Pre-Race: 108th Indianapolis 500

FLRacingFan

FLRacingFan

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Unfortunately looking like Opening Day will be rained out once again. Would expect a crazy amount of race setup running on Wednesday and Thursday to make up for it before Fast Friday.

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Sato is starting off quick, but I suspect he will drop back now and work on race set up. That's his pattern, Fast every day, but not enough to alarm anyone, but he will qualify on the first three rows and be in position to win by lap 180. He's done this three times now and won two of them.

I just hope we can avoid a controversial finish free of yellows or reds.
 
To get anything in today is a win. I entered the track knowing that. IDK if it was a promotion the speedway did with the rain and LIGHT crowd, or if it was planned when I bought it.... but my Bronze pass was good for pit lane access today. With that in mind, I grabbed a seat in the very small bleacher section inside of the Turn 1/2 short chute. Goal was to watch cars and then visit the garage/pit lane.

They really are like fighter jets around here. All the laps today just took my breath away. I know the track specs so I knew I could see about half a mile of the track (entry of 1 through exit of 2). It took about 8 seconds. For half a mile. As someone who's home track was a paved half mile for a while, it blew my mind how fast these cars are.

I was allowed in the pits and in the garage. It was very cool. It's great that Indycar is giving fans that close of access... to be doing it for "free".... really awesome! Truthfully, outside of regional touring series, I've never been in a hot garage area. It was fascinating in the garage watching the crews work on the cars. These chassis' really are like big lego sets! They had those cars torn down quickly! I'm not much of a photo/autograph guy but it was cool seeing people who were huddle around Larson's pit. He is the show this year wow! No one around Dixon, Power, Herta or anyone else.

Raining hard now and I'm unofficially calling it. Dry tomorrow and Thursday, Friday forecast looking better. Stunning weekend and I'll finally have to break out the Powerade Sunday.
 
Most everyone got a handful of laps in, which is better than many expected. Still, with all of the rain that plagued the Open Test last month as well, the field has missed out on about 2.5 of 3 scheduled days of running so far. They still have no idea if they’re good off the truck and if you’re not, you don’t have much time to experiment and adjust. Teams are gonna be scrambling tomorrow and there’s gonna be a ton of track activity.
 
FLRacingFan said:
Most everyone got a handful of laps in, which is better than many expected. Still, with all of the rain that plagued the Open Test last month as well, the field has missed out on about 2.5 of 3 scheduled days of running so far. They still have no idea if they’re good off the truck and if you’re not, you don’t have much time to experiment and adjust. Teams are gonna be scrambling tomorrow and there’s gonna be a ton of track activity.
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I am excited to see the scrambling! It was great seeing everyone roll today. I'm one of the whacko's that plans on being there 12-6 tomorrow and Thursday.
 
Speedbowl14 said:
I am excited to see the scrambling! It was great seeing everyone roll today. I'm one of the whacko's that plans on being there 12-6 tomorrow and Thursday.
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Soak it all in. It will be the most amazing start on race day that you will ever experience.
When you get a chance, where are your race day seats ?
 
This was a good spot to go to. Which ever location is closest to the track. Race fans seem to like this spot.
Had a pretty good conversation with Robby Gordon's dad back in the
early 90's there.

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Still raining very lightly. Should stop raining in the next 30ish minutes, maybe some drizzle lingers after that.

Indycar devout- what kind of procedure do they do for track drying on these practice days? A am ASSuming no more effort than running a couple dozen safety vehicles around?
 
Speedbowl14 said:
Still raining very lightly. Should stop raining in the next 30ish minutes, maybe some drizzle lingers after that.

Indycar devout- what kind of procedure do they do for track drying on these practice days? A am ASSuming no more effort than running a couple dozen safety vehicles around?
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In 1973, the first vehicle to hit 500 miles was one of the safety trucks.
 
Doc Austin said:
In 1973, the first vehicle to hit 500 miles was one of the safety trucks.
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HA. That is the one where it rained essentially all May and the race ran 2 days after it was scheduled? I've seen pictures of the flooded infield I wouldn't be surprised if the grounds look like that today, semi-lol. It POURED here overnight and NOAA put up a flood advisory.
 
donthaveanickname said:
There are stats for everything...

"Since 1984, the driver to go out on track first has never won the Indy 500 and only finished second once (Marco Andretti, 2006) and only qualified on pole twice (Helio Castroneves, 2010; Ryan Briscoe, 2012)."

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The most baseball stat of racing stats I’ve heard in a while.

Something tells me we were probably not in danger of a Grosjean win to begin with.
 
Speedbowl14 said:
HA. That is the one where it rained essentially all May and the race ran 2 days after it was scheduled? I've seen pictures of the flooded infield I wouldn't be surprised if the grounds look like that today, semi-lol. It POURED here overnight and NOAA put up a flood advisory.
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It was 50 years ago, so memory is a bit vague. They tried to start on Monday, but it started raining on the parade lap, and then Tuesday was a washout. I remember the race being on Thursday, but it was really Wednesday.

My cousin was in the mortuary business, and he did a lot of business with the speedway. Everyone knew him, so we could just walk in any time we wanted. On Tuesday we went into the H stand and the entire place was deserted. I swear, you could almost hear the NOVI and you could sense the history of the place. That was the moment I understood what Indy meant.
 
Final shower on the radar just passed over me. The concrete sidewalk didn't lose any dryness it had developed. Leaving the Airbnb now... feeling good!
 
It started raining again once I left the Airbnb. Sitting in the E penthouse waiting for it to stop raining. They are still drying the track at least
 
Finally blue sky and dry at the speedway. The radar was painful... the relatively small area of Speedway is the only area of showers in the immediate Indy area
 
1973 was the most horrific May that I can ever recall.
We lost Swede Savage and a first responder to the wreck. We also lost Art Pollard.

Hats off to race winner Gordon Johncock it was brutal. All of the rain was fitting for such a month.
 
Greg said:
1973 was the most horrific May that I can ever recall.
We lost Swede Savage and a first responder to the wreck. We also lost Art Pollard.

Hats off to race winner Gordon Johncock it was brutal. All of the rain was fitting for such a month.
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Everything following Savage's crash is one of the most heartbreaking stories in motorsports. The crash itself is one of the most horrific.

Raining again, we may be done I'll give it a few minutes. Meteorologists swung and missed horrifically today. The intense practice was fun, though. Tomorrow and Friday will be big, fat days.
 
Greg said:
1973 was the most horrific May that I can ever recall.
We lost Swede Savage and a first responder to the wreck. We also lost Art Pollard.

Hats off to race winner Gordon Johncock it was brutal. All of the rain was fitting for such a month.
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I was there. Savage hit the wall square in front of us. Hoffific doesn't quite described it.

Later we went to Burger Chef, and in the corner still in his firesuit was Johncock and his wife. We didn't bother him.
 
Forecast, unfortunately, doesn’t look too good again for Fast Friday, so teams will probably switch from race setup to qualifying sims halfway through today. Will be interesting to start seeing who has real speed, not many no-tow laps were run yesterday.
 
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