How Bobby Unser won the '68 Indianapolis 500, and the Milwaukee man who made that happen

INDIANAPOLIS – Mark Wilke stumbled just a moment on the specifics.

Uhhh …  fif… yeah … fifty years. Really? Yes, really.

It has been 50 years since Bobby Unser won the Indianapolis 500 for the first of three times and delivered owner Bob Wilke and his Leader Card Racers the last of their three.

“In 1968, my dad just built a brand-new home out in Franklin (Wis.), and we stayed at home and listened to the race on the radio, my brother Greg and I,” said Mark, Bob’s grandson and the family historian, who was 10 at the time.

“We listened to it on the radio, and we remember distinctly laying on our beds in the room and having the radio in between us, taking the lead with X amount of laps to go, jumping up and down on the bed.”

Fifty years.

Such milestones set memories to flowing, even if sometimes they become a bit embellished by time. With the 102nd Indianapolis 500 set for Sunday, the gregarious Unser is only too happy to share his recollections of the day 50 years ago and of the Milwaukee businessman he considers the most fair and honest car owner he ever had.

“Bob in those days was equivalent to Roger Penske today,” Unser, 84, said Thursday, using the meticulous 16-time winner as his point of reference. “No matter what, he was the big daddy, one of the biggest of the big daddies.

“He was here as an owner way ahead of me, and he always had good drivers. Rodger Ward. Boy, oh boy. Don Branson.

 “No doubt, he took a gamble on me.”

A second-generation American, Bob Wilke joined his father’s specialty paper business in the 1920s and discovered racing early on. He became a successful owner of midget cars and then a sponsor of Indianapolis-style cars in the ’50s and finally an owner. Ward won Indy with Wilke in his debut in 1959 and again in ’62.

Unser joined the team four years later and loved working for Wilke, alongside chief mechanic Jud Phillips.

“Bob didn’t mess with us,” Unser said. “He didn’t call on the phone saying, ‘You gotta do this. You gotta do that.’ He was very gentle and easy with us.”

When May 1968 rolled around, all eyes were on Andy Granatelli’s turbine engine cars. A year earlier, Parnelli Jones had dominated before a mechanical failure with three laps to go, opening the door for A.J. Foyt.

This time Joe Leonard won the pole for Granatelli, but Unser – who qualified third – figured by race time his turbocharged Offenhauser engine provided comparable power.

"After – what? – eight laps, I could close up on Leonard so easy it wasn’t even funny,” Unser said.

“So I waited till I got on the straightaway here, right in front of Granatelli. I wanted to do it right in front of him. I did. I know it’s conniving a little bit. I gave Andy a little wave.”

The Eagle Phillips had prepared for Unser was so strong, he could have played with Leonard all day except for one problem. A broken gear linkage left Unser stuck in fourth, so it took him three-quarters of a lap to get going fast enough for the turbocharger to kick in, and by then Leonard was almost out of sight.

“I could pass him anywhere. Middle of the turn, going in, coming out, it made no difference. I’m going, this is hog heaven, except I didn’t have my gears,” Unser said. “I’d have probably lapped him two times.”

Carl Williams’ crash on the back stretch with 17 laps to go looked like it might end Unser’s charge. Even after the safety crew cleaned up the mess in record time, he’d still have to get up to speed to catch Leonard. And Art Pollard, Leonard’s teammate, hung back to try to extend the gap, a tactic that left Unser furious.

Still, he was composed enough to understand the situation when the race restarted with 19 laps left.

“I’m counting the laps,” Unser said. “I know what I can gain on him by now. ... The white-flag lap, I’m going to catch him.

“If I catch him on that, there’ll be no stopping me. If I’d have had to cut through the grass, I’d have done it.”

Unser didn’t need to do anything heroic. Leonard and Pollard never got up to speed with simultaneous fuel pump shaft failures on the restart. Unser cruised to victory over Dan Gurney for his fourth consecutive victory.

Unser stayed with the Leader Card team to the end of the 1970 season. The economics of the sport were changing, and Wilke was having a hard time adapting to the idea of taking a sponsor’s money. In the midst of a tire war, Goodyear and Firestone were throwing around serious money, and Unser was one of Goodyear’s favorite sons.

“He doesn’t have enough money to spend on racing as it takes, as the tire companies have,” Unser said. “It’s a lot of money we’re talking about. That race car in ’68, that was (paid for by) Goodyear. The engines that I ran, Goodyear. My money, all Goodyear.”

Goodyear steered Unser toward Gurney’s team, in which it also invested heavily.

Wilke, who had had a history of heart attacks, died a short time later. His son Ralph inherited the team and kept it running into the mid-1990s.

“My grandfather, besides being a wheeler-dealer, my dad is just the opposite,” Mark Wilke said. “My dad, when he took over, the most important thing to him – even though the Indy-car team was important – the important thing to him was the thing that fed the Indy-car team, and that would have been his business.”

The best days in the Wilke family’s racing efforts fade deeper into history with each passing year. But even after a half-century, memories remain vivid.