Faster. Louder. The weekly column on SPEEDtv.com by Jade Gurss. (Harold Hinson Photo)
This weekend marks the 15-year anniversary of an Indianapolis 500 victory by Team Penske’s Al Unser Jr., who won the 1994 Indy 500 from the pole position with the pushrod Mercedes-Benz 500I engine, a powerplant Emerson Fittipaldi called “the Beast” for its immense horsepower and its guttural, low-toned moan. The 500I is believed to be the most powerful engine ever to race at the Brickyard, and might have driven one of the final wedges between CART and what would become Tony George’s Indy Racing League.
Conceived by Roger Penske and Ilmor founders Paul Morgan and Mario Illien, the eight-cylinder Mercedes engine took advantage of Speedway-only rules that allowed additional turbocharger boost and other benefits for pushrod-style engines. For years, smaller teams had used stock-block Buick V-6 engines, which were fast for qualifying but extremely unreliable. The 209-cubic-inch 500I remains the only engine to win the pole and the race in its first Indy appearance, and the cloak-and-dagger, behind-the-scenes story is fascinating.
In 1993, Penske, Illien and Morgan decided the time was right to pre-empt their competitors by building a pure racing engine to take advantage of the Speedway’s rules for the 1994 race. The engine was designed and built in 23 weeks in almost complete secrecy. Using tiny groups of key employees at Ilmor in the U.K. and Penske’s Indy car shops in Reading, PA, it was said there were more pistons in the engine than employees at each facility who knew of its existence for the first several months.
Penske sat down with his employees to explain the secrecy: it was necessary to not allow a competitor like Ford-Cosworth to respond before the race and also to make sure the Speedway didn’t have time to outlaw the engine or change rules.
“Imagine that everyone you tell is like tearing off a piece of your paycheck,” Penske urged.
In England, the Mario Illien design was created with the same external dimensions as the “regular” Ilmor 265D engine (raced by six other cars in the 500) so the Penske chassis would work with either engine in case the new powerplant wasn’t effective or reliable. To keep the secrecy with outside suppliers, they were told the new mystery parts were for Penske’s then-Pontiac-branded NASCAR program.
With new engine parts being created overnight by computer-automated machines, they were packed and shipped daily (sometimes twice a day) on the supersonic Concorde airliner from Heathrow Airport in London to Kennedy Airport in New York. Penske staff would pick up the pieces and install them into the engines being built and tested at a secret warehouse separate from Penske’s main engine shop in Reading. If the new parts were late, the quickest delivery route to Heathrow was with Paul Morgan piloting his vintage World War II fighter plane, a P-51 Mustang.
The trio of drivers (Unser, Fittipaldi and Paul Tracy) turned almost 10,000 secret test miles at several tracks then owned by Penske, while working to sign an agreement with Mercedes-Benz to brand the engine. In early April, Mercedes signed-on, and a week later a news conference was held to announce to the world the existence of the new pushrod powerplant.
