![]() ![]() Menard made the fatal mistake of merging his team with Panther Racing owned by John Barnes in 2004. He won two IRL championships in 19, with Tony Stewart and Greg Ray respectively but he never found that Indianapolis 500 win. With the formation of the IRL, Menard became a full-time entrant. The problem was that none of those wins came while driving for Menard. That’s a list representing three F1 championships and nine Indianapolis 500 wins. Just some of the well-known names that drove for Menard are Al Unser, Tom Sneva, Gary Bettenhausen, Kevin Cogan, Raul Boesel, Townsend Bell, Eddie Cheever, Robbie Gordon, Buddy Lazier, Arie Luyendyk, Tony Stewart and Greg Ray. I go through this history to illustrate the type of drivers that have driven for John Menard over the years. Danny Ongais came out of retirement and drove Brayton’s car to a seventh place finish after starting from the back of the field. His teammate, Tony Stewart, slid over and started from the pole, but was not the recognized pole-winner. John Menard was devastated at the loss of his driver and close friend. Sadly, Brayton was fatally injured in a practice crash the following Friday. He withdrew a qualified car that was good enough for fourth, and qualified his backup car on the pole. In a dramatic move under the old qualifying rules, Scott Brayton did the unthinkable. Seventh was the best Luyendyk could do as Brayton finished a forgettable seventeenth.ġ996 will forever be the year of tragedy for John Menard. ![]() Brayton qualified on the pole, while Luyendyk started next to him from the middle of Row One, while teammate Buddy Lazier started twenty-third in a third Menard car. The Lola/Menard’s of Brayton and Arie Luyendyk were fast throughout the month. Menard took it on, made his own tweaks and dubbed it the Menard engine. He had teamed with Scott Brayton who had family ties to the Buick engine. The veteran Menard team of 1992 had a total of five Indianapolis 500 wins, sixty-five starts and an average age of almost forty-nine.ġ993 saw Menard expand again – this time to four cars with Bettenhausen, Picquet, Geoff Brabham and a late entry with Eddie Cheever but they fared no better than a sixteenth for Cheever.ġ995 showed great promise for Menard. Unser was brought in as a replacement for Picquet and went on to his third place finish. Picquet crashed in practice and mangled his feet to the point it was questionable if he would walk again. Bettenhausen returned, along with 1983 winner Tom Sneva and former Formula one champion Nelson Picquet. He was playing catch-up until he went out with radiator issues on Lap 89 and finished twenty-second. He got down low onto the apron and spun heading into Turn One on Lap One. Unfortunately, Bettenhausen didn’t fare too well in the race. was the quickest qualifier at 224.460, but started thirteenth as he was not a first day qualifier. In 1991, John Menard owned the fastest car in the field – a Lola T9100 powered by Buick and driven by Gary Bettenhausen. While driving for Menard in 1992, Al Unser drover the Buick to its best-ever finish – third. The Buick was known for three things it was very quiet, it was very fast and it was very unreliable. The USAC sanctioned Indianapolis 500 was the only race that would allow that much boost for the stock block engine. While the CART regulars were running Chevy’s and Ford Cosworths Menard chose to run the V6 Buick which required 55-inches of boost to be competitive. In the days of CART, he ran one-off efforts in the Indianapolis 500. Menard has been involved with Indy car racing for decades, but became most prominent as an owner in the nineties. The Wisconsin businessman owns the Eau Claire based home-improvement chain with 280 stores across fourteen states stretching from Ohio to Wyoming. But they also matched the personality behind the sponsorship – John Menard. The cars with Menards sponsorship have always been known for their vibrant use of dayglow colors. When I say colorful, you can take that one of two ways. The 2016 Indianapolis 500 got a little more colorful this past Tuesday, when it was announced that the Team Penske car of Simon Pagenaud would carry sponsorship from Menards for the two races in the month of May, as well as the race at Road America. ![]()
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