Tom Malloy, driving the 1978 Penske PC-6 Indy Car at Britain’s renowned Goodwood Festival of Speed.
by Jake Grubb
Courtesy MALLOY, book by Tom Malloy & Jake Grubb
The First 200+ mph Qualifier at Indy: Impossible! Until it Wasn’t!
A 200 mph qualifying lap at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was for 68 years thought to be impossible – until it wasn’t — when in May 1978 it was achieved by driver Tom Sneva in the then-new and revolutionary Penske PC-6 Indy Car.
At what point does the race for speed reach terminal gravity? Year after year, from the inaugural Indianapolis 500 in 1910 forward, Indy Cars achieved steadily greater speeds: faster on the straightaway, record-setting qualifying speeds, and faster racing speeds. It took 66 years for an Indy Car to log a single Indy lap at an average of 200+ mph. Yet after that, only 19 years elapsed until the fastest-ever official lap at Indianapolis Motor Speedway was clocked at 237.498 mph in 1996.
The Penske PC-6: Breaking the 200 mph Qualifying Barrier!
Seemingly a leap into the space age, in 1978 driver Tom Sneva piloted the Penske PC-6 to the first official 200 mph+ qualifying lap at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “The Gas Man,” as Sneva was known, officially notched the 1978 record-setting average 4-lap speed of 202.156, at that time an unbelievable feat!
The actual 1978 Penske PC-6 record-setter displayed here achieved this hallmark milestone at the launch of what became an 18-year period – from 1978 to 1996 – when the lap speed record at Indy was broken in 15 of those years!
Penske PC-6 featured a 2.4 liter turbocharged Cosworth DFX V8 engine, mated with a Hewland LG-500
4-speed gearbox. The engine developed 1,000 reported horsepower in a chassis/engine package weighing
only 1,525 pounds. The result: F18-like speed.
The extraordinary Penske PC-6 Indy Car was fitted with the most powerful Indy Car engine ever seen, up to that time frame. Its 2.4 liter turbocharged Cosworth DFX V8 engine developed 1,000 reported horsepower in a chassis+engine package weighing only 1,525 pounds. The result: F18-jet-like speed. But safely transferring that power to the racetrack with stable handling was the deciding factor in the PC-6’s superiority. Stemming from Roger Penske’s 1973-1976 efforts to compete in Formula 1 with its PC series 1, 2, 3 and PC-4 cars, the Penske PC-6 was developed by designer Geoff Ferris, who modified the platform of his earlier Penske PC-4 Formula 1 car into what became the PC-6 USAC Champ/Indy Car. The car would rocket Tom Sneva and Roger Penske into the history books, setting the first-ever 200+ mph four-lap average while qualifying for the 1978 Indianapolis 500. Today, this very car resides in the renowned Tom Malloy Collection of historic racecars, where it remains race ready for active track demonstration runs at major motor racing events.
