A 500 Unlike Any Other

The Indianapolis 500 is the largest single day sporting event on this here flat earth and perhaps its the only reason many of you have ever heard of the city at all. It’s okay. The place isn’t called Nap Town because of its thriving nightlife.

The Sunday before Memorial Day is the most special day of the year for the state of Indiana, the people of Indianapolis, the auto racing world, and for yours truly. I’ve often said I’d trade a thousand Christmases for just one Race Day – and I’m not kidding. Not in the least bit. I’d trade an underwhelming stocking full of socks and store brand deodorant for a cold beer and the sweltering sun in Turn 2 any damn day of the year. 

There is nothing like Race Day. Three-hundred thousand people (at least) cram themselves into the two-and-a-half mile oval of 3.2 million paved over bricks that is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, located six miles west of downtown Indianapolis, every Memorial Day weekend to watch 33 of the world’s best drivers command open-wheeled rocket ships pacing 225 miles-per-hour for 200 laps. 

The stands are cramped. You can’t get up to pee. The weather is usually blistering hot. You’re sunburned. You’re sweaty. You’re probably drunk. The people jammed in next to you have questionable body art. And you’re eating cold fried chicken and drinking beer from a hand-me-down Coleman cooler all damn day. 

It’s fucking amazing.

If basketball is the heartbeat of Indiana, then The Indianapolis 500 is the soul of Indiana, our greatest global export.

Dating back to the Speedway’s inception in 1909 and the race’s birth in 1911, The 500 — or if you’re from Indy, its simply known as The Race — is steeped in tradition and folklore. The entire month of May in Indianapolis is dedicated to The Race, starting with the 500 Festival and the Mini Marathon within the first week, followed by Opening Day of practice, Fast Friday, Pole Day, Bump Day and of course – Carb Day*.  Hell, there’s even a separate Indy Car race on a road track within the infield of the Speedway two weeks before The 500 just to get you prepped. 

 (*Carb Day is the Friday before the race that features the final practice session for race teams, a pit stop competition, and an Indy Lights race (think minor league for Indy Car). Some over-the-hill rock band (or Kid Rock), that your parents likely made out to in your dad’s ’83 Camaro, tries to pull themselves together for one last try in front 90-thousand people playing hooky from their day jobs. The people-watching is top notch as there are no rules or decorum on Carb Day. Think of it as suburban soccer mom Rumspringa mixed with all the townie bars in Indy converging at one hallowed place.)

The pandemic ripping the entire Month of May away from Indy has not only been heartbreaking to countless race fans, but undoubtedly it’s wreaked havoc on the city’s and surrounding areas’ economies. But The Race is much more than an economic boon to a city and more than an excuse to drink an ungodly amount of beer surrounded by questionably clad strangers.

It’s our history. It’s our tradition.

Both the Speedway and the race coincide with Indianapolis’ once prominent auto manufacturing prowess. According to my Paps, at the turn of the 20th century, Indianapolis was only rivaled by Detroit in terms of auto making. I don’t know if that’s exactly true or not, but I’m not going to talk back to the old man. 

What I do know is that at the time of the track’s creation, there were no less than 55 premiere auto manufacturers in the Circle City alone, making Indianapolis the perfect spot for the birthplace of American speed and ingenuity. 

Here’s the Speedway’s creator, Indianapolis business man Carl Fisher, to explain: “Indianapolis is going to be the world's greatest center of horseless carriage manufacturing [sic]. What could be more logical than building the world's greatest racetrack right here?"

Good thinkin’, Carl.

Although America’s car-creating heyday has long since passed, it’s still a major part of Indiana’s modern economy. The state is third in the country in auto manufacturing with approximately 520 auto assembly establishments. Auto production and the Speedway’s influence is still felt across the state of Indiana with small town dirt and clay tracks located in every county from Lake Michigan to the Ohio River, from Anderson and Brownstown, to Paragon, to Rushville, to Salem. There isn’t a single Hoosier that hasn’t spent at least one summer Friday night of their life at a dirt track watching weekend warriors race their homemade stock cars or sprinters in hopes of a small check, a whole lot of pride, and more than likely a case a of room-temp Budweiser – probably.

Exhibit A:

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway took only five months to build in the spring and summer of 1909. For reference, my 2020 quarantine from work started five months ago and all I did was teach myself a single guitar chord and watch Ken Burns’ documentaries…and Tiger King…twice. I’m sorry. I have no excuse.

The first event held at the Speedway was a hot air balloon race in the summer of 1909. Forty-thousand people were said to have attended the inaugural affair. Apparently, there was LITERALLY NOTHING else going on in Indianapolis that day. This is probably another reason why NBA players don’t want to come to Indianapolis in free agency, because we do shit like watch gigantic balloons for fun. We Hoosiers are simple folks, I guess. 

In 1911, the very first 500-mile race was held in front approximately 80,000 spectators. Ray Haroun won the inaugural race in just under seven hours with an average speed of about 75 miles-per-hour. It was Haroun’s win that introduced the world to the Indianapolis 500 and a nifty little thing that every car in the world now possesses – a rearview mirror. 

Starting in 1922, the power of radio pumped the roar of engines out of speakers all over the world, making The 500 a truly global event. In 1965, ABC’s Wide World of Sports, hosted by the legendary Jim McKay, brought the race to life across the globe on television right as the event was reaching its prime. Names like Foyt, Unser, Mears, Johncock, Rutherford, and Andretti became superstars and immortals in front of the world’s eyes. The only thing that stopped The Greatest Spectacle in Racing was two World Wars. 

The grandeur and prestige of the race would develop and grow over the course of the decades as America’s auto industry became a global behemoth and firmly turning Indy into The Racing Capitol of the World. It was The 500 -- not basketball -- that put Indianapolis on the map. Over time, The Race became the race that every driver worth their salt had to win to achieve true racing immortality – a notion that still lingers to this day.

Aside from being such an economic driving force and global event, for the people of Indy, The Race is something hard to describe. Precious or special seem to fall short in detailing what it means to us. I don’t know any other way to describe it other than — ours. Race Day is our day. 

Race Day, like the Month of May, is drenched in timeless traditions. The fly over, the invocation, the B-List celebrities (Nick Lachey!), the emotional playing of Taps, the Purdue Marching Band (I don’t know if you know this, but Neil Armstrong went to Purdue.), Back Home Again in Indiana, “Ladies and gentleman, start your engines!”, the winner’s glass of milk, the kissing of the bricks, and the Borg-Warner Trophy are all part of what make the Greatest Spectacle in Racing so damn great. 

And yet, still…it’s more than that. It’s more than the roar of hundreds of thousands of people cheering on their favorite driver hitting 230MPH down the main straightaway.  

For us Hoosiers, it’s our own personal traditions that make Race Day the pageant that it is. It’s going to the race with the exact same group of people for thirty-plus years. It’s having the same tickets that your dad had, passed on to him from his dad, and maybe his dad before him. It’s your parents pulling you out of school on a Thursday to go watch practice. Thanks, Mom. Hell, it’s your teacher skipping school on a Thursday to go watch practice. It’s camping out all weekend in the Coke Lot. It’s getting lost in the unfortunate sea of human debauchery that is the Snake Pit.  It’s the drivers themselves, from all over the world, choosing to live in Indy year-round, choosing to become Hoosiers, because this race and this track just mean that damn much. 

Everyone has something about Race Day that sticks with them, something that they love beyond words. For me, it’s two things. The singing of Back Home Again in Indiana has always melted my heart.  As a kid, hearing Jim Nabors sing our state’s song as thousands of balloons floated into the Indiana spring sky (those damn balloons again) meant the green flag was about to drop. But as an adult living far from home, it’s emotional. True, I cry at a lot of things – Simon Birch, Cubs playoff games, weddings, etc. — but it is without shame that I will admit, since I moved to Nashville seven years ago, I’ve been teary eyed before every race when that song begins to play.

Not too long after the conclusion of Back Home Again, after the parade laps and after I scream my discontent for Dave Colabro’s voice ringing throughout the Speedway’s public address system, the green flag falls as the pace car veers toward Pit Road. All 33 cars put the pedal to the metal as they pass the start-finish line, the exposed yard of bricks, on the main stretch and enter Turn 1 of Lap 1. It’s the best eight-seconds of my year.

This year is obviously different. The race was pushed back from May to August, in hopes that we as a society could collectively get our shit together, wear masks, wash our hands, and social distance. Now, here we are, running The Greatest Spectacle in Racing with no one in attendance aside from the teams and a handful of media. To put it bluntly – it sucks. It’s the safe and correct call, but it still stings. Like so much of what we’ve used to perceive as normal, the Indy 500 is altered by this unforgiving pandemic and our universal inability to be diligent in countering its spread. 

I’ll still watch the race from the comfort of my home in Nashville, just as I’ve watched practice and qualifying for the last week, and just as I’m watching Carb Day as I type this very sentence. I’ll watch and cheer. I’ll cry during Back Home Again in Indiana because no matter what, The Indianapolis 500 is still important, and to me, it’s still better than Christmas. 

I’m going to do my best to treat this Sunday just as I would any other Race Day. I’ll wake up early and crack open my first Coors Original at about 8am after a hearty serving of bacon and eggs. I’ll eat cold fried chicken, ham and cheddar sandwiches on Hawaiian bread, and Kroger potato salad. I’ll drink beer from my Coleman cooler all day long and I’ll wear a cut-off t-shirt that I wore to high school basketball practice while I do it. I’ll probably even yell obscenities at Dave Colabro, just for good measure. 

The difference is, this year, for the first time since 1992, I won’t be watching from the South Vista of the Speedway. And for the first time in 15 years, I won’t be going with my Dad. I won’t have to turn my head and pretend like I don’t see him moving police barricades as we weave our way through West side traffic and neighborhoods on our way to the track. I won’t have to remember to put on sunscreen at Lap 10, forget to reapply the rest of the race, and then at the end of the day wonder how the hell I got so sunburned. I won’t have to stand for the first five laps as the top cars jockey for the lead or for the last five laps as the field chases the leader. I won’t get to listen to Speedway historian Donald Davidson’s pleasantly British accent recap the race on the ride home. I won’t get to watch the race’s re-broadcast on local TV at 6PM. I won’t get to wave the winner on as he drives by en route to Victory Lane, a cold bottle of milk, and racing immortality. 

Again – it sucks to not be there – royally. I’d give anything to be at this race on Sunday. But I have to remember that I’m not the only one who longs to be at the track. There are folks who look at my 27 year streak being snapped and shrug. Try 40 years snapped, kid. 50 years ended. 60 years gone. Don’t believe me? Ask these folks:

Like everything else right now, we are all in this mess together, and in the grand scheme of things the race is diminutive as to the problems that so many other folks are facing right now. I’m trying my best to not lose sight of that, even as my broadcasting career teeters in the void of the pandemic’s purgatory.

So, I’m choosing to be as positive as I can. I’m going to try to make the most out of my Race Day. Because no matter where I’m at, no matter what is happening in the world, I’m a Hoosier and the Indianapolis 500 is ours.