Indy and Alfa to star at Festival of Speed

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Indianapolis legends rodger Ward, Parnelli Jones and Johnny Rutherford have accepted invitations to take part in June’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, with the cars which made them famous at the Brickyard. They will be accompanied by IMS boss Tony George.

Ward, now 78 years old, won the 500 in 1959 and ’62 with glorious front-engined Watson-Offenhausers, and went on to claim USAC titles both years. He will be reunited with his ’59 car, from the Indianapolis Hall of Fame museum, which is being restored for the event.

Jones, 65, won at Indy in ’63, driving a four-cylinder Watson-Offy, but will be out in the V8 Lotus-Ford 34 in which he finished second to Jimmy Clark’s 38 – the race’s first rear-engined victor – in ’65. Rutherford, 60, won the great race three times, driving McLaren-Offy M16 derivatives in ’74 and ’76, and the magnificent Cosworth DFX-motivated Chaparral 2K in ’80, when he also landed the CART crown. He will drive the earlier McLaren M16C/D.

Emerson Fittipaldi, a firm Festival favourite for his stoic efforts in torrential rain with the 228mph Penske-Mercedes Benz PC26 Indycar last year, is returning to see what it can do given a fair wind.

Alfa Romeo will also have a major presence at the Festival, with four cars coming from its museum in Milan, including the 8C-2900B Special Berlinetta which nearly won the 1938 Le Mans 24 Hours and one of the two 1940 flat-12 512 Grand Prix cars which never raced.