Indy 500

Being from Indiana, sure I will follow the race today but with mixed feelings cuz im an old nostalgic fuddy duddy I guess...When a kid I didnt have the money or whereabouts to ever attend so we listened on the AM radio to Sid Collins and his crew (Chief Steward link_disallowed Fengler and Tom Carnegie and Freddie Agabashan etc spelling???) on the radio (when it started at 10:00) in the days when the track opened the first of May with a whole month of events and two weekends of qualifying and names like Foyt and Unser and Andretti and Sachs and Ward and Jones buttttttttttttttttt then came the CART and INDY CAR feud and as far as Im concerend it was all downhill from there with so many foreign drivers and the reduced schedule.........Seems all good things come to an end grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Oh well, I have my memories of what I consider as better times, better morals and family values and patriotism

Old Nostalgic Christian Conservative Fuddy Duddy John T

John, I am with you and I think 1 or 2 others.
Once the split I did watch cart till it bellied up.
Now I gave up on whole works.

I'm with you - back when it was USAC running Offenhuaser's and Cosworth's!
Every once in a while we would be treated to AJ, Mario,Kinnser or a Carter showing up to a what is known now as a Silver Crown Series race on 1/2 mile dirt.

John, I heartly agree with you. Those were the days when team ingenuity prevailed and rewarded the ones able to engineer a better idea. I was fortunate to attend the race in 1964 as I was in the army stationed at Fort Knox so decided to attend the race. It was a true memorial experience.

Watching F1 right now. Wrecked a few before the first corner, and rain is threatening. Monaco is something special, even if too tight for any car to pass ever... Rain is coming that always makes a F1 race more interesting.

Will watch Indy. It isn't what it was. Unsers and Andretti. The Texian. Rick Mears. The school principle that did a 360 and won - can't say his name. Those were the good days.

Just can't get excited about the cars or the drivers like I used to. I hear you on that.

The big split & strongarm tactics with Cart forming really was the end to open wheel in the USA.

Charolette this evening, watch the Nascar crews.

All three series have an Austrailian starting on pole today!!!

Heck of a racing day.

--->Paul

Some buddy's and I attended the race in 1963. As far as viewing the race from the grandstand near the 4th turn, it was not really that great. You really couldn't see a lot, just a lot of noise. However, what I remember the most is the crowd and the partying before the race. The town was basically shut down for the race, parking on the train tracks and etc. We being basically conservative country boys, could not believe what went on behind the scene of the big event. With today's morals and changing times, I would have no desire to go again. However it was an experience to see it once.

360 - danny sullivan 1985. bobby unser was right not enought fans for two open wheel curcuits. cart and irl. i miss the good old days of indy also. just like everything else in life to much money wrecks everthing.

Aric Amarillo isn't Australian. He was born on Eglin AFB, in Florida. (Dad was Air Force) He's on the pole for the NASCAR race, in a car sponsored by USAF. Australian Marcos Ambrose is outside row 1.

My family has reserved a box @ Indy since the early 50's. I remember when I was a kid, listening to the adults talk about how much Indy had changed, how it "just wasn't the same", and how they missed legendary drivers from the past. Nothing stays the same. My heros were Mario Andretti, AJ Foyt, and Rick Mears. Last race I attended, a young Tony Stewart sat on the pole and ALMOST won.

One of my earliest memories was hearing time trials and the race from our backyard... I guess I used to sit outside and and stare at the back tree line (we were many miles from the track, but...).
I think my first race as a little kid was when Mario won it - I guess that was his only win.
My favorite was always time trials.
I did get to go back to the race when I was in college... my uncle worked for a big local bread company and had first row first turn outside seats - wow.
Haven"t kept up much with it since the split. And since our news here comes out of Cincinnati, you hear nothing about the race. Not even sure that town knows where Indy is...

Roger that John T. We live 7 miles from the track. Not about to wander outside on the streets.

It is all big business now, they have lost the passion.

Eddie Sachs said you can win alot of races and nobody ever heard of you but you win the Indy 500 and every kid in the school yard knows your name. Now the kid in the school yard probably says ,"What's the Indy 500?".

My late dad was from IN about 50 miles west from the race. One of my co-worker's rode his motorcycle with a side car to that race every year along with wife in the sidecar. He had about 7 of those Harley's. He not only rode he could repair them. They made those Harley's in York PA not far from me. About an hour's drive.
I told my wife I should've had one when I was in the Army. She said I probably wouldn't be here today. Hal
PS: My grandparents lived near Crawfordsville.
There wasn't much in Waveland.

Though also an Indiana notive, John, I don't pay attention anymore.

Sadly, Indy car racing, like NASCAR and just about everything else has been regulated into a slot car agenda.

Also a nostalgia lover, I fondly remember the days when you could "run what ya brung."

The days when one could watch the NOVI with a couple hundred HP more than anything else on the track accelerating out of turn four at, maybe 140 MPH, blue smoke rolling off of the front tires, blasting past the Offenhausers down the front strait are gone forever.

Dean

Bingo, Carl.

Indy was once a cradle of innovation but those days are gone with the wind. The inevitable result seemed to be cast in concrete when Andy Granitelli brougnt the turbine to the track in the late 1960s, causing officals to ban the non crowd pleasing innovation.

Remember the Cummins Diesel Specials of the 1950s, that probably would have won had they installed rudimentary air cleaners to prevent track debris from destroying the turbo compressor blades?

Dean

What's the problem with foreign drivers? Any racer worth his salt will want to race with the fastest competitors regardless where they came from. It's only the cherry pickers that want to race with the slower guys. There's a lot more credibility beating the best of the best over beating the also rans.

I grew up about 50 miles north of Indy and have attended about 20 times. I now live about 30 miles from the track at Charlotte. I still find the races enjoyable and unpredictable. I remember the wreck on the the 1st lap in the 1st turn when AJ Foyt had tire tracks on his helmet when he got out of his car!! Then the finish last year when the rookie was going to win and then he crashed in the 4th turn on the last lap. Great memories.

I was in turn 4 in the 1969 race that had the red light crash in turn 1 on the first lap. I WATCHED AJ climb over the fence!!

John, my folks used to have box seats at Indy, before "us kids" came along, starting in '52. We always listened to the race on the radio, since there was NO TV COVERAGE...then years later came TV coverage on tape delay, later the same day. I remember Dad setting up his little folding sheet metal charcoal grill and cooking the most fantastic steaks, burgers, and dogs on Memorial Day while listening to Sid Collins and the crew--including Howdy Holmes--call the race, when I was a kid...

Anyone who was an Indy 500 fan in the '60's and early '70's surely must recognize the name Lloyd Ruby. Look up futility in the dictionary; I think his picture must be there. And as far as "run what ya brung," that's a misconception. Rules in the 50's and '60's heavily favored the obsolete Offy engines over anything else. For awhile--thinking of the gas turbines here--anything that threatened the dominance of the Offy was simply handicapped to the point that it was no longer competitive. BUT...the Ford small block engine that powered the first Mustangs owes a lot of its R&D to what began as the 221 V8 that A.J. Foyt and a few others raced. [Somehow, I remember hearing the term "Coyote Ford" associated with that engine...but I'm too lazy to Google it today to confirm.]

I went to the first day of time trials in '73, when Art Pollard was killed in turn 1. I guess I should be thankful that I didn't go back to witness the utter carnage that occurred in the actual race that year. At time trials, we had a stopwatch and were hoping that Mark Donahue could make a 45-second lap and break the 200 MPH barrier...but it wasn't to be that day.

In '76, fresh out of college, a couple of buddies and I made it to the all-night party on 16th Street the night before the race. My memories of that are shrouded in an alcohol-induced haze, but I do remember telling my friends that I went back to sleep in the car just before daybreak because "the dew set on me"...knowing that dew only sets on inanimate objects.

The thing is, Indy cars DO NOT draw "the best competitors". They get what's left after "the best" go where the money is better....ie NASCAR. The best open wheel drivers make their way through 1/4-midget, midgets, Silver Crown, USAC (and WOO) sprinters, THEN part ways with open wheel racing in favor of NASCAR. The likes of Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Ryan Newman, Kasey Kahne, ect....went where the grass is greener AFTER it looked like they may be the face of Indy car racing. Same applies still to this day. There are a handful of promising drivers in Indy car, but many wouldn't have made it out of the developmental racing leagues a few decades earlier. NASCAR cashed in on the big TV dollars and with that, stole the talent.

Indy itself didn't help any, with upsetting the apple cart & creating the split between Indy & Cart.

Will take years to repair that, even with them back under one roof. Like you say, the young guns head to greener pastures, leaves a void.

Now F1 is knocking on the USA door again, in Texas and in the East. See what comes of that. Bernie's way of doing business doesn't always work well in the USA, so probably won't work any better that the last few times, but we will see.

--->Paul

Indy Racing League (or whatever they call it now) did exactly what NASCAR is trying to do today. That is, they shot themselves squarely in their own foot! They somehow got the idea that they were bigger than the sport itself, and all decisions were based on greed/wanting to get a BIGGER slice of the pie. In BOTH cases, revenue is fan driven. And they put the fans in the back of the bus, making everything about drivers and team owners.

It's just like my dad used to tell me about running a business. The customers are PAYING to be there, everyone else GETS paid. Without the "customers", you don't have a business.

I used to be a big Indy 500 fan back in the 60's and 70's but have lost interest over the years. If memory serves me right didn't the first turbin car (STP) by Andy Granatelli(sp?) break the 200 mph barrier in 1968. If I remember right they said it reached like 228 mph on the back stretch that year. That car had the big air intake and they restricted it the following year to slow it down. I could be wrong but I am sure it went over 200 mph during the race. I believe Parnelli Jones was the driver. Correct me if I am wrong,..my memory may be off by a couple of years.

I don't mind the foregners now, just so long as they have the respect for the Speedway that it deserves. Never liked the F1 guys running here and looking down their noses at the place.

Franchitti was very humble and appreciative. A real class act. Deserves that super hot wife he's got.

There were a couple dozen veteran Indy 500 drivers in the stands at Indy today not in race cars. We did'nt hear about them as the media focus is on the big money teams and young new drivers. Even thou there are a lot of e-fuel critics on here it should be noted these race cars were running on E-85 which is mostly a home grown, made in America product. It is a great promotional event on an international scale with great value to indirectly promote an agricultural commodity. And has done wonders to bolster our Midwest ag economy.

I grew up in NW indiana and my memories of May was that it was Indy month. Some folks would actually take time off from work and go down the Naptown(NW Indiana slang for Indianapolis)to watch the time trials. It was the time of Offenhauser powered roadsters and before the Lotus invansion. When I was in college at Purdue they kept us pretty busy in engineering school but all the talk in the month of May was of the powerful cars and the drivers who rode in them.
I remember the Novi engines, Andy Granetelli"s (?)four wheel drive car that I believe was gas turbine powered and almost won the race except for the failure of a $1.50 bearing (big news in engineering circles).

Ah, once upon time , in a land far away......

Thanks for the reminder, John!

It was '67 when Parnelli dominated the 500, until a transmission bearing let go. I just looked it up, and Tom Sneva was the first to turn a qualifying lap at 200 MPH, and that was in '77.

Your words bring back so many great memories of Indy racing. I grew up in Indiana and my whole family lived on Indy news for the month of May.
Much different now.

I felt like I knew Foyt, Hurtibise, Ward, Bettenhausen, etc etc etc...my heros then.