leading groups in competition to run Ontario Motor Speedway. One group headed by Ray Smartis, another group was a reportedly a coalition of local labor unions, and then there was the Ontario Motor Speedway Operation Company Limited (OMSOC).

The principals of OMSOC were racing industry heavyweights- Anton Hulman and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Corporation, 1963 Indianapolis ‘500’ winner and USAC racing team owner Parnelli Jones, Jones’ racing team partner and Southern California car dealer Vel Miletich, Jones and Miletich’s public relations/business manager Jim Cook, and the pair’s lawyer a man named Dudley Gray.

Other partners in the OMSOC included Peter Firestone, grandson of Firestone Tire and Rubber Company founder Harvey Firestone, Mike Slater the president of Commander Motor Homes and a USAC car owner, and Arthur D Hale, the founder and president of US Mag Wheels. Parnelli Jones was President and Vice-Chairman of the group, while Tony Hulman, who held the majority of the shares, was OMSOC Chairman.  Gray was the General Counsel, Miletich the group’s Secretary-Treasurer. IMS President and long-time Hulman confidant Joseph Cloutier was a Vice-President with Jim Cook named the OMSOC General Manager.

OMSOC quickly emerged as the frontrunner, but before the OMSOC proposal was submitted, some tough behind the scenes negotiating was done with USAC. After weeks of conferences between the IMS Corporation and USAC, a deal was finally signed at the first USAC race of the year at Bryan Texas. USAC agreed to sanction the 1973 California ‘500’ for a $500,000 combined sanctioning fee and purse, which was a reduction of $200,000 from 1972.

At the April 10 deadline, OMSOC submitted its proposal, which called for the group for the group to immediately pay all the outstanding debts incurred by OMS Inc., and pay the OMS Corporation $150,000 in rent at the end of the first year on March 31, 1974. OMSOC would pay $200,000 rent for the second year, $250,000 at the end of the third year, $400,000 for the fourth year and $512,000 the fifth year.

To supplement the sharply reduced rent payment amounts, OMSOC would also pay the OMS Corporation a 50% share of the Speedway profits. The two other competing groups which had submitted proposals withdrew their proposals after the details of the OMSOC proposal were revealed.

The OMSOC offer was unanimously accepted by the OMS Corporation Board, and after the signing the one year agreement with a five-year option, OMSOC President Parnelli Jones accepted the keys to the plant on April 22 1973. “We have a year to find out if the track can be operated successfully," Jones said at the signing. "We honestly don't know yet. We do know that it will take all the cooperation of the community, the drivers, car owners, manufacturers, racing fans, and sanctioning bodies to make it happen."

Planning for the fourth annual 1973 California ‘500’ began immediately, with changes in the format from the previous three years. Qualifying would be just two laps, not four laps and the day after qualifying there would be two 100-mile “qualifying heats” held with the finishing order of the races to set the 33-car field behind the front row.

The shorter “qualifying heats” would not pay individual purses but would award USAC championship points. USAC formally issued the sanctioning agreement for the 1973 “California 500” on April 20, 1973.  OMSOC announced for the first time at Ontario, camper parking would be allowed in the infield, which would not create sightline problems as the backstretch at Ontario was several feet higher in elevation than the front straightaway.  

During practice for the 1973 “California 500” Jerry Grant and the ‘Olsonite Eagle #48 turned in a practice lap speed of 190.645 MPH which put him near the top of the speed charts. After qualifying was completed on August 25, the same three drivers made up the front row of the starting grid for the 1973 “California 500” as the 1972 race; Grant, Peter Revson and Gordon Johncock.

But unlike 1972, Grant did not win the pole position as he qualified second fastest with a two-lap average of 198.873 MPH, while pole-sitter Revson broke the magic 200 MPH barrier, but did not approach Bobby Unser’s year-old track record with a two-lap average of 200.089 MPH.

Grant, Revson, Bobby Unser, Jerry Karl in Smokey Yunick’s turbocharged Chevrolet-powered Eagle,  AJ Foyt and Foyt’s teammate George Snider chose to save the wear and tear on their equipment and did not race in either of the twin 100-mile “qualifying heat” races on run August 26. Technically, Grant, Johncock, and Revson by qualifying on the front row were not required to run either 100-mile races.   

The twin 40-lap races were won by Johnny Rutherford and Wally Dallenbach, so they would start in fourth and fifth positions respectively for the 500-mile race on Sunday September 2. The day before the California ‘500,’ a group of car owners met in a closed-door session to discuss what was described as “upgrading the design, performance, safety, and finances of the USAC championship circuit” while at the same time a closed-door drivers meeting was held.

The next day, Grant’s #48 Olsonite Eagle was the first car out of the California ‘500,’ for the second year in a row, as he crashed in the second turn on lap two after second place driver Gordon Johncock’s “STP Double Oil Filter” Eagle blew its Offenhauser engine and laid a slick mixture of oil and STP Oil Treatment on the track surface.

Dallenbach, the eventual California ‘500’ winner was behind Grant and while his “STP Oil Treatment” Eagle also slid in the oil, Dallenbach somehow saved it from crashing.  Johncock’s crippled Eagle coasted around to his pit area and by crossing the start/finish line; Gordon was credited with a 32nd place finish. Jerry Grant in last place earned just $2,305 out of the total purse of $370,000.  

Grant tested the early development Formula 5000 Eagles in late 1973, and while AAR built Eagle chassis for the 1974 and 1975 SCCA/USAC Formula 500 championships seasons, Jerry Grant was not the AAR team’s driver. After the 1973 “California 500,” Grant never drove again for All American Racers Inc., although he drove nothing but Eagles for the rest of his USAC racing career.

Postscript – the USAC/SCCA battle resolved (for awhile)

Author's copy of an SCCA/USAC F5000 program

USAC’s threatened 1974 withdrawal from ACCUS over the “Full International” status of SCCA races never occurred. Instead a series of meetings between USAC and SCCA officials commenced in January 1974 with an agreement was reached in May 1974 for the Formula 5000 series to be jointly sanctioned by the SCCA and USAC. The eighth season of the open wheel formula car road racing series, known as the 1974 “SCCA/USAC Formula 5000 Championship” began June 2 at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course with "Buckeye Cup."  

Beginning immediately, the Formula 5000 championship was open to not only SCCA legal cars but also to USAC cars powered by either 161 cubic inch turbocharged, 255 cubic-inch double overhead camshaft or 305 cubic inch "stock block" engines. The USAC cars would run on methanol, with a required pit stop for turbocharged cars.

Over the next few years, there were a number of USAC stars that competed in the Formula 5000 series; the roster included Mario Andretti, Mike Mosely Johnny Rutherford, as well as Bobby and Al Unser, but there were only three turbocharged Offenhauser powered entries that ever tried to run the Formula 5000 series.

In a press release that announced the agreement worked out with USAC President Reynold McDonald, SCCA President Cameron Argetsinger was quoted that “joint sanction is an important step, but more importantly, USAC and the SCCA have agreed to direct their best efforts of a long-range plan for a common open-wheel car and engine formula and a single championship to be run on both road courses and ovals.” The timetable called for the two groups to formulate a detailed plan for approval by each governing board by January 1975 with the common formula put into effect in January 1976.

Alas, this plan never came to pass as the SCCA and USAC were unable to agree on a common formula. Nearly a year after the planned target, on October 11 1976, the USAC announced its withdrawal from the joint sanction of the Formula 5000 series. Frankie DelRoy, USAC’s Technical Director told Milwaukee Journal writer Roger Jaynes “for a while it looked like we could work out a common formula. But every time we tried to work out a compromise the SCCA wanted everything their way. Fuel, tire sizes, type of engine- everything.”

In the end, said DelRoy, “it was a case of us helping out the SCCA and them not helping us.  They got our name drivers - Mario Andretti, Al Unser and the rest to strengthen their series, but they didn’t want to help us one bit.” The Formula 5000 series came to an end at the close of the 1976 season, and most of the teams enclosed their Formula 5000 chassis in full bodywork to compete in the “new” SCCA Can-Am series for 1977.  

Postscript- the slow death of the Ontario Motor Speedway

After attendance dropped again for the 1973 “California 500,” the new operators, the Ontario Motor Speedway Operation Company Limited (OMSOC) moved the 500-mile USAC race date to March for 1974. The original one-year operation agreement between OMSOC and OMS Corporation was renewed with amendments reducing the rent payments in 1974.

The March 9 1975 USAC California ‘500’ attracted just 52,000 spectators, and after the race it was revealed that OMSOC owed $119,000 in back taxes, $7,000 in penalties and $75,000 in rent due on March 31 1975. On March 27 1975 OMSOC President Parnelli Jones president terminated the lease saying that OMSOC had lost too much money.

George Mim Mack, chairman of the non-profit OMS Corporation which issued the bonds was asked in a 1975 newspaper interview if the Ontario Motor Speedway would ever be profitable. His response was “you’d have to say since the first operators were knowledgeable and the current group is very knowledgeable that it may be unrealistic for that to happen in the immediate future.”

OMSOC closed their offices on March 31, 1975 and the City of Ontario assigned ten City employees to care for the facility with Ray Smartis returning as General Manager later in 1975. Smartis moved the 1976 California ‘500’ date back to Labor Day, and the Ontario Motor Speedway continued to struggle along as it hosted Spring and Fall USAC race dates beginning in 1977 but it still lost money. Beginning in 1978, the threat of foreclosure hung over the track daily and that possibility had to be reflected in every contract for track use.

By 1980 the latest management group was bankrupt, and Ontario Motor Speedway bonds were nearly worthless, while the value of 800-acre property had skyrocketed. In December 1980, the City of Ontario sold the bonds, and in effect the property and facility, to the Chevron Land Management Company for $10 million. By February 1981 the track was deserted. 

During 1981, Chevron demolished the track facilities and in the summer of1986 moved the 1.5 million cubic yards of dirt that formed the earthen berms. With the last vestiges of the track Chevron developed the area for commercial and residential uses.

There are no landmarks of the “Big O” left, although there is a multi-use public park in the City of Ontario California named in honor of the Speedway and several streets in the area of the park are named after automobiles such as Duesenberg Drive and Porsche Way.  

In the next installment of the Jerry Grant story in 1974, Grant moves onto another team as a replacement for an injured colleague. 

The racing life and times of Jerry Grant

Part five –1972 after the Indianapolis ‘500’

While car owner Dan Gurney’s appeal of the 1972 Indianapolis ‘500’ penalty of ten finishing positions and over $71,000 by United States Auto Club (USAC) officials for a pit violation was being addressed, the “Mystery Eagle” team moved to Milwaukee for the 150-mile ‘Rex Mays Classic’ on June 4. Grant’s teammate, Bobby Unser qualified his 1972 All American Racers (AAR) Eagle #6 for the pole position with Grant alongside in the purple and white #48.

Bobby Unser led the first 45 circuits on the flat Wisconsin State Fair Park one-mile oval before he pitted and yielded the race lead to Grant for one lap while the field ran under the caution flag. While Unser went on to lead the last ninety laps and win the race, the turbocharger on the four-cylinder Offenhauser engine in Grant’s car failed and the “Mystery Eagle” retired on lap 86.

Three days after the Milwaukee race, Gurney and Grant learned that their appeal of the Indianapolis penalty had been rejected, and rather than a minimal fine which they had hoped for, Grant was awarded twelfth place. Around that same time, Grant and Gurney discovered that their Indianapolis sponsor, Chris Vallo of CV Enterprises, rather than being a millionaire as he claimed was a scam artist who had dropped of sight owing the AAR team and Grant tens of thousands of dollars.

Grant’s promising 1972 USAC season ground to a halt for lack of sponsorship with the purple and white #48 AAR Eagle grounded for three months. In mid-August, Gurney’s primary sponsor Oscar L “Ozzie” Olson of the Olsonite Corporation, manufacturer of molded one-piece plastic toilet seats, announced that he had purchased the “Mystery Eagle.” Olson announced that Jerry Grant would run the final three USAC races on the 1972 schedule, starting with the third leg of the USAC ”Triple Crown” at the 2-1/2 mile “Indianapolis of the West,” Ontario Motor Speedway.

Practice at Ontario California began on August 22 and both the Eagles of Grant and teammate Bobby Unser soon posted practice lap speeds of over 200 miles per hour (MPH). Experts calculated that the turbocharged Offenhauser engines in the AAR Eagles had to produce nearly 1,100 horsepower in order to accomplish the 200 MPH feat.

That huge amount of horsepower from 159 cubic inches of engine displacement came at a price as the high level of boost pressure put a tremendous strain of the engine’s internal components.  Unser experienced two engine failures in practice and then in pre-qualifying practice on the morning of August 26, Unser’s car suffered another engine failure, which opened the door for Grant.

Jerry Grant’s first lap around the Ontario Motor Speedway in the purple and white #48 “Olsonite Eagle” lap was completed in 44.7 seconds, or 201.414 MPH. Jerry Grant was the first man to officially turn a lap in an Indianapolis-type championship race car at over 200 MPH. Grant’s lap broke Peter Revson’s day-old Ontario track record of 194.470 MPH and set a new world’s closed course speed record and took the two-year old "world’s closed course speed record" away from NASCAR stock car racer Bobby Issac.

Grant’s last three laps of his 10-mile time trial run were progressively slower, but he would start the ‘California 500’ from the pole position with a four-lap average of 199.600 MPH. In a post-qualifying interview, Grant explained “I didn’t want to push it so I backed off a little after that first lap. The track is slick and I didn’t want to make a stupid mistake.”

Grant seemed a bit underwhelmed by his accomplishment. “Going 200 MPH to say you’ve gone 200 MPH is not the object. I want to get a good starting position in the race and any of the three in the front will be fine with me.”    

Meanwhile, the AAR crew replaced the engine in Unser’s car in time for him to make his time trial run later on Saturday, but rain showers in the area kept Unser off the track and therefore he was ineligible to make a run for the pole position. 

The next day, Sunday August 27, Unser’s Eagle blazed to a new track and world’s record with a lap of 201.965 MPH and a four-lap average of 201.374 MPH but because his run came a day too late, Unser started the 1972 ‘California 500’ from the twenty-third starting position.

If there was any question of the level of animosity between Grant and Unser, it was answered by Grant’s quote printed by the Associated Press after Unser’s record-setting run. “Isn’t it ironic?” said Grant, “the B team is sitting on the pole and the A team is back in 23rd?”  Unser later told Preston Lerner "that record should have been mine.  Letting Jerry get the record irks me like hell because I did all the development work on the car.”

In pre-race publicity, AJ Foyt predicted race laps would be in the 175-180 MPH range with engine turbocharger boost levels reduced and the cars carrying full fuel loads . In final practice on September 1, Grant ran a lap with full tanks at 190.779 MPH, and Unser practiced at 192.028 MPH. In an article published the day before the race the Long Beach Press-Telegram ranked Grant as a 10-1 favorite to win the race to be held on September 3 1972.  

Jerry Grant’s “Mystery Eagle” failed to complete the first parade lap of the third annual $700,000 “California 500” before a rod bolt in the Offenhauser engine broke. In an interview days later with Ohio sportswriter Rick Yocum, Grant revealed “I never felt more confident about a race in my life than I did about Ontario. Usually we change the engine after qualifying, but mine was running good, and you hate to fool with something that’s working so well. We changed pistons, valves and bearings, but not the bolts.”

Grant struggled with engine problems at the “Trenton 300” held on the 1-1/2 mile dog-leg oval Trenton (New Jersey) Speedway; he qualified eighteenth and finished 21st after the engine failed on lap 53. At the season-ending ‘Best Western 150’ at Phoenix International Raceway, Grant qualified tenth and finished eighth, 11 laps behind his teammate Unser who won his second consecutive USAC championship race.

Next time we will tell the story of Jerry Grant's shortened 1973 season and his struggles against  the USAC hierarchy.