PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum - View Single Post - Has Mercedes ever considered a turbine car?

t walgamuth · #13 07-06-2021, 06:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Idle

One more turbine story....

Back in the 60s there was a turbine car entered in the Indy 500. It ran away from everyone and looked like the sure winner until it's transmission, which had been tossed together by a bunch of mechanics since one didn't exist, failed.

Afterwards the team was very upfront about the failure of the transmission and why. They just didn't have the time and money to test it like they should have.

But the turbine was banned at Indy after that. The reason given was because it was too reliable. Back then you could count on about 30% of the field losing an engine during the race.

I later heard from an Indy driver who was there the thing was banned because it was used to cheat. The exhaust was up high to keep from torching the race track. So the driver was putting the car into a position to burn the face shield of the other drivers during a pass. This was passed off as an 'accident' that happened a lot of times.

People had to pit to change their helmets.

I don't doubt that story about burning the faces was told far and wide (though I never heard it) . They did not need such dirty tricks though as the turbine could run all day at its qualifying speed while the piston cars loaded their fuel with nitro to qualify and had to use pure ethanol in the race which made their cars about 10 mph slower than the turbine and Parnelli could do it without breaking a sweat.

At the start he went to the outside on turn one and took the lead from the third row in one swoop. There was no rubber on the track and the other guys were all liked up on the inside from habit. The turbine with its four wheel drive just blew their doors off.

A great moment in racing history.

The speedway restricted the turbines next year so they lost about a third of their power, but with the slick Lotus design still took all the best qualifying spots only to suffer another freak failure near the end......flameout caused by running white gas to get more power I hear.