The first time Mark Ingersoll won Indy as a crew chief, he fully understood his father’s passion some 37 years ago.
Buddy Ingersoll, his father, drove a BB/Altered Turbocharged Buick Regal to victory in Comp Eliminator and Ingersoll was there to witness it.
As far back as he can remember, Ingersoll learned from Buddy the prestige of the Labor Day extravaganza.
“Oh man, it was always an important race,” Ingersoll confirmed. “I remember going up there with him when I was a little guy. And back then, you had to wait on the circle track to get teched in. And it was just a drawn-out thing, and it was just a different experience. It’s always been the highest importance.”
Today is much different for Ingersoll, who serves as crew chief for Erica Enders, multi-time world champion and back-to-back NHRA U.S. Nationals champion. She handed Ingersoll his first Indy championship as a tuner.
However, it wasn’t his first.
Some 37 years ago, Ingersoll experienced his first Nationals win. Buddy drove his BB/Altered Turbocharged Buick Regal to the Competition Eliminator crown by beating Glenn Self.
Ingersoll, then a teenager, admits he didn’t really grasp the magnitude of watching one of his dad’s crowning achievements, his second major victory since winning the 1977 NHRA Modified World Championship.
“It always seemed bigger than the rest of the races,” Ingersoll said. “So I didn’t go to every single race with him because I was into sports and school and everything through high school, but I always went to the Indy for sure. But you knew it was important, for sure.”
Ingersoll first joined Elite Performance in 2014, and a year later, he and Enders took home their first U.S. Nationals Pro Stock win. Then, he understood the magnitude of his father’s passion in winning Indy.
“I definitely understood what he felt,” Ingersoll explained. “I think it’s the feeling everyone experiences. That’s what keeps driving you to keep coming back.”
Ingersoll understood a more profound passion that drove his dad.
Buddy was passionate about turbocharged racing, starting with the four-cylinder Pinto he raced to the Modified title. But his finest work might have been the Regal, which at one time was the former Warren Johnson Hurst/Olds Cutlass.
“He liked going fast, and he liked new things, and new projects, and new challenges,” Ingersoll said of the Buick that ran in the mid-seven-second range. “And it’s just like a game; it’s just, how fast could I make this go? He liked to tinker and come up with different stuff and run something nobody else has and that kind of thing. That was his deal.”
Indianapolis represented the second of three significant victories with the twin-turbocharged Regal.
The first came weeks before the Indy triumph when he beat Larry Morgan’s four-cylinder H/Altered Fiero at the NHRA Northstar Nationals in Brainerd, Minn. The third major win was gaining inclusion for the car in IHRA Pro Stock after unsuccessfully lobbying for the car to run in the NHRA’s version of the class.
Buddy eventually drove the car to runner-up at the 1986 IHRA Fall Nationals to Bob Glidden before the series canned the idea.
“I can remember it all like it was yesterday,” Ingersoll said. “That car was always super fast, but so many things could go wrong, and the technology back then with clutches, computer systems, and stuff like that, it’s so much better now.”
“So you had so much more power than many of the cars that were trying to run. And it was just hard to contain it. You don’t really know how advanced it was until you look back and say, ‘That was awesome.”
It was as if Pro Stock racing saw a glimpse of the future, and it scared them.
“Well, it’s like anything else; nobody wants to change,” Ingersoll said. “And that was just totally different.”
As Ingersoll, fresh off of a test session on Tuesday in Tulsa heads into Indy looking for a three-peat, he smiles, reflecting on the experience of winning Indy with his dad.
“As a drag racer, you always want to win Indy,” Ingersoll explained. “He hadn’t won it, even though he tried many times. But when he did, it made everything just right in the world.
“It’s a huge race for everybody. And everybody in the country shows up for there. It’s not like you get only the East Coast racers to show up or whatever. Everybody shows up for Indy, and they bring their best game. So when you when it, you know you’ve beaten the best of the best, giving their best.”
