Before getting into my thoughts on the 100th Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, I want to say something about Kyle Busch.
Most people know I wasn’t much of a fan of this guy when he first came into the Cup Series. However, I’ve never said I didn’t think much of his driving ability.
Since Busch's injury last year, I’ve paid a lot of attention to him, and have nothing but admiration for the way he came back from that forced layoff. The veteran seems to have matured a lot, and that combined with his unbelievable talent has made him something special.
A friend of mine once told me during one of NASCAR’s seasons when different teams were winning every week that, sooner or later, someone was going to get their act together and simply start blowing everybody else away. It happens in nearly every series at one time or another. He pointed to A.J. Foyt’s 1964 campaign on what was then called The Championship Trail, when Indianapolis drivers competed on dirt and asphalt ovals. The United States Auto Club had 13 races on the Trail that year and Foyt won ten of them, including taking his second Indianapolis 500 win.
Well, this year it seems that the team which has gotten their act together is Joe Gibbs Racing... and the No. 18 bunch in particular. Listening to Kyle and crew chief Adam Stevens on the scanner at the Brickyard, I sensed a real chemistry between them. You could tell Kyle was chomping at the bit to get up front, and when he asked if Stevens wanted him to “…get up there and go for the win,” the crew chief’s reply was a classic. “No, Kyle," he said, "Because if you do that there won’t be any win. You’ll run out of gas. Just hold on until the next caution, and then go for it.” The rest is history.
OK, we’ve got one more race in the Verizon IndyCar Series this weekend, the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. After that, there's Barber Park and then it’s time for May in Indianapolis.
There was a time, not too long ago, when Indianapolis Motor Speedway presented one race a year – the 500. A full house on race day, and probably 150,000-plus were in the stands on the first day (of four) for qualifying. No doubt 100,000 or more would be there on the other three qualifying days and Carburetion Day.
Then, in 1994 came the Brickyard 400 as NASCAR arrived; the place has been seeing more use each year. Formula One didn’t last long, and now the motorcycles are gone, but we’ve got a road race to pep things up in mid-May, a fantastic SportsCar Vintage Racing Association event in June, and new events seem to pop up all the time. Heck, we even had a Rolling Stones Concert last year.
Being honest, some of the luster has seemed to be missing from the venerable old 500 in the past couple of decades. Qualifying is now done under a new format and takes only two days, etc. The racing hasn’t been bad, though. Far from it. Last year’s 500-Mile Race was one of the most exciting I’ve ever seen, and it was a real thrill watching Juan Pablo Montoya come from the rear of the field to win.
If IMS is going to see things swing back to the way it was in the good ol’ days, there’s going to be no opportunity like 2016. My former intern at Indianapolis Raceway Park, Doug Boles, who is now president of IMS (I still call him Probie), says ticket sales are running far ahead compared to any of the past few years. He’s looking for all reserved seating to be sold out. Already, camping spaces are sold out, I’m told.
Don’t let the fact that the reserved seats may be gone well before race day keep you away. General Admission in the infield offers you the chance to walk all over the facility, and several of the new “spectator mounds” provide a great view of the action.
On most of the message boards which I frequent, you can read all kinds of complaints about the way the series is today. I’ll have to admit I miss those days in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s when it was almost a “run what ya brung” affair. Innovation was invited, but if you went too far and appeared to get too big an edge you got reined in quickly. The best example of that I can remember was Andy Granatelli’s turbine back in 1967. You could almost hear USAC thinking, “That’s enough of that.” They came close in 1967 and ’68, but any turbine after that was uncompetitive because of legislation. Then, there was Penske’s pushrod Mercedes engine that blew everybody’s doors off.
Let’s face it, there are two extremes here – Open Competition, Anything Goes, and Spec Racing. I recall one of my favorite old comedians, Brother Dave Gardner, saying, “It’s not the pendulum as it swings to and fro, but the essence which drives it that makes stuff go.”
I’m not sure if that applies, but I do know, as I’ve said before, that the pendulum never stops in the middle of its arc. It has to go all the way to the other end by nature.
Now, we’ve got what amounts to Spec Racing. Identical cars, engines built to a specific formula without much leeway... you can go on and on. Oh, there’s some allowance with the “aero” kits, but that’s about it. What’s going to happen on race day, or even in qualifying, I don’t know. We’ve got Honda-powered teams complaining that Chevrolet has a big advantage and is sandbagging. How do we know Honda isn’t waiting for 500 time to open their 2016 engine up all the way?
Either way, it should be interesting.