Round 5 - The 97th Indianapolis 500
'The World's Fastest Game of Musical Chairs' - Adam Johnson
On Sunday May 26th, two iconic races for open-wheeled cars took place.
One was a tedious procession of tyre management and drivers crawling around a track patently unfit for purpose, with the only moments of interest being the off-track politics and the on-track frustration and shattered wings as every futile attempt at overtaking (you know, that thing central to motor racing) ended in frustration, rage and failure.
The other was the Indy 500. A race which I'm pleased to report was none of those things.
In fact, even if the Monaco GP wasn't essentially a more glamorous version of the M25 in a traffic jam, it would've had to work hard to trump the 2013 running of the Indy 500. Even that other famous 500-mile oval race, the Daytona 500, was pretty tedious folly this year in comparison to this festival of speed, close racing and mind-boggling skill. The stats don't always tell the whole story, but they paint a pretty colourful picture as records tumbled left right and centre: sixty-eight lead changes, fastest average speed at an eye-popping 187.433mph, and fourteen different leaders were all race records. In fact, for about 198 of 200 laps, we had the perfect Indy 500: atmosphere visceral, dramatic storylines rising and falling, racing close and skilful, and tension rising to heart-pounding levels.
Let's talk about those 198 laps first before dealing with those final two later.
After the dust had settled on the lengthy qualifying process (which my colleagues Sandy Lamparello & Matthew Hickey covered in previous pieces), we had a fairly unexpected front row trio of one-car team driver Ed Carpenter, rookie Carlos Munoz, and nearly-man Marco Andretti, hoping to finally break the curse of his surname. With big names scattered up and down the field and underdogs sensing a chance to shine, the stage was set for a legend to be born. Or an already-existing legend to achieve Indianapolis immortality; for the first time since 1987, two drivers were racing for a shot at becoming four-time 500 champions (Helio Castroneves and Dario Franchitti, the defending champion of the race). With that in mind, the drop of the green flag wasn't so much the start of a motor race but the slipping of a pack of wild dogs off the leash, ready to do frenzied battle as grandstands full of delirious fans cheered them on.
One dog who didn't last long in the cage was J.R. Hildebrand, who repeated his last-lap crash from 2011 on lap four. And that's not me being disingenuous - it was literally a carbon copy of the wreck which stripped him of victory several hundred yards from the line of bricks. Except this time he decided to save the emotional agony and get it done after four laps, not 199 and three-quarters.
Aside from the slowdown to clear the remains of Hildebrand's camouflaged car off the track, the opening laps set the tone for the race: one which bore more resemblance to a restrictor-plate NASCAR race than anything else. A dense cluster of cars packed tightly together in line astern with the lead shuffling back and forth and never lasting for more than a few laps at most. Carpenter and Andretti showed their hands first, taking part in the lead tango for most of the opening period, and pretty soon popular Vin Diesel lookalike Tony Kanaan had powered up from the 11th starting spot to join in the fun. He was driving the 11 car and was in his 11th attempt at the race - a lucky synergy perhaps? He wasn't leaving anything to chance, skirmishing furiously at the sharp end with the young guns around him.
After a breathless opening we had a chance to relax when Sebastian Saavedra looped around and into the wall on lap 27. He was spitting feathers in the cockpit, and the replays showed why: Pippa Mann abruptly ducked low to avoid the slowing Buddy Lazier and in the process sliced in front of Saavedra, causing the lock-up of brakes and spin. One can only assume Saavedra keeps a Mann voodoo doll in his trailer (as opposed to any other kind of doll...let's not go there) as on lap 46 Mann slapped the outside wall and suffered terminal damage, ending her impressive charge up the rankings from 30th. As a fellow Londoner I'd picked her to be the underdog I cheered on, so perhaps my tweets about her rapid ascent were a bit premature - whoops! Actually, it wasn't going particularly well for any of the British contingent; even Three-Time Franchitti was having a 'mare mired down at the wrong end of the top 20. Neither was it a good day to be a driver being cheered on by me, as Takuma Sato found out when he was caught in the spin cycle at lap 57. Impressively, he somehow managed to avoid hitting anything; something a Dartford chav has a problem doing at 5 mph in the Asda car park, let alone at 220mph at Indianapolis.
Once that slowdown was complete, two rounds of pit stops had cycled through, and a few more of the big guns had arrived at the party occurring up front. Aussie firebrand Will Power sat fifth ahead of teammate Triple Threat Castroneves, and reigning Indycar series champion Ryan Hunter-Reay led the field to the restart in his bright yellow Chevrolet. It was the third of the Penske machines which started to grab headlines as the race neared halfway; NASCAR reject A.J. Allmendinger, in his first 500, was determined to seize the chance of redemption Roger P. was giving him and was piling towards the front at a rate of knots akin to Stingray legging it from the Aquaphibians. Having seen a promising NASCAR career go up in smoke after taking a dodgy sleeping tablet, A.J. was calling on all his old Champ Car experience (which Sebastian Bourdais has seemingly forgotten ever since his miserable sojourn in F1) and at the halfway mark had stormed into the lead - and more importantly kept it. Something no other driver had been able to do all day. This was not just a grab at what he described as 'his last chance in motorsport' - this was a statement of intent.
Until his seatbelts came undone.
No, really.
It wasn't even like his chances of victory were ended by something decent, like a tyre blowout or engine exploding. Nope. His belts came loose. And whilst Dartford chavs will tell you it's entirely possible to drive very fast with no seatbelts on, an Indycar driver (as in someone who actually knows how to drive fast) will tell you otherwise - rightly so. But by only being nine laps off sequence, his shot at the Borg-Warner trophy wasn't over yet. But the queue of guys demanding a slice of the lead was growing by the lap, with E.J. Viso now the latest to join the most happening party in town. And the fastest.
The laps clicked away at a breathless pace, pit stop cycle after cycle coming and going as the lead changes just kept coming. The long line of swarming multi-coloured insects never spread out, and wound round the track at dizzying speed as the yellow flag stayed in it's holster and drivers danced a tango of overtaking inches apart. It was an unbelievable display of high-speed racing; contrast this to the lengthy conga lines and games of follow-the-leader at this year's Daytona 500 or indeed the Monaco GP. My opening remarks were not just me being disingenuous and hurling mud at the most overrated sport on the planet (outside of football); it was a statement of fact. The excitement, tension and rising heartbeats were felt by everyone from the drivers themselves to berks like me sat in front of their tellys in far-flung countries; THIS is what motorsport is all about.
And even the most nerveless of drivers started to show cracks in their armour. James Hinchcliffe slithered and wavered perilously close to the wall, and Townsend Bell went one further and smacked the concrete off of Turn 2 at lap 163, somehow saving the car and avoiding a yellow flag but ruining the steering rack in his car in the process. Bourdais somehow managed to bin it on the entry to pit road, bashing the front of his car all to pieces (and then his steering wheel with his fists in annoyance) on lap 179. And still the laps flew by. And still the tension rose. Now, if only we had a nice caution to bunch up the field with a handful of laps to go - oh dear Graham Rahal, how unfortunate of you to crash in Turn 2 with seven laps to go. And bunch the field up with a handful of laps left. Suddenly that tension was bubbling over into outright nail-biting delirium. This was the showdown the race deserved. With all the big guns poised like nerveless snipers to deliver the killer shot, the green flag flew on lap 198 with Kanaan in 2nd and Munoz in 3rd swamping Hunter-Reay into Turn 1. The battle was only just beginning...
...and then Franchitti slapped the wall in Turn 1, and the battle was brought to an abrupt end two laps too early.
You know that comedy sound effect of a record needle scratching and falling off a record player? That's kinda how the end of this race felt. A massive deflating sigh of disappointment. Just as we were gearing up for a wild and explosive climax, the yellow-flag finish killed the excitement stone dead.
But the disappointment was quickly abated when everyone realised who was leading when the music was brought to an abrupt stop: ol' TK himself. Finally, after twelve attempts and six Fast and Furious movies, Tony Kanaan was in victory lane at the Indy 500. And as he cruised around on what must've felt like the slowest final lap of his life, the crowd didn't seem to mind too much that the race didn't end with the finale it deserved; because it ended with a deserving winner, one which the thousands in the stands gave a standing ovation to as he drank the world's most famous milk and declared, "This is it, man. I made it. Finally they're going to put my ugly face on this trophy". A face that we can assume his old mucker Dan Wheldon would be very happy to see on the trophy, as well as the fans and most of the rest of the field. It's always a heart-warming day when a fan favourite finally gets the success they deserve; none more so than on Sunday, May 26th 2013 on a yard of bricks and rectangle of asphalt in Indiana.
The debate about whether Indycar should adopt NASCAR-style Green-White-Chequer finishes raged long into the night (you can probably tell what my stance on the issue was), but let's be honest here: fantastic setting, unbelievable race that will go down in history, and a disappointing finish? Still way better than anything F1 has had to offer lately!
You can follow Adam on Twitter.
One was a tedious procession of tyre management and drivers crawling around a track patently unfit for purpose, with the only moments of interest being the off-track politics and the on-track frustration and shattered wings as every futile attempt at overtaking (you know, that thing central to motor racing) ended in frustration, rage and failure.
The other was the Indy 500. A race which I'm pleased to report was none of those things.
In fact, even if the Monaco GP wasn't essentially a more glamorous version of the M25 in a traffic jam, it would've had to work hard to trump the 2013 running of the Indy 500. Even that other famous 500-mile oval race, the Daytona 500, was pretty tedious folly this year in comparison to this festival of speed, close racing and mind-boggling skill. The stats don't always tell the whole story, but they paint a pretty colourful picture as records tumbled left right and centre: sixty-eight lead changes, fastest average speed at an eye-popping 187.433mph, and fourteen different leaders were all race records. In fact, for about 198 of 200 laps, we had the perfect Indy 500: atmosphere visceral, dramatic storylines rising and falling, racing close and skilful, and tension rising to heart-pounding levels.
Let's talk about those 198 laps first before dealing with those final two later.
After the dust had settled on the lengthy qualifying process (which my colleagues Sandy Lamparello & Matthew Hickey covered in previous pieces), we had a fairly unexpected front row trio of one-car team driver Ed Carpenter, rookie Carlos Munoz, and nearly-man Marco Andretti, hoping to finally break the curse of his surname. With big names scattered up and down the field and underdogs sensing a chance to shine, the stage was set for a legend to be born. Or an already-existing legend to achieve Indianapolis immortality; for the first time since 1987, two drivers were racing for a shot at becoming four-time 500 champions (Helio Castroneves and Dario Franchitti, the defending champion of the race). With that in mind, the drop of the green flag wasn't so much the start of a motor race but the slipping of a pack of wild dogs off the leash, ready to do frenzied battle as grandstands full of delirious fans cheered them on.
One dog who didn't last long in the cage was J.R. Hildebrand, who repeated his last-lap crash from 2011 on lap four. And that's not me being disingenuous - it was literally a carbon copy of the wreck which stripped him of victory several hundred yards from the line of bricks. Except this time he decided to save the emotional agony and get it done after four laps, not 199 and three-quarters.
Aside from the slowdown to clear the remains of Hildebrand's camouflaged car off the track, the opening laps set the tone for the race: one which bore more resemblance to a restrictor-plate NASCAR race than anything else. A dense cluster of cars packed tightly together in line astern with the lead shuffling back and forth and never lasting for more than a few laps at most. Carpenter and Andretti showed their hands first, taking part in the lead tango for most of the opening period, and pretty soon popular Vin Diesel lookalike Tony Kanaan had powered up from the 11th starting spot to join in the fun. He was driving the 11 car and was in his 11th attempt at the race - a lucky synergy perhaps? He wasn't leaving anything to chance, skirmishing furiously at the sharp end with the young guns around him.
After a breathless opening we had a chance to relax when Sebastian Saavedra looped around and into the wall on lap 27. He was spitting feathers in the cockpit, and the replays showed why: Pippa Mann abruptly ducked low to avoid the slowing Buddy Lazier and in the process sliced in front of Saavedra, causing the lock-up of brakes and spin. One can only assume Saavedra keeps a Mann voodoo doll in his trailer (as opposed to any other kind of doll...let's not go there) as on lap 46 Mann slapped the outside wall and suffered terminal damage, ending her impressive charge up the rankings from 30th. As a fellow Londoner I'd picked her to be the underdog I cheered on, so perhaps my tweets about her rapid ascent were a bit premature - whoops! Actually, it wasn't going particularly well for any of the British contingent; even Three-Time Franchitti was having a 'mare mired down at the wrong end of the top 20. Neither was it a good day to be a driver being cheered on by me, as Takuma Sato found out when he was caught in the spin cycle at lap 57. Impressively, he somehow managed to avoid hitting anything; something a Dartford chav has a problem doing at 5 mph in the Asda car park, let alone at 220mph at Indianapolis.
Once that slowdown was complete, two rounds of pit stops had cycled through, and a few more of the big guns had arrived at the party occurring up front. Aussie firebrand Will Power sat fifth ahead of teammate Triple Threat Castroneves, and reigning Indycar series champion Ryan Hunter-Reay led the field to the restart in his bright yellow Chevrolet. It was the third of the Penske machines which started to grab headlines as the race neared halfway; NASCAR reject A.J. Allmendinger, in his first 500, was determined to seize the chance of redemption Roger P. was giving him and was piling towards the front at a rate of knots akin to Stingray legging it from the Aquaphibians. Having seen a promising NASCAR career go up in smoke after taking a dodgy sleeping tablet, A.J. was calling on all his old Champ Car experience (which Sebastian Bourdais has seemingly forgotten ever since his miserable sojourn in F1) and at the halfway mark had stormed into the lead - and more importantly kept it. Something no other driver had been able to do all day. This was not just a grab at what he described as 'his last chance in motorsport' - this was a statement of intent.
Until his seatbelts came undone.
No, really.
It wasn't even like his chances of victory were ended by something decent, like a tyre blowout or engine exploding. Nope. His belts came loose. And whilst Dartford chavs will tell you it's entirely possible to drive very fast with no seatbelts on, an Indycar driver (as in someone who actually knows how to drive fast) will tell you otherwise - rightly so. But by only being nine laps off sequence, his shot at the Borg-Warner trophy wasn't over yet. But the queue of guys demanding a slice of the lead was growing by the lap, with E.J. Viso now the latest to join the most happening party in town. And the fastest.
The laps clicked away at a breathless pace, pit stop cycle after cycle coming and going as the lead changes just kept coming. The long line of swarming multi-coloured insects never spread out, and wound round the track at dizzying speed as the yellow flag stayed in it's holster and drivers danced a tango of overtaking inches apart. It was an unbelievable display of high-speed racing; contrast this to the lengthy conga lines and games of follow-the-leader at this year's Daytona 500 or indeed the Monaco GP. My opening remarks were not just me being disingenuous and hurling mud at the most overrated sport on the planet (outside of football); it was a statement of fact. The excitement, tension and rising heartbeats were felt by everyone from the drivers themselves to berks like me sat in front of their tellys in far-flung countries; THIS is what motorsport is all about.
And even the most nerveless of drivers started to show cracks in their armour. James Hinchcliffe slithered and wavered perilously close to the wall, and Townsend Bell went one further and smacked the concrete off of Turn 2 at lap 163, somehow saving the car and avoiding a yellow flag but ruining the steering rack in his car in the process. Bourdais somehow managed to bin it on the entry to pit road, bashing the front of his car all to pieces (and then his steering wheel with his fists in annoyance) on lap 179. And still the laps flew by. And still the tension rose. Now, if only we had a nice caution to bunch up the field with a handful of laps to go - oh dear Graham Rahal, how unfortunate of you to crash in Turn 2 with seven laps to go. And bunch the field up with a handful of laps left. Suddenly that tension was bubbling over into outright nail-biting delirium. This was the showdown the race deserved. With all the big guns poised like nerveless snipers to deliver the killer shot, the green flag flew on lap 198 with Kanaan in 2nd and Munoz in 3rd swamping Hunter-Reay into Turn 1. The battle was only just beginning...
...and then Franchitti slapped the wall in Turn 1, and the battle was brought to an abrupt end two laps too early.
You know that comedy sound effect of a record needle scratching and falling off a record player? That's kinda how the end of this race felt. A massive deflating sigh of disappointment. Just as we were gearing up for a wild and explosive climax, the yellow-flag finish killed the excitement stone dead.
But the disappointment was quickly abated when everyone realised who was leading when the music was brought to an abrupt stop: ol' TK himself. Finally, after twelve attempts and six Fast and Furious movies, Tony Kanaan was in victory lane at the Indy 500. And as he cruised around on what must've felt like the slowest final lap of his life, the crowd didn't seem to mind too much that the race didn't end with the finale it deserved; because it ended with a deserving winner, one which the thousands in the stands gave a standing ovation to as he drank the world's most famous milk and declared, "This is it, man. I made it. Finally they're going to put my ugly face on this trophy". A face that we can assume his old mucker Dan Wheldon would be very happy to see on the trophy, as well as the fans and most of the rest of the field. It's always a heart-warming day when a fan favourite finally gets the success they deserve; none more so than on Sunday, May 26th 2013 on a yard of bricks and rectangle of asphalt in Indiana.
The debate about whether Indycar should adopt NASCAR-style Green-White-Chequer finishes raged long into the night (you can probably tell what my stance on the issue was), but let's be honest here: fantastic setting, unbelievable race that will go down in history, and a disappointing finish? Still way better than anything F1 has had to offer lately!
You can follow Adam on Twitter.
