The whoosh of a turbine became a familiar sound at the Brickyard during the 1960s, and albeit briefly, in Formula One in the early 1970s. In this, the final installment, Michael Oliver recounts the story of their silent, but significant impact on open-wheel racing.
The positive reasons for using a turbine on the tracks were its tremendous power and torque. The downside was that the inertia due to the high revs of a turbine meant that throttle lag was a terrible problem. These characteristics were most suited to a track where minimal throttle movement was required, and so Indy was an obvious choice. The first turbine-powered open-wheeler car was entered at Indy in 1961 (although a car had been built and used in tire testing as early as 1955) but wasn’t ready in time for the event and thus made its debut in 1962. The car, the Trackburner, was entered by an influential man within USAC at the time, John Zink. This was ironic since USAC later became one of the most vociferous opponents of turbines at Indy and eventually legislated them off the track. The car, which used a Boeing turbine, was designed and built by one of the company’s engineers, Len Williams. He adopted the European rear-engined format, with an outlet funnel for the engine behind the driver’s head, similar to the layout that would be chosen by Lotus six years later. Piloted by Dan Gurney the car failed to qualify. However, it did not fail by much. It has since been reported that the car could have qualified but under the terms of his arrangement with Boeing, this would have required Zink to purchase the turbine, an expense which could not be justified unless the car was a potential race winner.
