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The 45th Indianapolis 500 was held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Tuesday, May 30, 1961. For the first time since 1949, the Indianapolis 500 was not recognized on the World Championship calendar. The race celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first Indy 500 in 1911. Eddie Sachs and A. J. Foyt were battling for 1st-2nd in the latter stages of the race. On Foyt's final scheduled pit stop, his crew is unable to properly engage the fuel mechanism, and his car does not take on a full load of fuel. Foyt returns to the track, and is pulling away from Sachs. Foyt's car is running faster due to the light fuel load, but his crew signals him that he will be unable to make it to the finish without another pit stop. The crew borrowed a fuel tank from Len Sutton's team, and signaled Foyt to the pits. Foyt gives up the lead on lap 184 for a splash-and-go. That hands the lead to Sachs, who is now leading by 25 seconds. With three laps to go, the warning tread shows through on Sachs' rear tire and Sachs decides to play it safe. Rather than nurse the car around, he pits to replace the worn tire on lap 197. Foyt takes the lead with three laps to go and wins his first (of four) Indy 500 victories by a margin of 8.28 seconds. A notable story included the appearance of two-time defending Formula One World Champion Jack Brabham from Australia, who drove the race in a low-slung, British built Cooper powered by a Coventry Climax engine. Dubbed the "British Invasion," it would be the first notable post-war appearance of a rear-engined car, and within five years the rear-engined revolution would take over the Speedway. The venerable front-engined roadsters with their larger and more powerful engines were much faster down the long straights, but the superior handling of Brabham's Cooper in the corners kept his car competitive. Brabham qualified 17th at 145.144 mp/h and drove the car to a respectable 9th place finish, completing all 200 laps. Five months after the race in October 1961, the front straight of the track was paved over with asphalt, and thus the entire track was now paved in asphalt and only a single yard of bricks at the start/finish line was left exposed from the original 1909 brick surface. The remainder of the original 3,200,000 bricks now lie underneath the asphalt surface. This meant that the 1961 race was the last 500 in which cars raced on the original bricks other than those at the start/finish line. ==Practice and time trials== Nicknamed the "Tinley Park Express," Tony Bettenhausen, Sr. was killed in a crash during a practice run on May 12. He was testing a car for Paul Russo. It was determined that an anchor bolt fell off the front radius rod support, permitting the front axle to twist and mis-align the front wheels when the brakes were applied. The car plunged into the outside wall, then rode along the top, snapping fence poles and tearing segments of the catch fence. The car came to rest upside-down on top of the outside wall, and Bettenhausen was killed instantly. Before the time trials Bettenhausen had been the favorite to become the first driver to break the 150 mph barrier at the Speedway.〔http://indymotorspeedway.com/500d-61.htm〕 Time trials was scheduled for four days: *Saturday May 13 - Pole Day time trials *Sunday May 14 - Second day time trials *Saturday May 20 - Third day time trials *Sunday May 21 - Fourth day time trials Eddie Sachs sat on the pole with an average speed of 147.481 mph (237.348 km/h). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「1961 Indianapolis 500」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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