Indy 500 Raceday

For any racing fan, today is the day you look forward to. With the Monaco Grand Prix in Formula 1, the Indy 500, and the Coke 600 in NASCAR, all three races are special to their discipline of racing, and all three happen on the same day. (I was writing a post about this a few days ago when I got interrupted, and I guess Alzheimer’s set in because I didn’t remember it until now) Monaco was won this morning by Lewis Hamilton who had a great drive in the wet conditions. Monaco is the most recognizable temporary circuit in the world because the track flows through the hills, around the harbor, and through a tunnel in the province of France. The famous hairpin is shown above. Take a lap with Fernando Alonso to see how difficult this circuit is.

Enough about F1, we’re gearing up for Indy now. Here is the starting grid, with Ganassi teammates Dixon and Wheldon 1-2, and Penske driver Ryan Briscoe filling out the front row. Here’s the finish to the 2006 500. And the 2007 500 (this was essentially the end, rain called the race). With unification of ChampCar and IndyCar this year, the grid is the deepest since 1995, the final 500 before the split. Looks like about 40 minutes until green, I’ll probably do occasional updates in live-blog style, I have nothing better to do.

12:25: ABC acting as if Danica is the only driver in the field. At least they showed her photoshoot pics. The hype surrounding her is ridiculous, this segment has to be like 10 minutes long.

12:35: Driver intros are underway, Marco’s suit is awesome. The group photo on the yard of bricks was pretty awkward… let’s just race.

12:45: Just had a big segment about “the dangers of racing”. These cars are glorified missiles with wheels running between concrete walls and catch fences, so yeah Indy’s dangerous.

12:48: Gotta love Helio – “Come on, if you meet Oprah, you’re the MAN”.

1:03: You know you’re close when Jim Nabors sings “Back home again in Indiaaanaaa”. And the engines are fired woooo.

Green Flag: So much for 3-wide, single file in a hurry.

Lap 3: Wheldon kinda dive-bombed teammate Dixon for the lead, but they made it. Scheckter is flying!

Lap 8: Danica’s team tells her to not worry about fuel… no kidding it’s lap 8 fools. Caution for debris – Scheckter already moved from 11th to 4th during the green run. The debris is Junqueira’s mirror… an aero advantage without it, I’d leave it off (nvm, apparently this is illegal).

Lap 13: Sarah Fisher has spun… under CAUTION. Wow… time to add the tag “Women drivers”. Eddie Cheever: “That was a silly mistake”

Lap 18: Buddy Rice is the new leader by not pitting, new tires restart third on back.

Lap 30: Wheldon leads, Rice was gobbled up on the restart. Junqueira is 14 laps down after fixing the mirror… what a terrible way to lose track time.

Lap 40 or so: Graham Rahal crashes out of Turn 4… damn the kid was having a good month before today. Looks like Alex Lloyd decided to slow in front of him to pit… you know you can go full throttle all the way to the frontstretch right Alex? I know this from my experience on IndyCar Series 2005. Seriously, it’s good stuff.

BIG trouble on Foyt IV’s car, car caught fire on pitroad, looks like a major fuel leak because the cap didn’t close. He had a similar issue during qualifying.

Lap 61: Leaders in HEAVY traffic, and Marty Roth crashes – very similar to Rahal’s crash, seems to have gotten too high at the same spot because Buddy Lazier decided to slow to pit early. Cmon guys, practice on IndyCar Series 2005 some more. Helio has a broken wing from debris, but that can be fixed quickly.

Anyone see the commercials for the show “Wipeout”? What a joke, that’s an exact copy of MXC, minus the hilarious commentary.

300,000+ people in attendance today, that’s 4x this year’s super bowl.

Lap 81: Jaime Camara destroys his car hitting the wall out of turn 1, and then again in turn 2 – debris all over the track.

Pretty sure ESPN just had a commercial that said “Let’s be honest, we watch this to see people wipe out”. Go fuc… I mean “Stay classy, ESPN”.

Lap 94: Kanaan passes both Ganassi cars and takes the lead!

Lap 100: Halfway running order: Kanaan, Dixon, Wheldon, Andretti, Scheckter, Carperter, Meira, Patrick, Hunter-Reay, Mutoh.

Andretti up to 3rd. The AGR cars are coming on strong now in 1st and 3rd. Does that mean… Danica is going to move forward?!!?!? Naaaah.

Lap 105 or so: NO WAY!! Leader Kanaan crashes! Looks like his teammate Marco made a late move into turn 3 and a hard crash for Kanaan who spun and got T-boned by Sarah Fisher who had nowhere to go. What the hell Marco…

Kanaan’s response to Marco “being sorry”: “He better be, it was a very stupid move”. He said Fisher cried all the way back in the ambulance… wow. You have to feel bad, it was her own team on a minimal budget. She doesn’t get the breaks Danica does.

And Jeff Simmons crashes under yellow… on the straightaway. What? something must have broken, the car turned dead right…

Lap 120: Race control to Danica “Keep the car in a straight line”. So you mean the driver who complains so much about blocking is getting warned for blocking? Yep. Also, Marco to the lead.

Lap 132: Justin Wilson spins into the inside wall, which is too bad because he was doing well for the ChampCar drivers. This has been a pretty grinding race with all these crashes.

Danica’s radio conversation: “I can’t do anything!!”, “I am slooooow”. Believe it or not, she actually said that. Thanks for confirming that Danica.

Lap 140: Mario Moraes!! WOW, he got out of line and somehow saved it inches from the wall. Dixon is now leading, his teammate Wheldon has dropped waaaay back – 14th at lap 147.

Lap 155: Alex Lloyd crashes into the pitlane. VERY scary, as he could have hit the pit barrier, and debris sent people scattering in the pits.

Tomas Scheckter, who ran in the top 5 most of the day, is now out with a broken driveshaft. A number of good cars have fallen by the wayside today. Vitor Meira to the lead on lap 159! Very daring move through the middle.

Lap 167: Milka Duno spins but avoids contact. Looks like Lazier chopped her a bit, and Milka kinda drove into the grass by herself after the contact.

Meira shockingly still leads. He’s never won in his 80 starts, but has finished 2nd 7 times. Still, a single car team isn’t expected to do much at Indy.

Crash in pitroad! Danica and Briscoe crash and Danica is out with a broken suspension! Looks like Shammgod made a good prediction. Briscoe’s crew didn’t seem to warn him that Danica was on his outside. Tough caution for the 2 remaining women drivers who are both involved in incidents. Fortunately the coverage will be about drivers up front from now on, not Danica running 10th.

Danica has a hissy fit and storms down pitlane looking to pick a fight with Briscoe. Sorry Danica, but any guy would probably beat you in a fight.

Lap 176: WILD restart, and Wheldon attempts to make a pass in the grass on the backstretch.

Lap 188: With 12 to go, the top five of Dixon, Meira, Castroneves, Andretti, and Carpenter are running nose-to-tail.

Lap 191: Marco is coming forward… up to 3rd now and closing fast.

Lap 196: Meira has closed and it’s going to be a race between him and Dixon.

Lap 198: Dixon hits traffic, but so far is getting through cleanly, he has a healthy lead now.

Lap 200: Congrats to Scott Dixon for his first Indy 500 win!

Final order: Dixon, Meira, Andretti, Castroneves, Carpenter, Hunter-Reay, Mutoh, Rice, Manning, Bell

Dumb reporter to Dixon in victory circle: “No longer can we call you the iceman, we will call you… the milkman”

Danica acts like if she had gotten down to Briscoe, sh!t woulda gone down. uhhh… haha.

Finals comments: 1) So many cautions really hurt the flow of the race, but it was good. 2) Awesome runs by Vitor Meira in 2nd, Ed Carpenter in 5th, and Ryan Hunter-Reay in 6th. For all the talk about the “Big 3″ teams they did real well. 3) Danica needs to chill out – she makes mistakes all the time too, and she wasn’t even good today. 4) Sucks that Kanaan got taken out, he might have had something for Dixon. 5) Let’s go to Milwaukee!

Indy 500 Pole Day Approaches

Tomorrow marks the first day of qualifying for the Indy 500 – Pole Day – where the first 11 starting positions are set. This caps the first full week of practice and is the first major event of the month of the Indy 500. The fastest lap recorded overall in practice was registered by Scott Dixon in the final practice – 226.968 mph, which is the average speed of the lap. This equates a top speed of over 233 mph at the end of the straights for the fastest cars.

However, before we can look forward, we have to examine the controversial and unfortunate events of the day. First, Alex Lloyd, the 2007 Indy Pro Series champion and current IndyCar rookie, crashed hard off turn 1 and was taken to the hospital complaining of neck and back pain (video). This crash will likely limit Lloyd’s ability to participate in the events leading up to the Indy 500, although the extent of his injuries are unknown. While the opportunity could be taken to criticize the somewhat dangerous Dallara chassis, I say the car held up well for the impact, which was at 220+ mph, and we hope for Lloyd’s return soon.

The major news of the day involved Danica Patrick mowing down a Dale Coyne Racing crew member on pit road (video Note: video is gruesome although ESPN has no problem replaying it thousands of times). Accidents on pit road, one of the most feared occurrences in racing, happen from time to time and usually result in injuries. However, for the media to react to this happening by immediately saying “It’s not Danica’s fault!!” rather than focusing on the crew member is ridiculous. Also, the story has been reported by saying “Danica’s car strikes crew member.” Let’s get this straight – Danica drove her car into the pit area, turned into her pitbox, and SHE hit the guy. Everybody’s arguments that “the guy shouldn’t have been there” or “he should have been more attentive” are all true and the crew member could have prevented the incident, but in the end the driver is responsible for the car and what he/she does with the car. Of course it wasn’t intentional and who knows if Danica had enough time to react, but the media should be focusing more on the injured guy than covering for Danica. Upon watching the replay, it is clear that the crew member, Charles Buckman, is fairly lucky to not have serious head/neck injuries from the back wheel and wing of Danica’s car and hopefully like Lloyd, he will recover quickly. At the very least, it’s good to see that this list has not been updated since 2003.

In the coming weeks I’ll try to post a picture of an Indy 500 car from each decade – we’ll see how far I get. First up is the Marmon Wasp, winner of the first Indy 500 in 1911. This car is famous for having the first rear-view mirror (visible above the dash). It was controversial at the time because it meant that this car was the only one in the field without a passenger mechanic – a clear advantage. The average speed for the race? About 75 miles per hour, which means the race took more than six and a half hours.