DPTJ Script: The USAC plane crash that imploded American open-wheel racing
Seven USAC officials were killed in a plane crash on April 23, 1978.
The most predictable thing about the history of American open-wheel racing is the fact that it was always in flux. From the moment the Indianapolis Motor Speedway first unveiled the idea of the 500-Mile Sweepstakes, it became the location of a century-long power struggle that made and unmade motorsport in America. We've talked about this battle before on “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” and how it resulted in the Split — or, when US open-wheel fractured in two.
Today, though, I want to hone in on one particular tragedy that brought this battle to a head — a plane crash in 1978 that killed nine people, seven of them serving as high-ranking members of the Indy 500-sanctioning United States Auto Club. In one fell swoop, motorsport was subsumed by a power vacuum that saw the ongoing fight for control over championship car racing take a whole new turn. Historians don't believe this plane crash caused the Split, so much as it was one of the final nails in the coffin for a particular way of doing business. And we're going to learn exactly what happened next.
To fully tell the story of the USAC plane crash, we first need to talk about USAC.
In the earliest days of the Indianapolis 500, the event was sanctioned by the American Automobile Association, or the AAA — the company that you probably better recognize for its roadside assistance services than its racing pedigree.
We've chatted about the AAA's role in motorsport a few times before on “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” — once in an episode titled “SCCA vs. AAA: The battle between sanctioning bodies that almost killed racing in America” and another titled “Death at Watkins Glen: How one forgotten crash changed motorsport forever.” We've also established the broad strokes of IndyCar's history in the episode titled “Indy 500 Rival: The Michigan race that tried to overtake American motorsport.”
All of those episodes will really help you understand the breadth of what the AAA did in motorsport up until 1955, but the key thing to know is that it largely focused on championship car racing, a discipline that included the Indianapolis 500, and that the AAA was also the professional racing organization that liaised with international organizations like the FIA.
1955 was a dark year for racing. First, the beloved Bill Vukovich was killed while racing at the 500. Then, soon after, Alberto Ascari crashed into the harbor at the Monaco Grand Prix and, a few days later, died while testing a Ferrari 750 Monza endurance machine. When that year's 24 Hours of Le Mans was marred by a horrifying crash that killed over 80 spectators, motorsport was forced to seriously rethink its goals and procedures.
And for the AAA, racing just wasn't worth it. By that point, it was finding great success providing roadside services, advocating for traffic safety laws, and creating educational programs for burgeoning drivers. So much of its mission statement relied on protecting drivers that motorsport, which was perceived as becoming increasingly dangerous, completely contradicted that mission.
That meant that the Indy 500 was left without a sanctioning body. The SCCA was a firmly amateur organization, while NASCAR prioritized totally different styles of competition and technology. So, Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Tony Hulman determined that he'd start his own sanctioning body, and that his sanctioning body would be in charge of the coveted Indianapolis 500. Thus, in 1956, the United States Auto Club was born.
USAC was immediately recognized by the FIA and largely picked up where the AAA had left off. By this point, the Indianapolis 500 was a staple on the Formula 1 calendar in order to justify the series calling itself a “World” Championship; even though only one F1 driver had attempted the race during the period where it was included on the calendar, having an American sanctioning body on good terms with the international world was clearly a boon.
Right from the start, USAC had a big vision in mind. It wanted to become the premier sanctioning body in the United States for all kinds of racing — be that grassroots competition, the Indy 500, or even land speed record attempts at the Bonneville Salt Flats, and runs up Pikes Peak.
Particularly critical here was the fact that USAC threw out a lot of the old conceptions of legal versus “outlaw” races. If you remember from our profile on Black racer Rajo Jack last season, “outlaw” races were any events that weren't sanctioned by the AAA, and if a AAA-sanctioned driver competed in one of those events, he could be barred from ever being allowed in big AAA-sanctioned races like the Indy 500. USAC decided right from the get-go that any driver, regardless of his primary affiliations, could compete in USAC so long as he followed the rules. Then, that driver could go right back to their normal series.
Former racer Duane Carter, who was chosen as the director of competition for USAC, said, “We feel that by making this decision we are allowing all drivers in the country to compete wherever they feel they have the best opportunity of making a living and without suffering any penalty.”
That might all sound promising — and for a while, it was. There was a certain level of organization overlaid on racing, and USAC saw an opportunity to become the body responsible not just for the Indy 500, but for the midget racing series where potential 500 talents cut their teeth, as well as for the various forms of lower-tier stock car racing that NASCAR had ignored.
But by the end of 1956, it was clear that not all was well.
Speaking to The Indianapolis News in September, driver Jimmy Reece asked, “When are we going to get a rule book? The AAA had a book, but it isn't worth a damn to us. You go to a track and one fellow says it's this way, another says it's that. If we had a rulebook, everybody would know what's right.”
There were also concerns that USAC was taking on too much too soon, as midget promoter Red Morely said, “I don't think we are getting a fair shake. We need you and you need us.”
Supplier Dick McGeorge also raised concerns about the USAC-sanctioned stock car races, saying, “We want to help. We know you have your problems and we think you've done a wonderful job in one year, taking over from an organization that had 50 years of prestige and experience behind it. But some stock purses have not had Champion money on them because we didn't know about the race.”
And there was apparently no clear understanding of who was, y'know, working a USAC event. For the earliest years of racing, officials, mechanics, drivers, and other key personnel were provided with armbands that were supposed to indicate that those folks were allowed to be in certain restricted areas and should be able to help with certain things — but driver Jack Turner alleged that somehow, fans had either made or gotten their hands on those same USAC armbands.
“You got too many spectators wearing USAC armbands,” he said. “You see a man with an armband and try to get some help, some information, and he tells you he isn't working and can't answer your questions. If he's wearing that armband at a race, he ought to be working.”
And then in 1957, driver John Zink Jr. of Tulsa claimed that, despite USAC's promise that it would allow its drivers to compete in other race series, Zink's promotion of and participation in NASCAR events was “in direct violation of the warning that was issued to you last August.”
Still, as the years passed, USAC grew. It improved safety measures and added new disciplines and slowly built up a reputation as a reputable organization, even in the face of lawsuits and criticism. But heading into the 1970s, drivers and team owners, particularly those competing the Championship Car discipline, were getting antsy.
Over in Europe, open-wheel racing was slowly starting to gain prestige, but its American counterpart remained mired in the past. USAC's Championship Car series still competed on dirt tracks and revisited the same venues multiple times a year rather than experimenting with new locations. The Indy 500 was clearly the star of the season, but it also felt like so much attention was paid to that single event that the rest of the year may as well have not even mattered. It would be like if Formula 1 only cared about the Monaco Grand Prix, while the rest of the season, the FIA was busy thinking about its smaller, more localized race series.
Even NASCAR was growing in prestige, and a big part of that came down to the fact that it had leveraged tobacco money.
A windfall hit the world of motorsport in 1970 when US Congress passed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act. This piece of legislature meant that as of January 2, 1971, tobacco companies would no longer be allowed to advertise on radio or television — and while that might have been a deadly blow to those brands, they were outfitted with a whole lot of lawyers who knew exactly how to find a loophole.
That loophole was sports marketing.
See, a tobacco company may not have been allowed to run a 30-second commercial on TV anymore, but it could sponsor a sport like, say, NASCAR. It could become a title sponsor, so that every time you say “NASCAR,” you actually have to say the tobacco company's name, too. And that wasn't even taking into account the races named after cigarette brands, or the team sponsorships, or all the printed advertisements for NASCAR that actually subtly promoted a cigarette brand.
If you're familiar with NASCAR's history, then you know that the brand in question here is Winston. Winston was a subsidiary of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, and from 1971 to 2004, the top level of competition — what we'd now call the Cup Series — was known as the Winston Grand National Series. And in that span of time, RJ Reynolds increased its motorsport spend from $100,000 to a whopping $17.1 million.
That amount of money was transformative for NASCAR. The RJR sponsorship came just as the series trimmed the fat from its race schedule, getting rid of dirt tracks and sub-250-mile races. The goal was to guarantee drivers could — and would — compete in every race, and that the whole operation would become more professional. With a sudden influx of money, prize purses could increase, and the draw for NASCAR was high.
And in 1971, USAC Championship Car Racing inked a deal with Philip Morris USA that made Marlboro cigarettes the series’ title sponsor. Marlboro added $100,000 toward the overall prize purse for the season and was so happy with its results that it planned to up its funding to $150,000 for 1972.
But there was a problem.
Brown & Williamson Corp. announced that it was introducing a massive partnership with the Vel's Parnelli Jones team via its Viceroy cigarette brand. Viceroy went all-in with a motorsport print advertising campaign, and the funding meant that team owner Parnelli Jones could attract some of the best talent in the motorsport world. It was so promising that folks were calling it a Superteam.
Marlboro, though, claimed that its sponsorship meant that competing tobacco companies shouldn't be allowed to advertise in Championship Car racing. Philip Morris USA raised the concern with USAC, but USAC shrugged its shoulders and refused to do anything about Viceroy. So, because Marlboro had yet to ink the final contract with USAC, it decided it simply wouldn't sign.
As Motor Sport Magazine reported, “The writing was on the wall for Marlboro. They did not need very much imagination to see that a good proportion of the races they were sponsoring are likely to be won by cars backed by a rival and the idea did not appeal. Marlboro have thus withdrawn their sponsorship from USAC, who presumably will now have to look for a backer in a different field.”
Except, USAC didn't find one — not until 1978. And so everyone at USAC got to stand by and watch as the RJ Reynolds money transformed NASCAR into an international phenomenon. And to make matters even worse, the Parnelli “Superteam” failed to live up to the hype. USAC had killed a great deal for nothing.
Still, the series trucked on. Teams began to experiment with aerodynamics and found that they could garner incredible amounts of downforce with a few little bits of aluminum. Turbocharging became the norm, and as engine builders stretched to 1,000 horsepower and beyond, those engines started exploding so regularly that trying to finish a race was a challenge in and of itself. Plus, Goodyear and Firestone both supplied slick tires for the first time in USAC history. Pair all that together, and you had a recipe for massive speed increases — and at the 1973 Indianapolis 500, it resulted in a month of death and destruction that warranted a 14-part series in the Indianapolis Star investigating the disaster.
“The Tony Hulman regime is under attack as never before in its 28-year stewardship,” the story read. “It is accused of ignoring safety considerations, being impervious to the legitimate concerns and well-being of its patrons, imperious in its dealings with outsiders and concerned only with attracting bigger crowds and accumulating more money.”
The immediate result was a change in stewardship of the Indy 500 and the issuing of a series of rules that ultimately dropped speeds at Indy by 10 miles per hour. It took until the end of the decade before drivers started hitting speeds similar to those in 1973, and by then, yet another revolution had happened.
For most of Indy 500 history, racing was done with four-cylinder Offenhauser engines that were only replaced when Parnelli Jones modified a Formula 1-spec Cosworth DFV engine and stuck it in his race car. The resulting engine, the DFX, soon ousted the ancient Offys, and as road racing began to play a stronger role in the makeup of the Championship Car season, it looked like perhaps USAC was in a good place. At least, until a fight with the Sports Car Club of America made the move to road courses even more difficult.
Tensions continued to mount.
The problem was that, even though the Indianapolis 500 had continued to grow in prestige, the overall USAC championship… didn't. The 500 was this impressive, world-renowned spectacle, but head to any other race on the calendar, and, well, it felt like no one cared.
It was as if the folks at USAC had gotten comfortable with the sport at hand and had no desire to change it — in fact, it seemed like the whole goal was to keep Championship Car racing small. Great team leaders had innovative ideas for how to grow the profile of the sport, but prize purses remained too small for anyone to consider developing a groundbreaking car design. USAC stuck with a tried-and-true set of tracks and saw no need to expand the calendar to new venues. And for many competitors, the drama over the botched Marlboro sponsorship still stung — particularly because it was becoming clear how influential that tobacco money had become in both American and European racing.
For USAC, it was as if the Indy 500 was the only thing that mattered. Nothing else.
“The rest of the series was bogged down,” Dan Gurney recalled, as reported in the Indy Car Wars. “It didn't have any leadership and was more or less derelict. Each particular promoter at each track was free to either promote or not promote. It was a very loose organization and there wasn't much linkage between all the other races and the Indy 500. The rest of the races were sort of orphans that nobody paid attention to. Nor had anybody heard the word ‘marketing.’ The waters were stagnant. You can't run the business of a racing team with just one big race a year and the rest of them are a bunch of losers, unless you're doing it as a hobby and not a real business.”
It was impossible to run the business of a race team, yes — but making matters worse was the fact that USAC responded to this issue by stifling innovation. In 1976, for example, pop-off valves, which were basically turbocharger boost regulators, were introduced, and the regulations there were tweaked over the next few years, sometimes even on a daily basis, so that USAC could keep the by-now-outdated Offenhauser engines competitive with the new technology.
The result was that USAC was drawing big fields, including to its non-Indy races, but the quality of competition was abysmal. At the 1978 California 500, for example, 30 cars started the race, but only five were actually running at the finish — and the second-place finisher was five laps behind the leader.
Team owners like Dan Gurney, Pat Patrick, and Roger Penske were serious about racing, and they wanted their championship to actually be, y'know, worth spending money on. On top of that, over in Europe, a new organization in F1 had popped up. It was called the Formula One Constructors’ Association, and it was composed of a group of privateer team leaders who banded together to advocate for better starting and prize money, as well as more of a say in any sudden changes to the rulebook. As a result, the sport of Formula 1 was exploding commercially — and Dan Gurney thought that was exactly the kind of thing USAC needed.
“Let's call it CART,” he suggested, “or Championship Auto Racing Teams.”
If you're not familiar with FOCA, or the explosive battle that took place between FOCA and F1's sanctioning body, the FIA, I really dug into this in a two-episode saga earlier this season on “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys.”
Early in 1978, Gurney set pen to paper to craft a seven-page manifesto referred to as the “white paper.” In it, he argued that “something is wrong with our sport — it is not reaching its full potential by any means, and there is great need for change!”
Gurney referenced FOCA and used it as an example to argue for a series of changes that would include taking over commercial rights, investing in better competition, encouraging tracks to actually promote USAC events, and having some team sway in USAC's rulemaking. He also wrote that it was critical that the tracks USAC competed at should open their financial books to the series, to help them better understand how to direct and spend money.
The white paper was a little ramble-y, and it definitely lost focus in certain parts. Its argument wasn't complete, either, as Gurney ended it by asking, “How do we finance this CART operation? Entry fees? Percentage of the purse? I'm open for suggestions.”
He distributed the white paper to USAC team owners to outsource opinions, but critical to the whole affair was that CART exist as an organization within USAC. Gurney hadn't advocated for a dramatic overthrowing of the powers that be; rather, he'd pinpointed areas that needed work and encouraged his fellow team owners to band together to arrive at solutions.
Instead, a tragedy would strike the USAC world, and CART would have to decide whether it remained in the sport, dissatisfied, or if it would forge its own path.
1978's USAC plane crash
Before we address the tragedy of the USAC plane crash, we must first back up a few months, to late October, 1977, and the shocking death of USAC founder and Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Tony Hulman.
At 76 years old, Tony Hulman seemed to be in decent health — spry enough in fact to step outside of his usual Indy 500 boundaries in 1977 to join winner and close friend A. J. Foyt on the celebratory post-race pace lap. Later that year, he hosted the annual Speedway press dinner and served as a grand marshal for a local parade, all the while managing his various business affairs around Indiana.
Then, on October 27, he died on the operating table during what was expected to be a fairly routine heart surgery. The cause of death was a ruptured aortic aneurysm.
Drivers and race fans around America were shocked, with men like Tom Sneva quoted as saying Hulman seemed to be in better health in 1977 than he'd been in the last few years. His widow, Mary Fendrich Hulman, took over as the chairman of the board of Hulman & Co., while Hulman's friend and business partner Joe Cloutier took over track ownership.
But while Hulman was praised for his stewardship of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, his other racing affairs — USAC, for example — suffered. The guys like Dan Gurney and Parnelli Jones might have a lot of thoughts about USAC as a season-long championship, but they did ultimately respect Tony Hulman for the work he'd done saving IMS and transforming the Indy 500 into one of the world's most incredible motorsport events. It's likely that their dissatisfaction with USAC was kept somewhat a bay while Hulman was alive, if only out of recognition for his other accomplishments.
Suddenly, though, Tony Hulman was gone, and in his place were a bunch of folks who hadn't earned Hulman's respect. Heading into the 1978 USAC Championship Car season, Gurney started passing around his White Paper, and frustrations mounted.
The 1978 USAC season kicked off on March 18 at Phoenix International Raceway, where Gordon Johncock won from second on the grid. He was two laps ahead of second-place finisher Steve Krisiloff, and only nine cars finished.
After that, the field headed to the Datsun Twin 200 over at Ontario Motor Speedway on March 26. Danny Ongais won the race after qualifying fourth, and this time, a solid four cars finished on the lead lap, and 12 of the 24 starters finished.
After a few weeks’ break came the Coors 200 at Texas World Speedway. It was the second win in a row for Danny Ongais, who started on pole position. Ten of the 21 starters finished the race.
And then, on April 23, the USAC Championship Car circus headed to Trenton International Speedway for the Gabriel 200. Gordon Johncock took another win, and a grand total of nine cars finished a race that kicked off with 22 cars on the grid. As you can tell, a decent field did not a decent race make.
When the pomp and circumstance had died down after the event, several USAC officials boarded a chartered Piper Navajo flight that would take them back to Indianapolis. The weather was clear when the flight left the ground, but as the pilot neared Indianapoils, a severe thunderstorm popped up boasting 100-mph winds and rocketing hail. He tried to avoid the storm system, but he wasn't successful.
Within 30 miles of the Indianapolis International Airport, the pilot of the Piper Navajo radioed in to report severe turbulence at 6,000 feet, after which air traffic control instructed him to drop altitude, down to 5,000 feet. He received no relief and received permission to drop down to 3,000 feet and changed direction in hopes of avoiding the worst of the turbulence.
That was the last air traffic control heard. The aircraft disappeared from the flight radar and crashed in a muddy field in Arlington, Indianapolis. There were no survivors on board.
The dead included USAC vice president for public relations Ray Marquette, 48; USAC technical director Frank DelRoy, 65, who was also the last riding mechanic to sit on pole at the Indianapolis 500; USAC deputy technical director Ross Teeguarden, 57; Midget supervisor and race flagman Shim Malone, 48; USAC physician Dr. Bruce White, 27; sprint car supervisor Don Peabody, 54; USAC registrar Stan Worley, 65, USAC public relations assistant Judy Phillips, 50; and Don Mullendore, 54, who was the one piloting the plane.
Dick King, USAC president, was supposed to be on that same flight, but he chose instead to remain at Trenton Speedway to finish up some business.
In the aftermath, locals reported they heard a “big thump” and saw a “ball of fire” in the area where the plane crashed.
A local of Arlington named Gene Gardner, a former World War II fighter pilot, was just in time to see the wreck — which, interestingly, took place in a patch of calm.
“I knew the plane was in trouble,” he told the Associated Press. “The engines were wide open like it was in power drive. It was really screaming. There was a large thud and then a boom. When we looked out, there was a fireball.”
Gardner immediately phoned the police. Then, he and his 19-year-old son ran out to see if they could offer any help.
“I've never seen a mess as bad,” Gardner admitted after laying eyes on an impact crater at least five feet deep and 10 feet in diameter. “Everything is just in pieces. When we saw there was no chance of anyone surviving, we got out of there.”
The first official on the scene was Marshall Randy Chandler. He confirmed that there were no bodies intact.
Making matters even worse, the freshly-plowed field was so saturated due to the rainfall that rescue vehicles couldn't actually make it out to the crash site. According to the AP, even four-wheel drive vehicles were only able to get about a quarter-mile away from the wreckage.
Around 10 o'clock that night, news reports of a plane crash started popping up on the radio and television, and the friends and family of the USAC members onboard the flight started to get suspicious. These were busy people, ones who were liable to place phone calls the moment they touched down. But there was radio silence.
State police admitted the aircraft looked to be a USAC plane, but they hoped to find a log book or some other identifying debris. It wasn't until the following morning that family members of those onboard were informed that their loved ones had been killed. Unfortunately, those families weren't even able to say a proper goodbye; the remains of many officials on board were too pulverized to be identified and were buried in a common grave in Arlington.
While it might take hundreds of people to put on a single motor race, the core unit in charge of those events is generally quite close-knit — and this was absolutely the case here. Many of the people killed in the plane crash were ones whose involvement in American motorsport stemmed back decades. These people had been foundational in the day-to-day runnings of racing, and with the opening day for the Indianapolis 500 less than two weeks away, the remaining members of USAC were left scrambling to fill the voids that had been left behind. After all, it wasn't as if anyone on that plane had trained someone to take over for them, or had left behind an instructional guide designed to bring the next generation into the fold.
IMS historian Donald Davidson described the ensuing few days as “surreal.” So many racers and other members of USAC were left reeling from the loss of people they considered friends, and as preparations continued for the Indianapolis 500, there were also plenty of funerals to attend — and those funerals had been spaced out so as to prevent any overlap.
In the aftermath, the widows of five of the USAC officials filed a lawsuit alleging that the National Weather Service had failed to issue severe storm warnings on the night of the crash, and that the air traffic controllers at the Indianapolis airport were negligent for not telling the pilot to divert to another airport. Magistrate John Paul Godich stated, “'It is clear the pilot asked for and received weather information from controllers who told him his flight path was safe and failed to warn him of the contrary.” The widows were awarded $2.1 million, to be paid from the US Treasury. That would be the equivalent of just over $7 million today when adjusted for inflation.
On May 28, 1978, just over a month after the horrific plane crash, Al Unser Sr. won the 62nd running of the Indianapolis 500 in what was the second-closest finish in Indy history at the time. It was the first victory at Indy for the mighty Cosworth DFX V8 engine.
The rest of the 18-race USAC Championship Car season went off without a hitch, traveling around the United States with a jaunt up into Canada and another over to Silverstone and Brands Hatch at the end of the year. Tom Sneva won the championship despite failing to win a single race.
The remainder of the season was more notable for the growing dissatisfaction between the weakened USAC and the ever-strengthening CART.
Dan Gurney's big question about how to raise the funds to get CART off the ground had been answered when a whopping 21 entrants paid $7,500 — about $36,000 today, adjusted for inflation — to join the organization. During the summer and early autumn, team owners began to meet in hotel lobbies and conference rooms to hash out a plan for integrating CART into the daily operations of USAC.
Critically, again, CART didn't want any say in sanctioning the racing. It just wanted to take a more active role in marketing the sport to its fullest potential. As Roger Penske, one of the key players in CART, said, “CART is in no way making any demands on USAC. All of us have too much at stake to do anything to harm racing.”
Even A. J. Foyt — a guy notorious for ignoring the political machinations of motorsport in an effort to just go racing — tentatively joined CART because, as he put it, “There have to be some changes made. Apart from three or four of them, USAC's board of directors don't know anything about racing. It's no good having guys from the midget and sprint divisions telling us how to run championship racing. They don't have any idea what our problems are. We are the guys with millions of dollars invested, and we should be making our own rules.”
On November 18, 1978, CART and USAC hosted a joint emergency meeting where CART laid out its six-point plan to bring Championship Car racing into the modern age. The organization asked that an 11-man board be formed of six CART members and five USAC members, and that board would be tasked with updating rules for 1979, organizing a maximum of 14 races a year with a minimum of 13 days between races, and negotiating TV and sponsorship deals.
CART also pitched some purse guidelines, which it felt were fair for its entrants. For 150-mile races, the total purse must amount to $75,000. For 200-mile races, that bumped up to $100,000. For 500-mile races, the purse needed to increase 20% when compared to 1978, while road races were sanctioned for at least $125,000.
USAC didn't hesitate. It rejected the plan.
CART came back with a compromise: Instead of an 11-person board, they could have a 12-person board with an equal number of CART and USAC members, though USAC president Dick King would be the sixth, non-voting member from the USAC side. The proposal was unanimously vetoed.
USAC was willing to make one concession: it adopted CART's proposed technical rule changes for 1979. But when it came down to giving up any amount of power, well — hell would freeze over before that happened.
“We are in accord with some of their objectives and in fact we took some steps at our September meeting to relate to some of those objectives,” said Reynold MacDonald, USAC board chairman. “We feel we must continue to function in the best interests of all our members. These include not only car owners, but also drivers, mechanics, race organizers, manufacturers, and sponsors.”
Pat Patrick had been named CART president, and in the wake of USAC's rejection, he told the Indianapolis Star that if a compromise couldn't be reached, CART would break away to become its own series.
“There's no longer a USAC Championship division as far as we're concerned,” Patrick said. “We've been fair and we've tried to act like gentlemen. But the people spending the money — the team owners — have no vote in the rules. We have no input into what USAC says or does. And effective today, we are going to control our own destiny.”
In that same interview, Patrick announced that CART's calendar was already coming into focus. Michigan and Phoenix had both signed on for race dates, and talks were already underway with Atlanta and Ontario.
Reflecting on the decision later, Dan Gurney concluded that “if the Speedway wouldn't take hold and provide real leadership to the rest of the circuit, just to survive, somebody else was going to have to do it. We asked the Speedway to understand the predicament we were in. We talked to them and they essentially were happy with the status quo. As far as they were concerned, they were OK, and yet they would not relinquish the control that USAC had over the rest of the races.”
Gurney went on to point out that, aside from the Formula One Constructors Association transforming European racing, and big-money sponsorships bolstering NASCAR, sports like golf and tennis were thriving because strong management was willing to treat its athletes with respect and negotiate big-money deals to benefit the sport. But USAC was adamant that nothing needed changing.
“We were trying to be genuine, professional teams and were watching other sports blossom and get big recognition on television and everywhere else,” Gurney continued. “We asked, ‘Where are we headed?’ And they told us they had no plans. We had never targeted the Speedway for attack; we only asked them to provide the leadership. There was never any discussion about doing something that would harm the Speedway. I never heard one tiny hint that that was the case.”
But USAC wouldn't budge. As 1978 wound to a close, CART got to work organizing its 1979 calendar. Even then, there were signs of trouble brewing; A. J. Foyt, who had confidently joined CART, decided that he was actually going to realign with USAC. After all, his concerns were mainly with the technical regulations, and USAC had solved those. Plus, as he put it, “CART is not strong enough to do anything about Indianapolis.”
In the end, CART organized a 10-race calendar for 1979 that included stops at Watkins Glen, Trenton, Atlanta, Michigan, and Ontario. The season opener at Phoenix went off without much of a hitch, and the race was aired on NBC. CART's calendar also included a stop at the Indianapolis 500, since there was still a convergence of rules between it and USAC.
USAC, meanwhile, had only managed to put together a seven-race calendar. It was a sign that not all was well with an organization that had relied so heavily on its teams to bring the contest and professionalism.
Did this contribute to The Split?
Now it's time to answer the million-dollar question: Did the USAC plane crash directly contribute to the formation of Championship Auto Racing Teams, the rival series that attempted to wrest control of American open-wheel from USAC?
As you might expect, the answer isn't totally black-and-white.
If you've gotten this far in the episode, then it's likely very clear to you that the Split was coming no matter what. Dissatisfaction with USAC was high, Tony Hulman had just died, and many team owners felt like their voices were completely ignored on just about every critical decision that could grow the series. Rumblings about a defection had been happening for months, and it was only going to be a matter of time before USAC and many of its associated team owners faced off in an explosive battle.
The fact that USAC was thrown into disarray and that its organizing force had been weakened by that plane crash in 1978 just made it a little easier for team owners like Dan Gurney, Roger Penske, and Pat Patrick to begin untying the knots that bound them to the sanctioning body. Instead of having a huge, dramatic showdown, the folks at CART could step into the power vacuum and begin organizing a completely different future — one that, at first, was still intimately tied to USAC.
I won't claim that CART was extending a perfect olive branch to USAC, one that would have instantly solved the problems of both the team owners and the series directors, but it was very clear that dissatisfaction with USAC ran deep among the team owners that had witnessed the professionalism of international motorsport and who could tell what Championship Car racing could become, if only they tried a little harder, spent a little more money on marketing, considered how the series might grow in the future. And when USAC stated that it was content to rest on its laurels, it's not exactly a surprise that the CART contingent felt they'd be better off going it alone. I think the fact that CART managed to organize 12 races in its first season compared to USAC’s seven should serve as a pretty good indication that much of the rest of the American racing world was ready to move on, too.
Still, it's pretty obvious that the fracture in Championship Car racing didn't create a winner. CART had a chance to grow commercially and technologically, but it was effectively the odd man out at the Indy 500 — a race so big that everyone at CART still wanted to compete in it. USAC hardly bothered to develop a full-season series after 1980, but it doubled down on its stewardship of the Indianapolis 500, its big crown jewel of the year, and refused to let up — and ultimately, when Tony George — the grandson of Tony Hulman — took over control of the Speedway, he set out to oust CART completely by developing a new race series, the Indy Racing League, and then guaranteeing the cars from that series most of the starting spots at the Indy 500. CART was left to figure out a response, and it tried to develop its own 500-mile race.
Now, if you remember last year's DPTJ episode on the US 500, the race in Michigan designed to rival the Indy 500, then you know that it's pretty clear the initial Championship Car fracturing in 1979 didn't work. CART might have had some good years, but USAC's hold on the Indy 500 followed by the formation of the IRL kept everyone at odds well into the 2000s. It was only when both factions were facing bankruptcy that reunification was necessary if we wanted any kind of open-wheel racing to be done in America.
The 1978 USAC plane crash didn't cause the Split, but it certainly played a hand in fostering the uncertainty that characterized American motorsport for decades.
Bibliography
Indy Split: The Big Money Battle that Nearly Destroyed Indy Racing by John Oreovicz
The IndyCar Wars: The 30-Year Fight for Control of American Open-Wheel Racing by Sigurd E. Whitaker
Retro Indy: 1978 plane crash claims USAC officials, Indy Star
A Night to Remember, OilPressure
Arlington, IN Plane Crash Kills USAC Personnel, GenDisasters
USAC Takes Over AAA's Place, Daytona Beach Morning Journal
New Race Governing Body Manages Its First ‘500’, The Indianapolis News
USAC Cleared Me: Zink; Not So: Carter, The Indianapolis News