How Roger and Mario Broke the Indy 500 - (Penske “Beast” V-8, 1994) -- It's Not the Car #18

To borrow a line from this episode, “this is a great story because it’s got Paul Tracy melting his feet off and a bunch of stuff blowing up and Mario Andretti sits on his porch giving the stink eye at one point.”
(The Mario in the headline is not that Mario. That’s a different Mario. Headline Mario was Swiss.)
(Digression: Headline Mario sounds like the worst Nintendo game. “Hey, Timmy! Come by my house after school! We can play Headline Mario and eat Cheez-Its!”)
(Timmy: “Uh . . . I have to . . . wash my hair?”)
(What would that game even be, really? Like, Mario and Luigi save the world from a giant jerky turtle monster by doing… journalism? What would the spinoffs look like? “You guys! I got the red shell in Headline Mario Kart! Now I can murder another kart with a single split infinitive!”)
(I should probably be telling you what’s in this episode, right? Ah well, too late, we’ve used up too much space already. It’s a corker, though, I promise.)
This show’s format rotates weekly, because squirrel. This episode is our monthly deep dive into an epic moment from racing history-in this case, the top-secret, hyper-rad moonshot project that three very clever men built to absolutely destroy the 1994 Indianapolis 500.
The cool part: They actually got away with it!
Related Trivia: Did we mention that SAM HAS A NEW BOOK OUT? It’s called “Smithology.” Available now on Amazon in print and as a Kindle e-book. It is far better written than the episode descriptions for this show. (Though that's admittedly . . . not saying much.)
This episode was produced by Mike Perlman.
**
Support It’s Not the Car:
Contribute on Patreon ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ / notthecar
**
Topic suggestions, feedback, questions? Let us know what you think!
⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠
**
Where to find us:
/ intcpod
/ j.v.braun
/ rossbentley
/ thatsamsmith
⁠ / intcpod
rossbentley.su...
speedsecrets.com/
/ drivercoach
**
ABOUT THE SHOW:
It’s Not the Car is a podcast about people and speed. We tell racing stories and leave out the boring parts.
Ross Bentley is a former IndyCar driver and an internationally renowned performance coach and author. Jeff Braun is a championship-winning race engineer. Sam Smith is an award-winning journalist and a former executive editor of Road & Track magazine. Together, we explore the emotion at the heart of the machine.
We don’t love racing for the nuts and bolts-we love it for what it asks of the bag of meat at the wheel.
New episodes every Tuesday.