427 replies to this topic

[Massa]

Every year you get a few people saying "I wish so-and-so was in the race this year."

I'm hoping Dog makes a comeback soon.  Hauled a good distance.

[Massa]

INDIANAPOLIS 500 FUN FACT:

The pit stall selection is based on Pole Day qualifying from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM.  The Shootout does not count for pit selection.  Therefore, James Hinchcliffe has the first pit stall (the polesitter's stall) even though he qualified second.

I think a broadcaster should have mentioned that during Pole Day (perhaps one did and I missed it), that they are actually competing for something during the pre-Shootout time.

[Massa]

Congratulations to Esteban Guerrieri of Buenos Aires, Argentina on winning the Firestone Freedom 100.  It was a really exciting race.  Guerrieri started last after an engine change and made a three-wide pass for the lead, splitting Tristan Vautier with Gustavo Yacamán on the inside.  Guerrieri got ahead of Yacamán, and the caution came out with two laps to go, leaving Guerrieri with the victory.  Some really dicey racing, but only two accidents, so good job to these young guys for driving a clean, but really, really aggressive race around the Speedway.  These cars could really slingshot.  It was like a cross between USAC, Handford-device era CART, and NASCAR at Talladega.  Pretty exciting.

Also the commentary debut of Dario Franchitti.  Perhaps trying out a second career with his retirement from driving one or two years away.

I encourage you to watch the highlights when they hit YouTube.  I enjoyed it.

[Massa]

Also: Dario Franchitti and Scott Dixon paced Carb Day final practice.  The Honda's fine at normal boost.  It was just the qualifying boost that messed it up.  I still anticipate a Chevrolet win by virtue of better fuel economy, but it's wide open for Sunday's race, truly.

Pretty cool, too, to see Bob Jenkins as the honorary starter for practice today.  Nice move by the Speedway.  Jenkins will be retiring at year's end.  Both he and his wife Pam have battled cancer; his wife is now battling brain cancer as mentioned before.

Not so cool to see Robin Miller interview Ana Beatriz..."Ana honey...Bia...what's wrong with the car, dear?"  No room for that **** on my TV.  What an ***clown.  Why not call A.J. Foyt "honey" and "dear" and see how that goes for you?  

One car to watch for is Bryan Clauson's...with Angie's List on board, he now has a green paint scheme.  Hopefully I can get a picture of it because I missed it.  Good luck to Clauson in tonight's USAC Silver Crown race, the Hoosier Hundred!

Anyway, complaints aren't what this thread is here for, so good to see all the sessions go green, no rain, and clean, no injuries.  Next time the cars fire it's for the Indianapolis 500!  So exciting.

Reminder that Sunday's 96^th Indianapolis 500-Mile Race is at noon GMT -5.  Coverage begins at 11 AM; green flag around 12:12.  That's on ABC in the U.S., TSN in Canada, ESPN International and its partners overseas.  Radio coverage will be available legally at 1070thefan.com.  If you need a stream, I am of absolutely no use to you.  Seriously.  Sorry.  You will have to do your illegal business on your own.

[Massa]

Final 7 laps from today's Freedom 100.  It was good stuff.  Spread out enough to not be pack racing, close enough to get dicey.

[HandyNZL]

Massa, on 25 May 2012 - 05:37 PM, said:

Also: Dario Franchitti and Scott Dixon paced Carb Day final practice.  The Honda's fine at normal boost.  It was just the qualifying boost that messed it up.  I still anticipate a Chevrolet win by virtue of better fuel economy, but it's wide open for Sunday's race, truly.

Pretty cool, too, to see Bob Jenkins as the honorary starter for practice today.  Nice move by the Speedway.  Jenkins will be retiring at year's end.  Both he and his wife Pam have battled cancer; his wife is now battling brain cancer as mentioned before.

Not so cool to see Robin Miller interview Ana Beatriz..."Ana honey...Bia...what's wrong with the car, dear?"  No room for that **** on my TV.  What an ***clown.  Why not call A.J. Foyt "honey" and "dear" and see how that goes for you?  

One car to watch for is Bryan Clauson's...with Angie's List on board, he now has a green paint scheme.  Hopefully I can get a picture of it because I missed it.  Good luck to Clauson in tonight's USAC Silver Crown race, the Hoosier Hundred!

Anyway, complaints aren't what this thread is here for, so good to see all the sessions go green, no rain, and clean, no injuries.  Next time the cars fire it's for the Indianapolis 500!  So exciting.

Reminder that Sunday's 96^th Indianapolis 500-Mile Race is at noon GMT -5.  Coverage begins at 11 AM; green flag around 12:12.  That's on ABC in the U.S., TSN in Canada, ESPN International and its partners overseas.  Radio coverage will be available legally at 1070thefan.com.  If you need a stream, I am of absolutely no use to you.  Seriously.  Sorry.  You will have to do your illegal business on your own.

So what time is that in Enzed?

[Massa]

Is the whole country in one time zone?  Race broadcast is Monday 4:00 AM in Auckland, green at 4:12.

[Massa]

Today's winner from indycar.com...and this is just the little guy...Indy's a special place...

[HandyNZL]

Massa, on 25 May 2012 - 08:29 PM, said:

Is the whole country in one time zone?  Race broadcast is Monday 4:00 AM in Auckland, green at 4:12.

Yes we are.  We are skinny.  We are not obese and fat like some countries.

And I was just testing to see if you knew what time it was...I knew when it was on...always 2hrs after Monaco finishes...which means I stay up from 7am Sunday morning till 10pm Monday night...normal stuff in the day, Monaco at midnight, Indy at 4am, work at 9am, finish work at 6-7pm, drive home, eat, sleeeeeeppppp

[Massa]

You're a better racing fan than I am, which you already knew and I already knew.

I can't believe the Indy 500 is tomorrow.  Hundreds of posts on my part and now it's finally happening and there won't be a single post from me during the actual race.

I absolutely love the 500 and I hope everyone knows that (I doubt I've made it clear enough ).  I wait all year for this race.  Only race I consider practice and qualifying to be can't-miss stuff, only race where all thirty-three drivers are legends in my mind.  It's just the best and it's probably not very exciting for someone who doesn't "get it" but I hope everyone who does will enjoy it.  I can't think of anything greater in sports, and I realize that differs person-to-person, but the Indy 500 is just the one thing I actually feel.  I'm actually moved by the winners and the losers and that's what's missing in everything else.  I love hockey, but I don't feel much of anything for the Stanley Cup champions, or the losers.  I enjoy F1, but I don't feel anything for the guys on the podium or the series champion or anything like that.  Same with NASCAR and Daytona, same with any other IndyCar race.  I don't "get it" the way I suspect a lot of people don't "get" Indy but damn, if I can only "get" one race, and I do, I'm glad it's this one.  The one sporting event, in all sports, where I don't say "this is fun, but it's just a game."  Indy means something to me and I realize no one read this and it was horribly written but I don't give a damn because THE INDY 500 IS TOMORROW AND I AM ABSOLUTELY THRILLED.

[Massa]

And then there's this...I was going to record this (and you don't even have to guess what music was going behind it)...but I didn't get the chance and so as walls and walls of text :

Indianapolis.

In the context of American auto racing, no name resonates more.

Some, like Ed Carpenter and Bryan Clauson come here from next door, grit on their visors and dirt on their gloves, wrestling sprint cars and midgets in the Midwest.  Some, like Sébastien Bourdais and Justin Wilson, come from an ocean over, calculated and precise to a near coldness, negotiating formula cars through the timeless trickery of European circuits.  Some, like Charlie Kimball and Ana Beatriz, come from paths that few even begin, let alone complete, a road starting at the point of improbability, some distance behind two drivers who now find themselves as role models off the track, and equals to their competitors on it.

The nation, and the world, come to Indianapolis by foot, by car, by plane, by television, by whatever means possible, lured by a celebration of the brave and their cars, a taunting of risk and a conquering of...

One centennial trails the event as it blasts down the front stretch, another centennial ahead, this one just now into its first corner.  Whether denoted as the 500-Mile Race or the International Sweepstakes, it's as much Eddie Sachs, Lloyd Ruby, Roberto Guerrero, Robby Gordon, and Tony Kanaan as it is Ray Harroun, Wilbur Shaw, Bobby Unser, Arie Luyendyk, and Dario Franchitti.

It's as much pork tenderloins and "Back Home Again in Indiana" as it is a three-million-dollar prize to the eventual winner.

It's as much Marion County as it is a world's fair parading an array of competitive driving's greatest masters, this year in the c#ckpit of a newly-designed car that's as much hand-crafted American machinery as it is a modern Italian design.

There are 200 pages in Indy's textbook, and rookies like Indy Lights champions Josef Newgarden and Wade Cunningham will learn at speed in racing's finest school, all coming out of today's event better racers than they were before the drop of the flag.  Corner 800 was too much for rookie J.R. Hildebrand last year, one of just two times the 500 has been decided on a last-lap pass.  Five years earlier, it was another first-year driver, Marco Andretti, losing it with the finish in sight.



Hildebrand and Andretti, no longer rookies, are best identified as part of a young, American contingent that also includes Ryan Hunter-Reay and Graham Rahal.  A few years experience under each one's belt, these four all pose a threat to take motorsport's ultimate honor.  They race against unfair criticisms: Hildebrand the choker, Hunter-Reay the ridebuyer, Andretti and Rahal both the future champions who never will be.  This year, though, each driver's situation has evolved.  Hildebrand's Panther Racing squad adds the cerebral Oriol Servià through a strategic alliance with Dreyer & Reinbold, the partnered teams now campaigning two engineering students of the past in the racecars of today and beyond.  Hunter-Reay and Andretti fly Marco's family colors, now armed with Chevrolet firepower, a potent brand this year as it was in twenty-one years ago when team owner Michael Andretti narrowly lost to Rick Mears.  Honda, however, powered a pair of Andretti Autosport Indy 500 victories, with Dan Wheldon and Dario Franchitti driving, and while Honda remains with Graham Rahal, a new logo has been added to the Ohio native's #38 for 2012.  Rahal now carries the same sponsor signage that father Bobby did in 1986, when he beat Kevin Cogan in a late-race duel.

Bobby Rahal has won as an owner, too, in a rain-shortened 2004 event dominated by Buddy Rice.  This year, Rahal's RLL team fields former F1 competitor Takuma Sato and the long-inactive Michel Jourdain, Jr., perhaps not household names, but neither was Danica Patrick when she drove for Rahal in 2005.  Patrick delighted the largest single-day sporting event crowd in her debut, fourth after leading late, a staple at Indy, absent this year.  Filling Patrick's seat at Andretti Autosport is Canadian James Hinchcliffe, quietly third in the series standings and fighting for an entire nation's auto racing shortcomings.  Scott Goodyear battled from the field's rear to finish just hundredths of a second behind 1992 champion Al Unser, Jr.  In 1995, Goodyear misjudged the final restart, passing the pace car and receiving a race-crushing penalty; the nation north of Indianapolis redeemed only by Jacques Villeneuve inheriting the race lead and eventual win under those circumstances.  Seven years followed, and it was Paul Tracy involved in controversy, a caution on the 199th lap resetting the running order just as he had passed Hélio Castroneves for what he believed to be the victory.

That was number two for Castroneves, his second in as many attempts after winning as a rookie in 2001.  In 2009, Castroneves became a three-time champion amidst an off-season legal battle that seeped into the championship's opening round.  Now, he's aming the favorites, having ended a drought at St. Petersburg, history looming as he edges closer to an elite trio of A.J. Foyt, Al Unser, and Rick Mears, the only drivers to reach the checkered flag first four times.  He'll have to contend with his Penske teammates, polesitter Ryan Briscoe, and Will Power, the same driver who replaced Castroneves in 2009's first race.  Yet for Power's road course prowess, the oval record does not match.  Good runs squandered have left Power's enthusiasm for speedways unrequited.  The fiery Australian looks for four consecutive IZOD IndyCar Series wins having taken what may have been his most impressive yet at Long Beach in April, charging from deep in the field after a penalty in qualifying, and flanking it with victories in Birmingham and São Paulo.  Dominant, but not accomplished, more is demanded of Power to add a prestigious title to his name:

The title of Indy 500 champion, reserved for few, claimed twice by Dan Wheldon.  Wheldon sped through a life and career decorated by accomplishments most fail to achieve on much slower clocks.  Dedication, humility, and affection colored a changed man as he crossed the finish line in the most thrilling of fashions last year, a moment Wheldon gave to the fans he cared about, and shared with the family he loved.

Drivers like Wheldon understood and understand Indianapolis.  They understand why hundreds of thousands populate a five-square-mile town called Speedway each Memorial Day weekend to hear the stories of Rose, Vukovich, Johnc#ck, the Unsers, Lazier, Cheever, de Ferran, and today's thirty-three, as they are told through the sounds of turbocharged engines and with the imagery of emotion unrivaled elsewhere in sports.  They understand the military tributes to servicemen and women, thousands with courage that overshadows even that of those taking the wheel within Indy's barriers.  They understand the dreams, impossible as they may have seemed to those in living rooms and computer chairs, of men like Jean Alesi, who found no challenge more demanding in his vast years of racing.  They understand the battles through adversity faced by drivers like Simona de Silvestro, burned and in a backup car as she qualified last year, now fighting an under-powered engine in today's race.  They understand the tears, tears of race winners like Hélio Castroneves, tears like those of Dan himself, the tears inevitable after today's 500 miles of racing.

Some look for a repeat.  Some look for a first.  Some look for a miracle.  The nation, and the world, look for an auto race in Indianapolis, and that they will find, encompassed in the pageantry and passion of auto racing's greatest day.

It is the Indianapolis 500, the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

[Massa]

SparkNotes of this thread up until now: 369 posts about nothing culminating in the actual race which is tomorrow.

SO EXCITED.

[Massa]

Bryan Clauson won the pole for the Hoosier Hundred and finished seventh.  He'll start from the thirty-first position in tomorrow's race.  Good for Clauson running the USAC Silver Crown race.  The Indy 500 used to be a USAC Gold Crown race for quite some time so it's good to see Clauson sticking with the roots.  I hope he runs well tomorrow.  Good kid, great driver.  Be careful not to confuse his car with Hinchcliffe's:

http://www.gettyimag...photo/145293183

[Massa]

Every driver in the field has won a race in something beyond karts.  Here are the most recent wins from each driver, some of whom have pretty long winless streaks:

One of those thirty-three's most recent win will be tomorrow.  It's Indy 500 Eve.  We're almost there!  We've almost made it to my favorite event in all of sports.

[Massa]

IT'S RACE DAY IN SPEEDWAY, INDIANA!!!

Thirty-three going for the milk and the millions...this is great.

It's finally here!

To everyone who watches, enjoy it!

[Massa]

LET'S GO!  IT'S HERE, IT'S HERE, IT'S HERE, THE INDY 500 IS HERE, T MINUS FIFTEEN TO BROADCAST TIME, T MINUS AN HOUR FIFTEEN TO THE RACE, IT'S HERE!!!!!!!

[Massa]

[JHS18]

I've found a stream for the race so happily I'll get to see it. Looking forward to it.

If anyone (looking at you here, Craig) needs a stream, just PM me and I'll sent you a link.

[HandyNZL]

Stream? Pfft....watching it on the idiot box, mate.

[JHS18]

Haha alright. Have to say, it is early stages so far, but this is entertaining. A lot of passes for the lead.

[JHS18]

Lotus didn't last long. What a farce. Real shame for Alesi and Simona. Alesi says he'll return.

[HandyNZL]

Going to be all about breaking the tow.

Who needs DRS?

[JHS18]

Andretti still leads, Dixon second, Hinchcliffe, Sato and Briscoe complete the top 5 for now. Still a long way to go.

[JHS18]

Ganassi cars looking strong. Dixon and Franchitti both on the move.

[JHS18]

Big crash. Mike Conway and Will Power. Looked nasty.

[JHS18]

Thankfully both drivers are okay. Was worried for Conway there for a second. Almost ended in the catch fencing.

[JHS18]

Conway lost it in turn one, Power ended up collecting him. Power's three race win streak is over.

[JHS18]

Wow. Castroneves did a great job of avoiding a bouncing tyre.

[JHS18]

Charlie Kimball has diabetes? Wow I totally didn't know that! j/k

[JHS18]

Back to green flag racing. Sato passes Kanaan for fourth...and a yellow flag. Ana Beatriz hits the wall.