All-purpose open-wheel (F1, IRL) racing thread

Man, terrible brain fart there! And I was at the final day of qualifying when Rahal couldn't find speed to make the field. On Race Day, someone in the Coke Lot propped up a cardboard promotional cutout of Bobby with a sign saying, "Need Race Tickets."

The Speedway has always been a fickle mistress, cruel to a fault sometimes. Michael Andretti did everything but lap the field in 1992, and his son could taste the milk in 2006. Parnelli's turbine went poof in 1967 and Joe Leonard's in 1968. Lloyd Ruby couldn't catch a break there. Hepburn, Mays, Horn .. all the way back to DePalma pushing his broken car across the line in 1912. And don't even start with the Bettenhausens.

 

In 2006, I stopped at Marsh After the race and picked up a bottle of Andretti wine, the idea being we'd pop it after he won one. It will make its 11th trip with us tomorrow morning.

 

I am in select company: In the house for both the Bartman game and J.R. Hildebrand hitting the wall.

 

If you had been at the Open with Van De Velde, that would be the all time trifecta.

And thank you maumann for every time you post.

 

@maumann is terrific. It's fun to find people who will geek out with you.

Anyone going? The Whitman brothers may not be fast. We may not jump high. But we can tailgate.

 

Running fast and jumping high are overrated.

Tailgating skills--that's what counts.

Been twice--probably the coldest day in May Indy history (or at least that's how I will remember it). Roberto Guerrero was the pole sitter and crashed on a warm up lap, and Michael led the whole way and seemed to lap the field until his engine blew up (maybe the 92 race Maumann referenced, I'm not sure). Saw a couple banging under their pickup truck on the way out.

Went again in the 2000s, a rain delayed event and had a late afternoon flight back to Atlanta (attending the race was an afterthought that time) and actually saw the end of the race from my couch in the ATL.

Have a great time DW. I don't know if there's a more adrendaline (sp) generating moment in sports than the first lap of Indy when they all come running around turn one.

 

I have followed the race on radio, TV or in person every year since I was seven years old in 1966 (I snuck a transistor radio into my ninth-grade classes for the tragic events of 1973) and finally talked some former high school friends into getting tickets and flying from Oakland to Indy for the first time in 1991, the year of Mears and Andretti pulling off consecutive outside passes in Turn 1.

Growing up, Race Morning was a special treat because my parents would allow me to stay home from church to listen to the broadcast, which started at 8 a.m. Pacific time. If I couldn't work with Ernie Harwell (whom I did meet in Lakeland), then I wanted to work with Sid Collins (who unfortunately took his own life before the 1977 race).

Not surprisingly, both of those plans eventually went astray. I worked in radio, but on both coasts. And IMS hired mainly Indy-centric staff, since it was a part-time gig. And somehow, I wound up knowing enough about race cars with roofs along the way to wind up chasing NASCAR around the country for a bunch of years. But because we had two Charlotte-based writers, I had the luxury -- and good fortune -- to be paying attention to Indy rather than the Coke 600.

I've listened yearly from California, Florida, North Carolina and my cabin in northeast Georgia, in my car, in the stands and now via streaming download. While covering the Brickyard 400, I have had opportunities to swap stories with Howdy Bell, Jerry Baker and Donald Davidson. Longtime AP writer Michael Harris, Lewis Franck and I have chatted many times about their experiences, and boy, what I would have given to be in the media center just once in May.

Yes, 1992 was bitterly cold (high of 53 with a windchill of 39) and we were shivering in the Turn 2 infield bleachers, right where Michael suddenly slowed after clicking off 39-second laps like clockwork. I missed 1994 because I was covering the DIII Baseball Championship in Battle Creek. We drove back and forth from Cincinnati to Indy two soggy days in a row in 1997 before giving up and driving all night to get back to Rocky Mount, where I watched the Tuesday race on my couch. My wife and I continued going until 1999, but our California friends refused to give Tony George any more money.

Unbelievably, I was offered a free seat in Paddock for this year's race from an NHRA PR guy with John Force Racing. But my wife became gravely ill and hospitalized in ICU for 14 days in April. She's much better, but not well enough to let me run off to Indy for the weekend. C'est la vie. Maybe I'll get the offer again next year.

Sunday is my Christmas morning, and I'll be there in spirit. Hoping for a safe race, an exciting finish and another new face on the BorgWarner.

 

The best thing about motor sports is how much its fans love motor sports.

 

Greetings from Turn 4.

 

Stay outa jail ...

 

The fact you could get enough of a signal to post in that madhouse is more impressive than any technology inside the cars.