INDIANAPOLIS — He has been around long enough, shaking hands and helping out the occasional legend, that by now he feels like part of the furniture. You walk into Gasoline Alley at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, turn a corner around one of the garages and there is Tim Delrose, as familiar as the easy chair in your living room.
“It’s May,” he said the other day, relaxing on a golf cart outside his friend A.J. Foyt’s garage. “Where else would you want to be?”
Since 1961, Delrose has come here for the 500 and everything attached to it. He has one of those smiling faces that make May special, and if you’ve spent any time at all around Indianapolis — the track itself or the city’s racing hangouts — you know Delrose as one of the sport’s treasures.
He was a 1950s teenager in Joliet, Ill., when he fell in love with the local midget scene. Bold Bob Tattersall was his first hero. Ten years later, once young Delrose made a little money in the newspaper-distribution business, he bought a midget of his own. But he dreamed of bigger cars and bigger tracks, so in the mid-’70s he purchased an ancient Eddie Kuzma dirt champ car. Jim Hurtubise, another hero in the Tattersall mold, ran it a half-dozen times on USAC’s Silver Crown miles. Delrose, ever jovial, soon knew everyone in the pits.
As the 1970s melted into the ’80s, he had a car-owning partner in restauranteur Dale Holt and a razor-sharp mechanic named Bob Galas. They’d just put together a beautiful Grant King car and were debating the merits of prospective drivers. Delrose ran the names past Foyt, who dismissed every driver on the list except one.
“Hire Gary Bettenhausen,” said Foyt. “He ain’t afraid to die.”
Across the next decade, Bettenhausen and the Delrose-Holt No. 12 won at all the Silver Crown citadels: DuQuoin five times, Springfield and the Indiana State Fairgrounds, site of the cherished Hoosier Hundred.
As a bonus, Foyt ran a couple of races in the team’s second car, and he and Delrose have been close ever since. But it is Bettenhausen who first springs to mind when you think about Tim Delrose and race car drivers. Now, sitting outside Foyt’s garage at Indianapolis, Delrose told me a Bettenhausen story I’d never heard, one dating back to the spring of 1986.
“Gary didn’t have a ride for the 500,” said Delrose, “and time was running out. He’d heard that Danny Ongais had a Cosworth engine that might be available. I told him, ‘I’ll see if we can get that engine. You get busy trying to find a car.’”
Bettenhausen lined up a seat in a March owned by Ralph Wilke and wrenched by A.J. Watson. Meanwhile, Delrose went to work on Ongais, who was less than certain about the engine’s health. The previous year, he’d been running that same Cosworth when he crashed at Michigan, and there was concern that it might have briefly run backward, never a great thing for an engine. Lacking time for a complete rebuild, Delrose had it looked over by Watson and another Bettenhausen comrade, sprint car owner Willie Davis. There were no obvious issues, but some worry remained.
Delrose paused for a laugh. “Danny said, ‘Here’s what we’ll do: If Gary qualifies for the 500, once he takes his third green flag in the race — the start and two restarts — you owe me 25 grand.’ I told him he had a deal.”
Next, Delrose called on Charlie Proffitt, field manager of Goodyear’s racing division. When Hoosier Tire was making serious inroads into the dirt-track market, Delrose had remained a Goodyear man, and Proffitt was a man who valued loyalty. Might he be able to roll some speedway tires Bettenhausen’s way?
Proffitt told Delrose, “If Gary gets into the show, we’ll take care of him.’”
Bettenhausen qualified on the final day of time trials and lined up 29th on the grid. From the drop of the green, the fast cars — those of pole man Rick Mears, Michael Andretti, Kevin Cogan and eventual winner Bobby Rahal — were on a different planet. But Bettenhausen toughed it out and finished 11th. Deep in the background, happy to have helped a pal, stood Tim Delrose.
Only at Indianapolis in May can a story from 37 years ago sound fresh.
As Delrose spoke, practice runs for the 2023 Indy 500 were well underway. Among the cars being towed back and forth from Gasoline Alley to pit road, right past Delrose, were those of pole man Alex Palou and Foyt’s own fast pair, assigned to Santino Ferrucci and rookie Benjamin Pederson.
“Things change,” said Delrose. “I still miss the Speedway Motel; we had so much fun there. And a lot of the guys I knew so well have passed away.”
We talked a bit about a few of them: 1960 Indy winner Jim Rathmann, Bobby and Al Unser, longtime Foyt crony Jack Housby. Take a bookcase out of the study, put a table in storage, shift an armoire from one corner to another and things feel different. But home is still home.
Delrose said, “You know why I keep coming back? The 500 is a race, yes, but it’s also a social thing. I hang with A.J., and I see all my friends. Yesterday, I picked up (22-time 500 starter) George Snider at the airport.”
He looked around, shrugged and said again, “Where else would you want to be?”
Nowhere. I mean, show me a place where the furniture is more comfortable.
This story appeared in the June 7, 2023 edition of the SPEED SPORT Insider.
