1960 Indianapolis 500 F1 Race Report & Results

Event: Indianapolis 500
Track: Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Weather: sunny, dry, warm

Jim Rathmann won his 1st F1 World Championship race at the 1960 Indianapolis 500. The Watson-Offenhauser driver started from 2nd on the grid and won on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval for the 1st time. It was also his 1st win of the season and the 3rd win for the Watson F1 team.

The 44th Indianapolis 500

The 1960 Indianapolis 500, run on Monday 30 May, would prove to be one of the great editions of the great American oval race. Jim Rathmann, by then a four-time Indianapolis runner-up, beaten in 1952 by Troy Ruttman, in 1957 by Sam Hanks, in 1958 by Jimmy Bryan and in 1959 by his rival Rodger Ward, finally won the race that everyone in his Detroit-area circle thought he had been owed for years. He did it after one of the most dramatic on-track duels in the Speedway's history, with Ward, the man who had beaten him to the bricks the previous May.

The roadster era was at its peak. The European mid-engined invasion that Cooper would launch the following year was still 12 months away. Eddie Sachs took pole position in his Dean Van Lines Special, an Ewing chassis with the four-cylinder Offenhauser engine, at 146.592 mph, the only pole position of his career. Jim Hurtubise lined up second after a stunning four-lap qualifying run; Rathmann was on the front row in his Ken-Paul Special Watson-Offy.

29 lead changes

The race itself was a sustained two-man fight between Rathmann's Watson and Ward's Leader Card 1 Watson. The two cars exchanged the lead 29 times, a Speedway record at the time, across the four hours of the race, lapping side by side through Turn One on multiple occasions, the kind of running that had been routine in dirt-track midgets but unheard of in the championship-points 500. Both men were running the same A.J. Watson chassis with the same Meyer-Drake Offenhauser engine; the equipment was identical, and the contest came down to two of the great American oval drivers of their generation refusing to give each other an inch.

The pivotal moment came in the closing 30 laps. Ward, who had built up a small advantage with a faster final pit stop, found his Watson beginning to vibrate badly with tyre cord starting to show. He had to back off; Rathmann took the lead with three laps to go and brought the Ken-Paul Special home 12.75 seconds clear of his rival.

Rathmann's overdue win

For Jim Rathmann the win was a reward for a career of Speedway near-misses. He had been a regular front-runner since 1949 and had finished second more often than any active driver. At 32 years old, with the Watson-built Ken-Paul Special and the Offenhauser engine that had powered every winning car at the Speedway since 1947 (with one exception), he finally took the trophy that the Bowes-Seal-Fast trade press had been calling his birthright for the last decade.

Paul Goldsmith brought a Lujie Lesovsky-built Epperly home third for his only Indianapolis podium, a small consolation for a driver better known to the NASCAR fraternity. Don Branson was fourth in the second Lesovsky-Watson, with Johnny Thomson fifth and Eddie Johnson sixth.

End of an era

The 1960 race was, although nobody at 16th and Georgetown realised it yet, the last Indianapolis 500 to be won by a roadster of any kind. The European mid-engined revolution arrived at the Speedway 12 months later when Jack Brabham brought a 2.7-litre Cooper-Climax to the Speedway and finished a competitive ninth, the first proper signal of what was about to happen to American oval racing. By 1965 the front-engined Offenhauser roadsters would be obsolete; by 1967 they would be gone from the Speedway altogether. Rathmann's 1960 victory was effectively the end of an architecture that had dominated American open-wheel racing for thirty years.

None of this had any impact on the European Formula 1 World Championship; the Indy points stayed in the points pool that no European driver could reach. Rathmann's 8 points, Ward's 6 and Goldsmith's 4 went on the season's championship table and stayed there, irrelevant. The 1960 race was the eleventh and final Indianapolis 500 to count for the F1 World Championship; the FIA removed the round from the calendar over the following winter, ending a decade of polite cohabitation that had served neither side particularly well. The 1961 European championship would start at Monaco without the Indy connection.

Classification 1960 Indianapolis 500

Pos	#	Driver	Team	Time	Laps	Grid	Pts
1	4	Jim Rathmann	Watson	3:36:11.360	200	2	8
2	1	Rodger Ward	Watson	3:36:24.110	200	3	6
3	99	Paul Goldsmith	Epperly	3:39:18.660	200	26	4
4	7	Don Branson	Phillips	3:39:19.340	200	8	3
5	3	Johnny Thomson	Lesovsky	3:39:22.710	200	17	2
6	22	Eddie Johnson	Trevis	3:40:21.970	200	7	1
7	98	Lloyd Ruby	Watson	3:40:36.950	200	12	0
8	44	Bob Veith	Meskowski	3:41:28.840	200	25	0
9	18	Bud Tingelstad	Trevis	3:44:31.270	200	28	0
10	38	Bob Christie	Kurtis Kraft	3:44:51.640	200	14	0
11	27	Red Amick	Epperly	3:47:21.940	200	22	0
12	17	Duane Carter	Kuzma	3:47:28.560	200	27	0
13	39	Bill Homeier	Kuzma	3:48:22.070	200	31	0
14	48	Gene Hartley	Kurtis Kraft	+4 laps	196	24	0
15	65	Chuck Stevenson	Watson	+4 laps	196	9	0
16	14	Bobby Grim	Meskowski	+6 laps	194	21	0
17	26	Shorty Templeman	Kurtis Kraft	Clutch	191	19	0
18	56	Jim Hurtubise	Christensen	Engine	185	23	0
19	10	Jimmy Bryan	Epperly	Fuel System	152	10	0
20	28	Troy Ruttman	Watson	Axle	134	6	0
21	6	Eddie Sachs	Ewing	Magneto	132	1	0
22	73	Don Freeland	Kurtis Kraft	Magneto	129	11	0
23	2	Tony Bettenhausen	Watson	Engine	125	18	0
24	32	Wayne Weiler	Epperly	Accident	103	15	0
25	5	Anthony-Joseph Foyt	Kurtis Kraft	Clutch	90	16	0
26	46	Eddie Russo	Kurtis Kraft	Accident	90	29	0
27	8	Johnny Boyd	Epperly	Engine	77	13	0
28	37	Gene Force	Kurtis Kraft	Brakes	74	20	0
29	16	Jim McWithey	Epperly	Brakes	60	32	0
30	9	Len Sutton	Watson	Engine	47	5	0
31	97	Dick Rathmann	Watson	Brakes	42	4	0
32	76	Al Herman	Ewing	Clutch	34	30	0
33	23	Dempsey Wilson	Kurtis Kraft	Magneto	11	33	0

Fastest lap: 1:01.590 min by Jim Rathmann (Watson) in lap 4

✅ Check out 1960 F1 Championship Standings
✅ Check out 1960 F1 Teams & Drivers

✅ Check out All Time F1 Drivers Rankings
✅ Check out All Time F1 Driver Records
✅ Check out All Time F1 Teams Rankings

About the author

Leopold

Leopold Pleijsier founded F1-Fansite.com in 2001 and has followed Formula 1 since the early 1980s. He writes about daily F1 news, race weekends, drivers and the sport’s history.

Related topics