STEPPING ON THE GAS

The gas turbine-powered, four-wheel-drive Lotus Type 56 was a controversial Indycar racer. This is the story of the Graham Hill Team Lotus car

WORDS Michael Oliver

THE TURN TWO CROWD leapt to their feet in unison as Graham Hill’s turbine-powered Lotus 56 thumped into the concrete wall beneath them and out of the 1968 Indianapolis 500. There would be no fairytale repeat of his 1966 victory. After 110 of 200 laps, his race was over due to right front suspension failure. Thankfully, although the car was badly damaged, he was uninjured, a 56 was still leading and another was running within the top ten. Excitement had built to fever pitch when, with only nine laps to go, the field took the restart following a lengthy period under a full-course caution. Almost immediately, the race-leading 56 of Joe Leonard coasted onto the infield and into retirement, to be followed shortly by the seventh-placed sister car of Art Pollard. Team…

You're reading a preview of

Octane (Digital) - 1 Issue, October 1, 2015

DiscountMags is a licensed distributor (not a publisher) of the above content and Publication through Zinio LLC. Accordingly, we have no editorial control over the Publications. Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers or other information or content expressed or made available by third parties, including those made in Publications offered on our website, are those of the respective author(s) or publisher(s) and not of DiscountMags. DiscountMags does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, truthfulness, or usefulness of all or any portion of any publication or any services or offers made by third parties, nor will we be liable for any loss or damage caused by your reliance on information contained in any Publication, or your use of services offered, or your acceptance of any offers made through the Service or the Publications. For content removal requests, please contact Zinio.