Big Al’s birthday bullet
When the Vel’s Parnelli Jones (VPJ) team unloaded Al Unser’s PJ Colt at Indy in 1971, they were understandably confident. Unser had won the 500 from the pole the previous year in essentially the same car, and gone on to capture the 1970 USAC (pre-IndyCar) National Championship—the first of four each in Unser’s career—in dominant fashion, winning 10 of 18 races. For ’71, Unser’s qualifying speed was up more than 4mph from the year before—a huge gain. His 174.622mph should have been enough for pole, but it wasn’t.
Read the article from the Summer 2017 issue of Die Cast X, click here.