By RICHIE HALL
Reporter Sports Editor
For the fifth year running, I got the chance to experience the Indianapolis 500 as a reporter.
Have I become jaded about going to the race every year? Nope. As someone who grew up in the Indianapolis area, I have been surrounded by the pageantry, the excitement and the tradition of the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing” every May for the past 40 years. The opportunity to cover the race is something that I don’t take lightly, and I’ve appreciated the fact that I get to see a side of the 500 that not very many people get to see.
So what is it like to cover the Indianapolis 500?
First of all, you have to get there early. Last year, I made a slight mistake in leaving after 5:30 a.m., and was stuck trying to get on to Crawfordsville Road from I-465 at 6 a.m. when the cannon went off. Granted there were many more people since it was the 100th running, but I didn’t want to take any chances for the 101st running.
So I headed out around 4:40 a.m., and zipped on into the Speedway a few minutes after 5 a.m. – 5:08, to be exact. There was no traffic at all, and I got a decent parking space as well.
After setting my belongings in the vast media center (more about that in a minute), I decided to go look around the Speedway and see what it was like before sunrise. There is an atmosphere of a calm before the storm. Most of the people there are workers and television reporters, with maybe a few fans here and there.
I criss-crossed around the garages, and was surprised, but not really surprised, to see crew members working on a few of the cars. So now there are workers, reporters, mechanics and fans buzzing around the Speedway in the dark. I started wondering about the drivers themselves. Are they still asleep? I would guess that some were and some weren’t – it probably depends on experience and how high their excitement threshold is.
About 10 minutes before 6 a.m., I met up with our photographer, Kent Graham, on the front straightaway. We chatted for a bit, and were appropriately startled when the cannon fired. (Kent estimated that it went off about 30 seconds early.) There’s really no place like being on the track at sunrise, right at the yard of bricks. Yes, I touched the bricks. How can you not?
I headed up to the media center a little later, and it was already bustling at 6:30 a.m. To say the media center at the Speedway is big is the same as calling the planet Jupiter big – a total understatement. The building is 35,000 square feet over four floors, with the main press area on the top floor. It’s about as long as a football field, with television monitors everywhere. One monitor shows a continuous results board, while others feature live video of the race, either through closed-circuit or the ABC coverage feed.
After about an hour of setting up my laptop, I bumped into a group of three fellow reporters, and chatted with them a bit. We then all decided to go out and walk around again – I was making my second trip to the main straightaway. Not that I was complaining.
Now if the 500 is the Greatest Spectacle in Racing, then what’s the No. 2 spectacle? People watching! My cohorts and I amused ourselves by observing the fans that were casually strolling around the track, many of whom were in very casual attire and drinking adult beverages at 8 o’clock in the morning.
After about a half-hour, we heard the sound of bagpipes and wandered over that way. We got there just in time to see the Borg Warner Trophy make its way across the first row of the garage. Again, I make the Jupiter comparison: You don’t know how big that trophy is until you see it in person.
With that, we made another tour of the garage area. We had our first driver spotting at about 8:30 a.m.: A relaxed James Hinchcliffe signing autographs for his fans. I bumped into Kent again at the garage of Noblesville’s own Conor Daly and his A.J. Foyt Enterprises teammates. Foyt had given Daly his first shot at the 500 back in 2013, so it was a homecoming for him.
Around 9 a.m., I headed back to the media center and decided to hunker down there for the duration of the race. We got a pleasant surprise at 10 a.m.: Sebastien Bourdais came up to hold a press conference.
Bourdais, of course, had been injured in a nasty accident during the first day of qualifying on May 20, when his car went nearly head on into the SAFER Barrier. Despite serious injuries to his pelvis and hips, he was able to return to the Speedway for Race Day.
“I’m doing good enough to be here,” he said. “It’s great to be out of the hospital environment. I’ve never really faced that before.”
After that, it was just a matter of waiting for the race to begin. The last hour or so before the green flag is another calm before the storm, and is usually a good time to eat lunch, or chat with fellow reporters. Once the pre-race ceremonies begin, everyone is either outside on one of the decks or up against the huge glass window waiting for the race to start.
The race got under way at 12:20 p.m. when Tony George said “Drivers, start your engines!” (I’m surprised more people didn’t pick up on that, after decades of “Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines.”) But the drivers were off.
The racing itself was exciting with this being such a wide-open race. Pole-sitter Scott Dixon led the first few laps, then Tony Kanaan took over, leading Laps 6 through 28 until he went in for his first pit stop. Surprisingly, he never led again.
Takuma Sato held off three-time champion Helio Castroneves to claim the 101st running of the Indianapolis 500 Sunday. Sato took the lead on Lap 195 and remained there through the checkered flag. (Kent Graham)
The pitting made for a handful of lead changes, but then a nice battle settled in between last year’s winner Alexander Rossi and Formula One sensation Fernando Alonso. The two exchanged the lead three times through Lap 48.
Everything was going well until Scott Dixon’s crash. You’ve probably already seen it, so I don’t need to explain how frightening it was. When a replay was shown on the TV monitor, a loud collective gasp came from the media members, louder than I’ve ever heard.
And yet, Dixon walked away. Not enough gets said about the safety improvements that have been made at the Speedway over the past several years. Fifteen years ago, Bourdais’ and Dixon’s accidents could’ve had much worse results.
Daly was racing well during the first third of the 500, getting up to 17th at one point. But unfortunately, that run ended on Lap 66 when he made contact with the SAFER Barrier on Turn 3. Daly and rookie Jack Harvey were involved in the incident. Both were uninjured, but their cars were done for the day. “Sorry guys, it was my fault,” Daly said over the radio right after the incident.
It was at Lap 65 where Takuma Sato took the lead for the first time, and held it for 11 laps before surrendering it to Rossi. Sato would not lead again for a while, until…well, you know. Rossi was battling it out with 2014 winner Ryan Hunter-Reay, and Helio Castroneves, despite starting 19th and having to take a drive-through penalty, got his first lead on Lap 96.
On Lap 100, the scoring pylon gave a tribute to Bryan Clauson, the Noblesville star who raced in three Indianapolis 500s, in 2012, 2015 and 2016. Clauson was taken from us way too soon, after an accident at the dirt track in Belleville, Kansas last August. Clauson led three laps at last year’s 500, and after that race, took a bunch of fans to the Kokomo Speedway – where he won that night’s feature race.
As the race went on, several of the early leaders began to drop out of contention. Rossi led Laps 105-109, but fell out of contention after that. Hunter-Reay was still in front on Lap 135, but then his engine smoked out, and his race was done. After all that, some new names began to show up in the lap leader list. Max Chilton, Charlie Kimball, James Davison.
Then on Lap 180, the biggest disappointment of them all: Fernando Alonso’s engine gave out, and he had to drop out of the race. Alonso’s sudden departure produced the second-loudest collective groan from the media center.
A few laps later, there was the five-car incident that took out Davison, Will Power (my pick to win the race), Oriol Servia, Hinchcliffe and Josef Newgarden. That would be the last yellow flag of the race. At Lap 189, it was green for the duration.
Chilton held the lead until Lap 194, when Castroneves took over. I will admit, I was rooting for Helio…history is king at the Speedway, and Castroneves joining the four-time champion club would have been a huge story. But Sato grabbed the lead at Lap 195 and never relinquished it. It was obvious to me on the last lap that he would be the winner.
“Until three laps to go, you really don’t know,” said Sato. “Me and Helio went side by side with three laps to go. You’ve got to go for it, run it flat. And we did it, and we pulled away. Fantastic.”
Sato’s win, of course, was historic too. He is the first Japanese driver to win the 500. It was redemption for him as well, since he finished second in 2012.
The race got over about 4:15 p.m. I hung around for a little bit, then made my way out of the Speedway and back into my car at 5:48 p.m. The only thing is, there was nowhere to go. I waited for about 20 minutes, then finally drove into a line of cars.
At this point, I got a condition called automobilius immobilus anxietus – call it car claustrophobia. The concept of being in a traffic line that was not moving wasn’t appealing, so I just found a “parking spot” in some wet, muddy grass. Did I mention that it had been raining heavily for the past 40 minutes?
My new parking spot was next to a bunch of party-goers who thought I was afraid of getting stuck in the mud. One of them shouted “I got money on you!” to get out.
“How much?” I asked. “It was just a joke,” he replied. Okay, then.
Once the traffic cleared to my satisfaction, I got out of the grass and onto the gravel road, to the cheers of the partiers next door. There was no trouble at all getting out of the mud. That guy should have taken the bet!
It still took about 20 minutes to finally get out of the Speedway. We were sent down Auburn Street to Crawfordsville Road, which of course turns into 16th Street past the roundabout. After that, we headed downtown, where I made my way to Illinois Street, and turned north. I was home quickly thereafter.
That meant my total time at the Speedway was 14 hours. Yes, covering the race can be exhausting, and there are times when I wondered why I was putting myself through all of this.
The answer is simple: It’s the Speedway. It’s a privilege to get credentials for the race. It’s a privilege to sit in the media center. It’s a privilege to observe the Pagoda at 5:30 in the morning. That’s why if I get the opportunity, I’ll go back. It brings to mind the famous Al Unser Jr. quote after he won the 1992 Indianapolis 500 (the first one I attended!): “You just don’t know what Indy means!”
Believe me, I do.
Noblesville native Conor Daly talks with Channel 6 reporter Brad Brown before the Indianapolis 500. Pictured at right is Carlos Muñoz, Daly’s A.J. Foyt Enterprises teammate. (Kent Graham)