Might A Mazda Miata Win The 1959 Indianapolis 500?

When automobile fanatics get collectively in teams, it’s inevitable that the bench racing hypotheticals will begin flying. If Betty White was driving a Viper, do you assume you can beat her in a race driving your Toyota Celica? Would Michael Schumacher in his prime beat Fangio in the event that they have been each driving the identical automobile? How far again would it’s a must to go in your race automobile to be quick sufficient to qualify for the Indy 500? That final one has been my favourite bench race question for over a decade, and it all the time will get my thoughts working.

A pal’s father as soon as informed me he had a C2-generation Corvette “with an experimental Can Am motor” that turned a lap at Indy “quick sufficient for pole” that 12 months. It’s whole bullshit, and positively not doable, as a result of Indy roadsters have been fairly rattling quick by the mid-Sixties, and Corvettes, uh, weren’t. However might a C8 Corvette qualify for the 1966 Indy 500? Yeah, I wager it might.

With advances in aerodynamics, tires, and reliability, trendy highway automobiles are quicker than ever earlier than, and even quicker than essentially the most bonkers racing specials of yesteryear. I’ll most likely find yourself doing extra of those sooner or later, however figured I’d begin with a fairly easy one. Should you purchased certainly one of Mazda’s $60,000 MX-5 Cup race automobiles, primarily based on the usual Miata drivetrain and bodywork, what’s essentially the most trendy Indianapolis 500 Mile Race that you can win outright? And what number of years later would you be kicked out on bump day?

Let’s do some math!

To begin with, let’s decide what an MX-5 Cup automobile can do. These automobiles truly raced at Indianapolis in 2017, however the sequence used the highway course, so the information from that race isn’t significantly helpful. To determine our MX-5 Cup’s prime pace, let’s look to the latest race at Daytona Worldwide Speedway. Under is an onboard video from Gresham Wagner’s race one victory. The automobile’s information recorder exhibits a most pace of 146-ish miles per hour for the MX-5 Cup, however that’s working in a pack within the draft, so let’s say our max pace for solo qualifying at Indy can be round 140 miles per hour.

Given the flexibility to set the automobile up appropriately for the 4 left-hand turns on the brickyard, the fitting tires to final a full stint at pace, and we’ll enable a bit of little bit of downforce if vital, I wouldn’t doubt that an MX-5 Cup might go flat out at Indy for the total lap, so we’ll say our theoretical common qualifying pace over three flying laps can be precisely 140.0 miles per hour.

The final 12 months that our theoretical MX-5 Cup would qualify for pole on the Indy 500 is 1955, matching polesitter Jerry Hoyt’s 140.045 pole. Okay, so we’re on pole, however do we’ve a shot at successful?

Again then Indy roadsters wanted to pit for gas 3 times within the 500 mile race, that means they may go 125 miles, kind of, on a full tank. An MX-5’s gas tank is 11.9 gallons, that means we’d have to realize a minimum of 10.5 miles per gallon at V-max. It isn’t essentially RPM that determines gas consumption, a lot as it’s load, and a Miata goes to be underneath critical load at 140 miles per hour. It’s rated at 30 MPG mixed, so I believe it might presumably go 125 miles on a tank.

Even nonetheless, we’ll be conservative and say the MX-5 wants an extra cease over an Indy Roadster to finish the five hundred. 4 stops in 500 miles. In these days Indy pit stops noticed the automobile stationary for round 25 seconds every cease, which might be a bit longer than a well-oiled machine working a gas dump and tire change on the Miata. I’m going to say that the MX-5 might brake from pace faster than the Roadster, and speed up again to V-max faster than the long-gear Roadsters might, so general time misplaced within the pits goes to be about equal for the Miata and the opponents at Indy. It washes out, pit stops received’t be the factor that kills our Miata’s win.

Bob Sweikert (above) received the 1955 Indy 500 in his pink Zink particular with a mean pace of 128.209 miles per hour. Given 4 stops at 20 seconds every, plus quicker acceleration and braking, we’ll spend about 120 seconds of the race not working flat out. Stick it in prime gear and put your foot to the ground, you’ll be caught at 140.0 miles per hour for 100 mile stints. And should you catch a draft, you may even run quicker than that. I believe we’re in with a shot to win the 1955 Indy 500 from pole place in a 2024 Mazda MX-5 Cup automobile.

Our ending time, after pit stops, assuming nothing went mistaken, can be three hours, 36 minutes, and 12 seconds. Sweikert’s successful time in 1955 was three hours, 53 minutes, and 24 seconds. We received by 17 minutes!

So with a qualifying pace of 140 miles per hour, and a race common pace of 138.76 miles per hour, we are able to look to historical past to find out a couple of issues.

The final Indy 500 we might qualify on pole for was 1955.

The final Indy 500 we might win primarily based on our common time to complete was 1959.

Although we would come out on prime in a 1960 picture end in opposition to Jim Rathmann’s Ken-Paul Particular, which averaged 138.767 miles per hour within the race, we wouldn’t have run a quick sufficient qualifying lap to make it into the large present. The slowest qualifier in 1960 was Jim McWithey’s Epperly-Offenhauser, which ran a 140.37 MPH in qualifying, and retired on lap 60 with brake failure.

Clearly that is all in enjoyable, and there are 100 thousand completely different variables that must go precisely our approach to ensure that this to occur. However, should you ever get the chance to journey to 1959, and you’ll carry a 2024 Mazda MX-5 Cup with you, attempt to win the Indy 500. You simply may.

Now I’m curious if a brand new Porsche GT3 Cup might beat the 1970 Porsche 917 to win Le Mans… That’s a query for another time.