![]() ![]() In the race, he was in a class of his own, leading all the way and winning by more than a minute. Mario put his experience to good use taking the pole by more than half a second. Andretti had run plenty of laps around the place in both F5000 and F1 cars, and of course he had famously won the 1977 United States GP in Long Beach aboard a JPS Lotus. 1984 was the first time CART raced in the California streets, replacing F1 which had run at Long Beach from 1976-83 following the inaugural F5000 race back in 1975. The new car worked well out of the box and the team completed two largely trouble-free tests before the ‘84 season opener at Long Beach. The T800’s long tail for the Indianapolis and Michigan superspeedways was Broadley’s work. This was bonded to a complete carbon composite top section and nose that made the chassis much stiffer than the T700.Īerodynamically, the T800 was infinitely better than the T700 although by today’s standards the wind tunnel work for the T800 was rudimentary. At the time, not enough was known about carbon fibre’s ability to withstand high-speed impacts with a superspeedway’s walls so the central part of the chassis retained a more traditional aluminium honeycomb ‘bathtub’. With the T800, Bennett pushed Lola into adopting modern carbon fibre composite technology. Nigel Bennett was hired to design the new car, the T800, with Mark Williams assisting and Eric Broadley designing the car’s gearbox. The team made its debut in 1983 with a hastily designed Lola T700 that required a mammoth amount of work to turn into a reliable, competitive car with which Andretti was able to win two races that year.īut a much better car was required, and an all-new Lola was commissioned for 1984. He was the team’s raison d’etre and only driver through the first six years. Paul Newman and Carl Haas built their team around Mario Andretti. Newman/Haas competed in Indycar racing for 29 years, establishing itself as second only to Penske Racing with a record of 107 wins, 110 poles and eight championships won by Mario and Michael Andretti, Nigel Mansell, Cristiano da Matta and Sébastien Bourdais. Thirty years ago, in the team’s second year in business, Mario Andretti won Newman/Haas Racing’s first of eight Indycar championships. ![]() Andretti's 1984 title by Gordon Kirby From the MotorSport website. ![]()
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