Were Indy cars of the 1950s raced on road courses like Formula 1 cars (Monaco, Grand Prix, LeMans, etc), or were they exclusively run on oval tracks like the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Indy 500)? I think the Indy 500 was included in the World Championship for awhile, and some F1 cars race the 500, but I don't think many Indy cars raced in F1 races.
Indy cars of the 1950's were seldom not on an oval. There were a few that went to Italy and raced at Monza. Yes, Indy was part of the F1 tour briefly. Formula One had one race at Riverside, here in SoCal in 1960 and the lineup was all F1
For the most part, Indycars were still front engine roadsters mainly raced on ovals up into the mid 60's. Jimmy Clark and Graham Hill brought their F1 cars (or at least variants) to the 500 around '65 which started the move to smaller, rear engine cars. The race was a stop on the World Championship at that point. Other types of tracks early Indycars raced on were dirt, board and I belive even Pikes Peak Hill Climb was on the circuit for a while as well as other "point to point" races. It seems that the movement of Indycars to street and road courses mainly came about in the 70's with the decline of the Can Am series.
Oh, and in 1959, Formula One raced at Sebring and Roger Ward drove a Kurtis-Offy Indy car, but did not finish the race.
Thanks. That's what I thought. I'm working out an art piece and wanted to Indy cars on a road course, but it sounds like that wouldn't hold true. I like the look of the 50s Indy cars better than most of the F1 cars, but confined oval tracks are boring compared to the backgrounds possible in road racing. I'm going to have to think about this some more, but I may have to go with the formulas.
Indy cars/National Championship/big car racing in the 50's was primarily on dirt. The advent of roadsters or "pavement" oriented cars led to an increase in many dirt tracks being paved towards the end of the decade. The cars morphed to rear engine designs by 61-63 and by late decade were used almost exclusively on the paved tracks, and road courses such as Riverside, CA and Indy's Raceway Park were regular stops for the USAC National Championship, which included the dirt cars until the late 70's.
well, try ideas around the race at Monza... ============ http://www.johnstarkeycars.com/pages/articles/articles_15.html ===========
as you see here...the Americans beat some butt over there, top three spots [FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]1957 MONZA 500 MILES 1: J. Bryan, 189 laps (Dean Van Lines Special, 4.2-liters) 257.504 kph 2: T. Ruttman, 187 laps (John Zink Special, 4.2-liters) 3: J. Parsons, 182 laps (Agajanian Special, 4.2-liters) 4: J. Fairman, 177 laps (Jaguar D, 3.5-liters) 5: J. Lawrence, 171 laps (Jaguar D, 3.8-liters) 6: N. Sanderson, 159 laps (Jaguar D, 3.5-liters) 7: R. Crawford, 117 laps (Meguiar’s Mirror Glaze Special, 4.2-liters) 8: E. Sachs, 107 laps (Jim Robbins Special, 4.2-liters)[/FONT]
read up on Monza and get do searches for photos of the track...Monza had some wicked banked corners that would make for wild artwork depicting the Indy cars....
Thanks for the tip! I looked up the 1957 Monza race. What a shame all but 1 of the European teams pulled out. It sounds like they knew they were going to be beat badly, and cited safety as an excuse. The Scots stuck it out though.
Kurtis built the Indy winners and dominant cars for years. They also built great road race cars but I think they were mainly raced in the USA.
Just got done watching Grand Prix with James Garner. Some good racing scenes but mostly 3 hours of my life I'll never get back. Next is LeMans.
But Roger did drive Ken Brenn's Kurtis Offy midget on the Limerock road course and beat the best road racer's in the world. The fact that an oval driver, in a midget, with no transmission, and marginal brakes, sent the big boys with their Ferraris and Masserattis packing, was quite humiliating.