Formula One is the pinnacle of motor racing worldwide, and yet no North American team has successfully competed in the championship for decades. 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.

Part II

On May 11, 1975, the teams were in Monte Carlo for the Monaco Grand Prix. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. Neither finished in the top 10. 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.

Back 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. Mario had suffered failures of the onboard brake shaft CV joints before that had ruined certain races, but during practice at Anderstorp for the Swedish Grand Prix he had a really huge shunt in chassis VPJ4/001 due to yet another CV joint failure. After that accident Mario laid down the law: he would race in Sweden with onboard brakes but beyond that he refused to drive the car anymore unless outboard brakes were installed to eliminate the CV joint problem. The team agreed to convert the remaining two cars to outboard brakes.

Ironically, when it came time to race, however, the car performed well and Andretti surprised everyone by finishing in fourth place behind two Ferrari's and a Brabham, keeping good company, and coming back from a poor qualifying session where VPJ4, chassis 002, started from fifteenth place on the grid. At this juncture it seemed that the team was beginning to stabilize at a competitive level just below the frontrunners, but unfortunately the rest of the season would not fulfill the promise of Silverstone, Spain and Sweden.

The balance of the 1975 season was lackluster, except for a strong fifth place in the French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard on July 6, 1975, when once again only Lauda's Ferrari, two McLaren's and James Hunt's Hesketh were ahead of the Parnelli, Andretti showing the way to many other teams that had been in Formula One longer than the Parnelli Jones team. Pictures of the VPJ4 at Paul Ricard show the high airbox of the period with the Parnelli sporting a large American Flag decal on it and the Team USA logo by the cockpit. Disturbingly few sponsor decals were in evidence, however, with only Valvoline and Goodyear on the rear wing.

Back at Silverstone for the British Grand Prix on July 19, 1975 Andretti was not able to repeat the third place he achieved at the same track in April at the non-Championship race, qualifying and finishing in 12th place, in a race that was stopped after rain and a hail storm caused multiple accidents due to the conditions.

At the Nurburgring on August 3, 1975 the Parnelli continued its backward slide down the order, with Andretti qualifying 13th and finishing in 12th place. But Andretti performed better in the race than the results suggest, and there are pictures of Andretti's No. 27 Parnelli with all four wheels off the ground at Flugplatz, one of the famous flying places of the Nurburgring. Andretti set the fifth fastest lap that day but ran out of fuel on lap 12 of the 14-lap race due to a fuel leak.

On August 17, 1975 the Austrian Grand Prix was held at the Osterreichring, another race ruined by the rain that year. Mark Donohue died from injuries suffered during practice when the left front tire collapsed on the March he was driving for Roger Penske. On race day, the heavens over the Austrian mountains opened up and made conditions undriveable leading to the race being stopped after 106 miles. Andretti did not get too wet since the Parnelli went out in lap 1 in a spin, after qualifying 19th in the newest chassis VPJ4/003.

Vittorio Brambilla in his bright orange Beta Team March was in the lead when the race was stopped and he won in spectacular fashion, spinning on the front straightaway after he crossed the finish line, aquaplaning on the standing water into the Armco barriers, with little damage, except to his ego. It was Brambilla's only Grand Prix victory.

On September 7, 1975, at Monza for the Italian Grand Prix, Andretti repeated the poor performance of the VPJ4 in Austria, qualifying down in 15th and going out on lap 1 after an accident.

Back in the United States on October 5, 1975 for Watkins Glen, "Team USA" brought two cars to the racetrack and one of the cars, VPJ4/002, ran a coil-spring rear suspension in place of Phillippe's torsion bar design. Andretti qualified well in fifth place and was running in the top five until his suspension collapsed after only 9 laps. This 1975 U.S. Grand Prix is best known for the fact that when Niki Lauda took the checkered flag in his Ferrari 312T, it was the first win ever for Ferrari in the U.S. Grand Prix.

When the Vel's Parnelli Jones Racing Team took stock of their 1975 season, it was a mixed review. Andretti had managed to lead a race at Montjuch Park and set fastest lap, had qualified and run well in the points in consecutive races at Sweden and in France, had turned fifth fastest lap at the difficult Nurburgring circuit before running out of fuel and by the end of the season was running up front at Watkins Glen before mechanical problems put him out. And by trial and error certain fatal flaws in the design had been corrected, including replacing the inboard brakes and the torsion bar suspension, making the car less loose for Andretti to drive.

Although inconsistent from track to track the Parnelli VPJ4, at least in the hands of someone as talented as Andretti, seemed to be capable of being the "best of the rest" car, not able necessarily to challenge the Ferrari's and McLaren's but able to show the way to the motley group of Ford Cosworth entries that made up the rest of the grid, including, Tyrrell, Lotus, Brabham, Ensign, Penske, Williams, Hesketh and Shadow. Indeed, the Parnelli could occasionally put in a standout of a performance that would separate the car from the rest of the Ford Cosworth contingent. But the loss of Firestone's development work and sponsorship clearly hurt the team's chances to develop the car into a consistent performer, even amongst the Cosworth Formula.

And speaking of Cosworth, it is significant that one of the most innovative projects to come out of the 1975 Parnelli Formula One season was the team's experimentation with the Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8 Formula One engine, to convert it to a turbocharged cousin, the DFX, which the Vel's Parnelli Indianapolis team tried out during practice for the 1975 Indy 500. How this insight took root within the Vel's Parnelli Racing Team is a fascinating story in and of itself, with veteran Indy 500 chief mechanic Chickie Hirashima and Vel Miletich himself contributing to the brainstorming within the team. It is also a perfect example of the cross-fertilization between Indycars and Formula One during this period.

But, incredibly, when Jim Dilamarter and Vel Miletich went to visit Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth, the principals of Cosworth to present the idea, the reaction of the two Brits was to laugh the two Californians' out of Cosworth's Northhampton offices: it couldn't be done was the view of Cosworth, but they would be happy to sell the Vel's Parnelli Jones Racing Team three engines at top dollar for the privilege of trying.

Ironically it was the principals of Vel's Parnelli Jones Racing Team, not Cosworth, that saw the Indycar potential for the DFX, which was realized by reducing its capacity from 3.0 litres to 2.65 litres to meet Indy's specifications (159 cubic inches), adding a turbocharger and managing to produce 880 bhp at 9,200 rpm. It was not yet known at the end of the 1975 Formula One season, but the Cosworth DFX engine that would be the staple for oval track Indycars in the years to come had its original inspiration from the work of the Parnelli Jones Grand Prix team on the racing circuits of Europe and back at the shop in Torrance, California.

Team USA in the Bicentennial Year

In the late summer of 1975 the team started to look for help to sort the car out, and Jim Dilamarter was dispatched to interview John Barnard, then a junior designer at Lola Cars Ltd. in Buckinghamshire, England. Barnard would go on in later years to design the Indy 500-winning Chaparral Indycar for Jim Hall in 1978 and the McLaren MP4 for Ron Dennis in 1981. Barnard appealed to the practical people at Vel's Parnelli Jones Racing Team because he was a hands-on designer, capable of wielding a milling machine or a lathe as well as a draftsman's pencil.

Mario was also thrilled to have new blood on board: According to Mario, "it took John Barnard to bring the car to a competitive level." Here is Mario's memory of how Barnard helped improve the car, as he relates in his book a story about testing the Parnelli Formula One car at Riverside, California prior to freighting it to South Africa for the Grand Prix:

"What Barnard brought was a lot of common sense and a practical approach. I was a couple of seconds off my Formula 5000 times [in the Parnelli team's F5000 Lola at Riverside] and that was when panic set in. Barnard put the car on the pad and strapped it down and jacked it up. As the car was rolling we were losing stiffness. We had a decreasing spring rate instead of an increasing rate and he just threw all that away.

Barnard also scrapped the exquisitely machined, $2,000 torsion bars specified by Phillippe: The ones Phillippe made for the front were no good. They were way too light, so we used the rear bars on the front. We went to a normal damper and spring combination in the rear, and right away I started matching my Formula 5000 times."

In the 1976 Bicentennial season, the Vel's Parnelli Jones Racing Team began the season but did not finish it. The team modified the original chassis for 1976 and designated it the VPJ4B, but the team skipped the first race of the season, the Brazilian Grand Prix. Viceroy had withdrawn as a sponsor and American Racing Wheels, a company owned by Art Hale, a lifelong friend of Parnelli Jones, took up the cudgels, which really meant that the team became largely self-financing. Andretti himself made the race at Interlagos, however, as the Parnelli team permitted Andretti to race Colin Chapman's Lotus 77, which was yet not sorted out and qualified only 16th, going out on lap 6 when Andretti had an accident.

On March 6, 1976 the Parnelli VPJ4B appeared for the South African Grand Prix at Kyalami with coil-spring suspension all around and in new white livery with red and blue pin striping and the legend "Happy Birthday America, 1776-1976" emblazoned across the three front wing elements. John Barnard redesigned the airbox and rear bodywork of the car, and ducts for the outboard brakes were visible on the front of the car. Andretti qualified poorly in 13th place but managed to finish in the points, up in sixth place.

On March 28, 1976 the inaugural United States Grand Prix West was held at Long Beach, and the first race for that storied venue was to be the sixteenth Sunday for the California-based Vel's Parnelli Jones Racing Team and the last Grand Prix for the team. For this street race the Parnelli had a shorter nose and the 1975-vintage rear bodywork and airbox because the car was down on revs. The paint scheme was now blue over white, with a large American flag decal on the sidepods. A large white No. 27 was painted on the tall blue airbox. Sponsors on the car for this last race included American Racing Wheels, Valvoline and Goodyear.

Andretti did his best to show the flag and was fourth fastest during Friday's practice sessions before blowing an engine. During Saturday's qualifying, the suspension broke and Andretti ended up qualifying fifteenth.

In the race, Andretti showed all the skill he would become famous for at Long Beach in the years to come, clawing his way up the field from fifteenth to ninth, including setting fastest lap early in the race. Andretti had made a brave show of it in the Parnelli's last Formula One race but it was all for naught when Andretti suffered a water leak, retiring on lap 15 of the 80 lap race, having well and truly cooked the Ford Cosworth.

Andretti had reason to be as hot under the collar as his engine during the Long Beach race. Prior to the race, while Mario was in the cockpit Chris Economaki, the legendary editor of National Speed Sport News, with his customary aggressiveness shoved a microphone in Andretti's face and put to him the following question as described in Tim Considine's American Grand Prix of Racing: "Hey, Mario, how about this being your last race in Formula One?" Andretti reacted by saying to Economaki "What the hell are you talking about?" At that point Economaki spilled the beans and told Mario bluntly, "Well that's what Vel [Miletich] told me." English is not Andretti's first language but he certainly has never had a problem communicating; Andretti quickly fired back this retort: "Well, it may be his last race in Formula One, but it won't be mine."

And of course that was true, The very next day, Andretti ran into Colin Chapman on the way to breakfast at the Queensway Hilton Hotel and they had a male bonding experience there over a cup of coffee. Chapman was befuddled because of the failure of his still-unsorted Lotus 77 to even qualify for Long Beach and Andretti's race was only slightly better. Misery loves company, and after that breakfast Andretti agreed to rejoin Lotus; two seasons later the two men went on to the 1978 World Championship in the world-beating jet black Lotus 78. Indeed, as Mario had predicted, Long Beach in 1976 was not Andretti's last Grand Prix.

Although Vel's Parnelli Jones Racing Team had raced its last Grand Prix on the streets of Long Beach, the team itself stuck together and continued to have considerable success in Indycar racing by running the Cosworth DFX turbo that the Parnelli team had developed from its exposure to the Cosworth in Formula One. In the 1976 Indy 500, which took place two months after the 1976 Long Beach Grand Prix, Al Unser's Cosworth turbo-powered Parnelli VPJ6 qualified fourth and finished the race in seventh place.

In the very next 500 mile Indycar race however, the Schaefer 500 at Pocono Raceway, the Cosworth DFX was an outright winner, little more than a year after the principals of Cosworth had pronounced the experiment a folly. In the 1977 Indy 500, there were five Cosworth's in the field and Al Unser qualified and finished in third place for Vel's Parnelli Jones Racing. By the 1979 Indy 500, 20 cars out of the 33-car field were using the Cosworth turbos that had their origins in the lessons learned in Europe by the Parnelli Grand Prix team.

With all the success that the Vel's Parnelli Jones team had in all manner of formulas, from Indycars to F5000, Parnelli Jones, a driver himself, shared the disappointment of his Indy 500 colleague Andretti at the abrupt end to the Formula One effort, but Parnelli knows within himself that he and Miletich gave it their best shot. As Jones told Andretti's biographer, Gordon Kirby:

"I know Mario was upset, but we had spent everything we had gotten from Firestone and more. We didn't put anything in our pocket. You couldn't blame Mario for being upset because he wanted an American team to go over there and do it, and we'd have loved to. We worked like heck to try to get sponsorship, but Formula One in this country at that time didn't seem to carry the prestige that it does today."

But Formula One is a sport where the last American to drive in a Grand Prix was Michael Andretti for McLaren in the 1993; as it happens Michael's father, Mario Andretti, was the critical component in the achievements of Vel's Parnelli Jones Racing team. Before the next Team USA takes to the grid, a young American driver working his or her way up through the ranks of European road racing will have to be found, funded and promoted. Every year, Red Bull runs a driver search program and academy for aspiring American road racers who make the grade. Each year's winners are announced during the U.S. Grand Prix weekend. Given the shape of things to come, there is a good chance that if there is to be a Menard Cheever Red Bull Special in Formula One, you will hear about it first some September at the U.S. Grand Prix at Indianapolis.