Within just a few years, though, the Cosworth engine DFX Parnelli attempted to run in 1975 would dominate the field and be the death knell for the Offenhauser engine that had ruled the roost at Indianapolis since World War II.īack in Europe on the Formula One circuit, on June 8, 1975, the Swedish Grand Prix was held and in some respects this was a turning point in the team's relations with its driver. Although the Parnelli VPJ6 would ultimately prove to be a success in USAC racing in 1978, it could not be sorted out at Indy in the month of May 1975, so Andretti and Al Unser ended up qualifying the team's red and white Viceroy Eagle-Offenhauser's for the race. Parnelli Jones introduced at Indy a chassis designated VPJ6, which was a modified Formula One chassis that had installed in it a turbocharged Ford Cosworth DFX V8, also based on Formula One hardware. Vel's Parnelli Jones Racing Team skipped the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder because it was run on May 25, 1975, the same day as the family business, the 1975 Indy 500. Andretti did little better than Hill, qualifying an unlucky 13th and going out with an oil line fire on lap 9 of the 75 lap race. Graham Hill failed to qualify his Hill GH1 for the race he practically owned, having previously won the race five times three times for BRM and two times for Lotus. On May 11, 1975, the teams were in Monte Carlo for the Monaco Grand Prix. In a two-part feature, Thomas O'Keefe looks at the reasons for this anomaly in his in-depth history of the last team, and the characters behind it, from those shores to competitively take the challenge to the Europeans. Formula One is the pinnacle of motor racing worldwide, and yet no North American team has successfully competed in the championship for decades.
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