1975 JORGENSEN GURNEY EAGLE FORMULA 5000 755
At the green flag for the Formula 5000 main event at the 2014 Brickyard Invitational vintage racing event, driver Paul Wilson in his March F5000 car lurched to an early lead, with Tom Malloy hot on his tail. Malloy was driving one of his favorite cars – a 1975 Jorgensen Gurney Eagle F5000 755 – at a favorite track of his, the INDY Grand Prix course. Wilson, the 2013 Vintage F5000 champion, maintained his 5-car-length lead over Malloy throughout the first lap of the 2.3-mile Indianapolis road-race course. But by the end of lap two, Wilson’s lead was 4.5 car-lengths. Lap three, 4-car-lengths; lap four, 3-car-lengths; lap five, a 1-car-length lead. Tom Malloy was persistently closing in, and after encountering lapped traffic while exiting the Turn 6 infield chicane, the two cars seemed connected by freight-car coupler as they fired down the infield straightaway. Braking hard for the 90-degree Turn 7, Wilson could sense that Malloy was setting-up a passing move, and he was accurate. As Malloy made the pass while entering the turn, he spun off-track onto the lush Speedway grass, and later commented; “I got greedy…but it was a good run.”
Forty years earlier, legendary driver James Hunt ran a similarly close 2nd place, in the same Jorgensen Gurney Eagle F5000 car, at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey California. In 2014, Tom Malloy and the 1975 Jorgensen Gurney Eagle continued a rich racing tradition, keeping this rare car at the peak of its purpose, and exhibiting that 1970s classic Formula 5000 racing is alive and thriving.
The development journey of Gurney Eagle Formula 5000 racecars spanned an 8-year wavy arc, birthing in 1967 and apexing in 1975 with this Jorgensen Gurney Eagle 755. Despite its checkered record, this Gurney 755 notched many impressive finishes, beginning with young phenom James Hunt in 1974 and later continuing with the legendary Bobby Unser. The car was Gurney’s best-of-breed Formula 5000 creation during this halcyon era of American V8 formula car racing.
Early volcanic shivers of a Gurney Formula 5000 racecar first erupted in 1967, when the SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) incubated a “professional” class for open-wheel racecars, dubbed “Formula A.” The initial idea was to offer an annual series of five races, open to Formula 3, Formula 2 and 3-litre Formula 1 cars, with a purse of $5,000 for each of the five annual races. Along the way, the notion of fitting lower cost, more readily available Chevrolet V8 engines into the cars so as to achieve higher horsepower for lower dollars seemed a way to boost excitement in the series and launch it to a new level of participation and fan interest. The idea worked, and effective in 1968 the name for this newly defined race series became “Formula 5000,” shorthand for open wheel Formula cars with 5-litre American V8 engines.
At that point in time, campaigning a Dan Gurney AAR Eagle F5000 car was the surest way to become competitive in the fledgling Formula 5000 race series, a fact demonstrated by drivers in Gurney Mk V Eagle cars winning the championships in both the inaugural and second-year Formula 5000 seasons – 1968 and 1969. By the early 1970s, however, toughening competition fueled by rising purses and series popularity saw rivals such as Britain’s Lola and McLaren fielding advanced cars with marquis drivers, and winning races. To stay ahead of the game, Dan Gurney elected to develop an all-new Formula 5000 car in his southern California All American Racers (AAR) facility.
Borrowing its fundamentals from the highly successful Gurney USAC Indy cars, with influences from then-modern Formula 1 precepts, the new Gurney car was guide-lined within Formula 5000 chassis rules and named the “73A.” Protracted track testing by veteran racers and Dan Gurney himself showed great promise and a few flaws, such as engine overheating caused from inconclusive aerodynamic features and suspension design issues.
Although the initial 1974 season with the 73A yielded several successes and respectable finishes, the car struggled against top competitors, with a handful of hard-earned 2nd and 3rd place results delivered from first-rate drivers Brett Lunger and Elliott Forbes-Robinson. Dan Gurney and his AAR team would redouble efforts and continue development.
A follow-on generation of the F5000 73A accelerated during the late stages of the 1974 race season, and was designated the “755.” Nearly one hundred pounds lighter weight than the 73A and with a more streamlined shape, the aerodynamic styling of the 755 was sleeker, featuring a minimized amount of frontal area, with a tower design encompassing a wrap-around of the driver and large cleanly shaped air scoop for routing flow to the engine’s intake trumpets via efficient internal and external aerodynamics.
The 755 was debuted late in the 1974 race season for two events, at Laguna Seca raceway in Monterey, California, and at Riverside Raceway in southern California, each with rising Formula 1 star James Hunt. Both events showed the 755 to be formidable, with James Hunt qualifying an aggressive 3rd and finishing 2nd at Laguna Seca, and a strong showing at Riverside until “Hunt the Shunt” crashed the 755 into the Turn 9 “sweeper” wall at speed on the 38th lap. Both car and driver were okay, and the 755’s presence was felt. This was followed by a 2nd place finish in America’s “Roar at the Shore,” the inaugural Long Beach Grand Prix in southern California that displayed a world class field of star drivers and Formula 5000 cars to an audience of 60,000+ spectators.
1975 opened to an aggressive schedule of Formula 5000 races across the USA, with mixed results for a further refined 755 from drivers Bobby Unser and promising Australian driver Vern Schuppan. At the much-awaited inaugural Long Beach Grand Prix, Vern Schuppan soldiered through an action-packed and attrition-filled event to an impressive 2nd place behind series dominator Brian Redman in a Lola T332.
Although a heartening result for the Jorgensen Gurney Eagle 755 in 1975’s highly successful Long Beach Grand Prix (Dan Gurney was one of the event’s co-founders) – the AAR effort was financially and operationally taxed from its Formula 5000 adventures by the end of the season. The company would regroup, never fully able to bring the 755 to its full zenith. In the meantime, the firebrand Formula 5000 series was cancelled after 1976, owing to a convergence of unforeseen factors, initially detonated by the mid-1970s oil crisis that stunted American-iron-big-engine motor sports in the USA for the next decade. Yet today, the latest generation Jorgensen Gurney Eagle 755 Formula 5000 car is performing better still than in 1975, campaigned actively by Tom Malloy at vintage feature races throughout North America. In keeping with the accomplishments of James Hunt and Vern Schuppan in 1974-75, the 755 set fastest Formula 5000 lap time in the 2014 inaugural Indianapolis Brickyard Vintage Invitational, with Tom Malloy piloting this rare one-of-kind racecar from a dynamic and special era. Following that, after Tom Malloy’s Formula 5000 win at Road America in July 2014, Tom commented to Dan Gurney himself; “Still running – still winning!” To that, Dan responded; “That Eagle is a lot of car on a circuit like Road America…WELL DONE!!”
