I am a born and raised Hoosier and I’m not too proud to admit it. That’s right, I’m a cornfed midwestern girl. One of the truisms of being from Indianapolis is that only one thing happens in the Month of May. THE INDY 500 PEOPLE. The Marathon. The Parade. The Mayor’s Breakast (my own grandmother, once attending with my grandfather the mayor, won a mink “checkered flag” collar), the dinners, the parties,the public day at the track where you get to drive your car around the Speedway, Carburetion day – there are no more carburetors but there is still CARB day – an all day drinking event that launches Memorial day weekend on the Thursday prior, the events of all shapes and sized – decorated in black and white checkered flags. Hell, I was once someone who held one of the BIG parties – even as far back as high school a huge INDY 500 party was held at my house, with the finale being everyone loading up into my dads truck (those who weren’t fast enough to fit in had to ride caravan behind) to go cruise the track to people watch and just generally celebrate.
To get tickets you had to sell your first born. Well, not quite. You had to get ahold of a program from the race, and then the day AFTER the race you had to mail in your request for tickets (first time out you could only request the SHITTIEST of tickets) with a check. If you got LUCKY – someone would not renew their tickets and your name would come up in the lottery. You would get tickets and your friends would come OUT of the woodwork.
I once had tickets. 4 of them that I shared with my best friend, we had them for several years. I had 4 seats in the infield in the short chute on the north end of the field – almost into turn 4. I could actually see quite a bit of the main straightaway one year.
NOW I see online that there are tickets AVAILABLE? WHAT ??? WHAT HAVE YOU PEOPLE DONE TO MY RACE?
Tony George……..your grandfather is going to come out of his grave and KICK YOUR ASS if you don’t fix this situation. NASCAR is all well and good but there is ONLY one Indy 500 and it shouldn’t be selling tickets at kiosks outside the track. You signed a deal with THE MOUSE for rights to air the race on ABC for the foreseeable billion years…..surely THE MOUSE has the clout to help us fix this. Because it’s like a sin to me that the Indy 500 isn’t sold out the day after the race.
In some specific Indy Car news, I’m quite put out with the Rahal Letterman team as they are the ONLY team I can possibly root for (Hoosier requirement, they come to your house and take your kids if you root for anyone else) – anyway they’re stuck with a turd for a chassis – the Panoz. The acquired the superfly Dallara earlier this week and despite the fact that it has either rained or been to cold to run MOST of the week they didn’t make the change to the better chassis. Danica Patrick is running the fastest times on the Panoz but Dan Wheldon is kicking it in the Dallara. It’s a similar phenom to the year that Penske showed up with the Mercedes engines which sounded completely different (you could hear their scream a mile away) and kicked everyone’s asses until the next year when everyone made the adjustment. Apparently the problem with the Panoz is that it reacts poorly to the corners at Indy in combination with the harder slicks the indy cars are racing on there.
Ummmmmm – not like the turns at Indy have changed people. Bad choice Letterman/Rahal team. But I still love you!
I’ve been to two 500′s and a few qualifiers and I have seen a difference in recent years.
Can CART and Tony George finally kiss and make up and get open wheeled racing back to where it should be and put NASCAR back in its place? Please?
I so wish that CART and Tony George would make nice. Actually, I’ve been waiting for YEARS for that. Still waiting… Let’s face it, IRL’s become the dominant one and until CART sucks it up (because most of the big names are in the IRL now), open-wheel racing will continue to be divided.