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"John Cooper did not turn his customary somersault on the ground in front of the Cooper pit at Indianapolis as his car crossed the finish line. This display of athletic exultation is reserved for occasions when his cars finish in first spot, and his man in Indianapolis, Jack Brabham\u2014twice World Champion and current defender of the title\u2014crossed the finish line in 9th place, eight minutes behind winner A. J. Foyt.   A large portion of the estimated 250,000 spectators would have allowed Cooper this bit of self indulgence, however, solely on the basis of having scored a moral victory. The Coventry Climax-powered Cooper was giving away some 80 cubic inches and 150 horsepower to its 32 Meyer-Drake-powered competitors. This difference between the British car and its American contemporaries was not readily obvious to the naked eye, and neither was the 500-lb (on the average) weight differential\u2014a fact which placed the Cooper&amp;#039;s weight at roughly 66% of the Indy roadsters and its horsepower at about 62% of the U.S. machines.   Obvious differences were primarily over-all size and engine location. The Cooper&amp;#039;s wheelbase was some 6 inches shorter and the tread about 3 inches wider (on the average) than its adversaries&amp;#039;. It also sat higher off the ground, giving it the look of a grasshopper in the midst of a swarm of beetles. Even with the greater ground clearance of the Cooper, the frontal area was as small as, or smaller than, any of the &amp;quot;roadsters.&amp;quot; due to the fact that it had the engine in the rear, enabling the driver to sit in a cockpit unhampered by driveshaft location problems.   Also different, and a factor which permitted Brabham to negotiate easily all portions of the 2.5-mile rectangle-with-rounded-corners, was the full independent suspension of the Cooper.           Most of the famous &amp;quot;brickyard&amp;quot; is now paved with very smooth asphalt, but for the sake of tradition a section of the old brick surface is retained in front of the pits. Many of the Indianapolis roadsters, with their relatively low sprung/unsprung weight ratio and solid axles, cross the brick section of the track looking more like hydroplanes on a choppy surface than well-handling race cars.   All 32 American cars had beam axles front and rear and all but two had torsion bars as the spring medium. Two cars, Roger Ward&amp;#039;s and Johnny Boyd&amp;#039;s\u2014both built by A.J. Watson\u2014had coil spring/damper units made by Monroe at each corner of the car. The Cooper used a similar system made by Armstrong.   Brabham qualified the Cooper, a new car built especially for the Memorial Day 500-mile race but based on last year&amp;#039;s Formula I design, at 145.144 mph. Although 16 cars qualified faster than the Cooper, Brabham started in 13th position due to the unique qualifying system at Indy, wherein all first-day qualifiers are assured their starting berths unless all those who qualify on subsequent trials surpass the speed of the slowest car from the first day. In the event this happens, the first day qualifiers can be bumped from the line-up, one at a time, starting at the back.   As predicted, the Cooper was faster through the corners but slower on the straights than the American cars, but it looked as though Brabham could pick his own path around the track with little need for being &amp;quot;in the groove&amp;quot; to achieve his top speed. He never pushed the car really hard during the race (his tachometer tell-tale was stuck at 6150 rpm after the race) and drove steadily in his usual unruffled style.           Pre-race prognosticators had plenty of food for thought in trying to pick a winner. The &amp;quot;experts&amp;quot; picked either vociferous Eddie Sachs, winner of the pole position two years running, veteran Rodger Ward, or relative newcomers Jim Hurtubise, A. J. Foyt or Parnelli Jones. Nor to be discounted in anybody&amp;#039;s poll were veteran Troy Ruttman, once again in good form, and the Rathmann brothers Jim and Dick. Any of these drivers were granted a good chance of picking up the golden marbles.   Speculation in this office seemed to favor Sachs, Hurtubise or Ward to win, with Brabham in the first seven if he finished. Pre-race comments by Wally Hassan, designer of the Coventry Climax engine used in the Cooper, indicated that this bored out (to 2.75 liters) 2.5-liter. 4-cyl GP engine might not prove reliable for the 500 miles and Hassan didn&amp;#039;t want the blame if it didn&amp;#039;t make it. As things turned out the engine, the car, and Brabham, probably could have gone another 500 miles at the same speed. It looked to us as though Foyt&amp;#039;s and Sachs&amp;#039; cars could have done the same, though some of the other finishers&amp;#039; engines sounded as though they were lucky to make it.   We thought the pre-race claims that the Cooper would have to make three or four pit stops for tires was pure strategy, planned to hoodwink the opposition. Brabham did in fact make three pit stops (one of which took over a minute). The (Cooper was the only car in the race to run tires other than Firestone and fuel other than Mobil, a situation brought about by Cooper&amp;#039;s contracts with Dunlop and Esso.   The Memorial Day 500-mile race is billed as &amp;quot;The Greatest Spectacle in Racing&amp;quot; And that it is! Bands, music, celebrities both in and outside the racing world, color, fanfare and all the hoopla of a country carnival, topped off by 33 brightly painted and very fast racing cars lapping the 2.5-mile track 200 times. All this is witnessed by the largest crowd at any enclosed event in the U.S., sporting or otherwise, and only (possibly) topped by LeMans or Nurburg Ring. Other spectator sports don&amp;#039;t hold a candle to the &amp;quot;500&amp;quot; in sheer size, opulence or grandeur. It&amp;#039;s easy to see why hundreds of thousands of people make the pilgrimage to Indianapolis year after year.   The line-up of cars waiting to get into the track starts the night before the race and by 5:00 a.m. (when the gates open) extends in all directions two or three lanes wide. Due to many years of planning and practice, and very efficient work by the police department, most of the mob is inside the gates within an hour after the gates open.           At 11 A.M. the flag dropped, after all of the 33 cars had completed two pace laps behind racing director Sam Hanks&amp;#039; gold Thunderbird, Jim Hurtubise shot into the lead from the outside of the front row and held off the pack for 36 laps, averaging 144.807 mph in the process. As Hurtubise came into the pits for his first stop, Jim Rathmann took the lead, then Parnelli Jones relieved Rathmann of this position two laps later.   Jones pitied on lap 50 for tires and fuel and Sachs took over the front position. Rathmann had dropped back with his engine spluttering. Jones regained the lead shortly after his pit stop, and was leading when the yellow flag went out as a result of the 5-car mixup in front of the pits. No change of position is allowed while the caution flag is out, so Jones led for 23 uncontested laps. This gave him $3450 with practically no effort at all as the leader on each lap of the race receives $150.   By lap 90 Foyt and Ruttman had both led briefly, but from there on it was Sachs and Foyt all the way, with Rodger Ward running a not-too-distant 3rd and always within striking distance.   Brabham&amp;#039;s entry had caused opinion to be so strongly divided among the &amp;quot;experts&amp;quot; that some predicted complete failure of the car, while others predicted that there would be a million dollars worth of obsolete racing equipment in Indianapolis on May 31. Throughout the race he cruised easily along, giving the impression that he was out for a Sunday drive.   Starting in 13th spot, the pole in the fifth row, Brabham ran at various times between 11th (15th lap) and 21st position (50th to 60th laps), working his way back up to 10th at half distance, or 100 laps. He was 8th at the 170-lap mark and was never worse than 10th at any time after the half way point.   The race itself is now recorded history and the daily papers, plus some of the weekly magazines, have devoted millions of words to how A. J. Foyt&amp;#039;s unscheduled pit stop handed the race to Eddie Sachs on a silver platter, only to have Sachs hand it back on a silver platter inlaid with platinum, three laps from the finish. It was a costly pit stop for Sachs and could have been so for Foyt, but it was apparently his day to win.   Brabham&amp;#039;s appearance caused enough interest to set the wheels in motion for some new U.S. cars to be built for next year&amp;#039;s race, and we will no doubt sec Brabham back, joined by other foreign entries, next year.   We think this is the best thing that could have happened to the Memorial Day 500 and should be a benefit to all concerned\u2014and especially the spectators. Now we would like to see some of the better Speedway drivers-Sachs, Foyt, Hurtubise, Jones and rookie Bob Marshman\u2014who did a magnificent job of driving in bringing his car from 33rd starting position to 7th in his first drive at the Speedway\u2014try their hand at road racing in good cars. Too many times the &amp;quot;round track&amp;quot; drivers have been invited to drive sports cars, only to get stuck with the worst dogs at the track. Unfortunately, too, most who&amp;#039;ve tried road racing have had insufficient practice either on the track or with the car they were to drive, and this is where the Cooper team&amp;#039;s planning paid off. Brabham had driven enough laps in practice to equal almost an entire race, so he entered his first event on the Speedway with more experience and knowledge of the track than a &amp;quot;rookie&amp;quot; driver usually has. He was also extremely familiar with the type of car he was driving, having driven Coopers for several seasons in competition.   It would be ridiculous to assume that we&amp;#039;ll sec a completely different group of cars at the Memorial Day 500 in 1962; very few car owners would be willing to scrap a car they&amp;#039;ve spent 20 to 25 thousand dollars getting ready to run, and start over. Some components, of course, could be used for a new car\u2014engine, wheels and hubs, brakes, pedal assemblies and, in some cases, the quick-change rear axle assembly.   We do believe, though, that there will be a few new cars and some older ones redesigned; possibly with independent suspension on one or both ends and better weight distribution. Ferrari has made it known that he will have a car, or cars, at Indianapolis after this year&amp;#039;s racing season for test purposes, just as Brabham and Cooper did last year.   And, there&amp;#039;s still a chance that other foreign entries may get U.S. sponsorship, as Brabham did. Al Dean, owner of the Dean Van Lines cars, has already proposed this to Stirling Moss.   All things considered, Indianapolis 1961 was a great race, and with the probable new U.S. cars and foreign entries that should appear next year, it will be even better in the future. A debt of gratitude is owed by all racing enthusiasts to Jim Kimberly, who sponsored the Cooper-Climax at Indianapolis. We don&amp;#039;t know whether Jim thought the Cooper could win, or if he just wanted to prove a point. But, regardless of the reason, he has helped bring a new era to racing in the United States. And we need it badly. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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