The long-anticipated participation by a turbine-powered car finally becomes a reality, and it almost wins first time out. Turbines have been entered before but none has ever qualified. Driving a revolutionary four-wheel-drive vehicle powered by a Pratt & Whitney gas turbine helicopter engine, Parnelli Jones leads all but 25 of the first 196 laps only to glide to a halt near the entrance to the pits. A bearing in the rear end has failed so that power can no longer be delivered to the track. This allows A. J. Foyt to take the lead, and just moments before he is due to come around to take the checkered flag, a multi-car accident develops on the main straight. Incredibly, Foyt has already had a premonition that something might happen and has taken the precaution of slowing down. He picks his way through the debris and then gears up for the final few yards, past the still-stunned Parnelli Jones and his Andy Granatelli crew.

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• ID: 38725
• Taken By: No Photographer
• Taken: February 09, 2006

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