There are people who defy convention by necessity. There are people who do it for fun, and then there are those that do it to prove a point, no matter how costly the potential victory may be. Drag racing folks seem to think that they have the market cornered on smart, rulebook-savvy racers. As you are about to learn, that couldn’t be further from the truth. There are scads of stories about racers flying the one finger salute to convention, race officials, and even common sense. Those guys go in straight lines, circles, and through the twisties. Take this as a motorsports version of “Profiles in Courage” with a side order of “Animal House.”

The Defiant Ones is a four-part series of stories about four very different ways of “sticking it to the man.”

Smokey Yunick at Indy with a Twin-Turbo Small-Block Chevy

Well, you knew this was coming. There’s no way to talk about defiant racers and competitors without talking about Smokey Yunick. His Stock Car exploits are well documented, but his Indy stuff is a little different.

By all accounts, Smokey Yunick liked stock car racing but loved Indy. To many of his generation Indy represented the pinnacle of the motorsports world. It was quite literally the space program on wheels for several generations. Then the invasion began. Traditional guys like Yunick hated the fact that foreign chassis and foreign drivers were showing up and, unlike in the years and decades past, competing strong. “I see Indy, the Indy I loved so much, disappearing,” said Yunick reflecting back on his mindset in the early 1970s. “Foreign cars, engines, and drivers will soon kill the American flavor of Indy and its 45 American racer heroes in American cars with American engines and American tires.”

His last stand at Indy lasted three years and it was spearheaded by a 208ci, twin-turbocharged, iron block, pushrod, small-block Chevy. Yunick was on a mission to “save” the race, in his words. He’d show the world that there was not need for all those extra camshafts, all those engineer types, and all of the piles of cash necessary to develop their combinations.

According to Yunick, the motor made 1,300-plus horsepower on the dyno, but was a troublesome piece at the track. Fuel management was the biggest problem and burned pistons plagued the team during practice for the 1973 race.

With Jerry Karl at the wheel the car managed to qualify for the starting grid. Yunick had been positioned at the entrance of the pit road giving Karl directions via a sign board. When the qualifying laps were posted and the announcement was made that the car was in, Yunick and his only crew guy, Ralph Johnson, exhausted from a month of 23-hour days, began to trudge back down pit row to meet Karl at their pit space. Every racer, crew member, and race official came to their feet and gave the two men a standing ovation for their entire walk. Yunick claimed it was the most moving and memorable experience of his racing life in his autobiography, Best Damn Garage in Town.

The race was another story. The car lasted 20 laps before the turbos began to act up. Johnson and Yunick cobbled the car back together. It then burned a piston, and as Smokey wrote, “put us out of our misery.”

The car, updated with a new transaxle, new fuel injection, and more fairing on the body, qualified for the 1975 race after missing the 1974 contest. Sam Sessions drove the car to a 10th (or 12th place depending on who you ask) finish in the rain shortened race. This really proved Yunick’s point. The little Mouse motor could hang with anything in the world. Unfortunately, this was its undoing.

Gearing up for the 1976 race, the engine was on the dyno, and arrangements had been made to test with Goodyear. All was looking good until late August of 1975 when USAC (then the sanctioning body behind the race) announced that the stock-block motors had no place at Indy. It was over, in more ways than one.

Yunick never returned to Indy as a competitor. He had proven his point so well that it ended his career. Dean Wormer dropped the big one. His car is now at the Indy Car Hall of Fame in Indianapolis…in the basement.

While it’s true none of the racers in our stories of The Defiant Ones won the races we mentioned, they were far from failures. You’re missing the point of this entire series if your only definition of success is a trophy. The Top Fuel driver’s petition against the Winged Express? That’s success. Leading 5 laps at Daytona in the only small-block car in the field? That’s success. Challenging for the lead in a half-decade-old car against factory teams? That’s success. Qualifying a small-block Chevy at Indy against international talent, twice? That’s success. Gaining racing immortality by doing any and all of this? That’s success.