It was a chilly morning as I rolled out of bed at 3:30am, but it didn’t matter, it was race day. Finally, all the running around all over IMS for a week comes down to one single race. The teams have been tweaking, tuning, and practicing for an entire month in effort to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of their cars; The question, is will it pay off? I walked out of my hotel, loaded my cameras, and hopped into the car. After a little waiting, it was time to meet up with the police escort into the speedway. It’s amazing how, despite the thousands and thousands of cars lined up bumper-to-bumper to get in, and how much everyone is buzzing about, the speedway is just eerily quiet. You will undoubtedly see lights attached to generators that are whirring away in various locations throughout the facility. Cables are everywhere, like jungle vines, snaking their way outside the media center to the various live broadcast setups on the second, third, and fourth floors of the building. There are tons of PR people, coordinators, facilitators, personalities, caterers, maintenance men, you name it, appearing as blurs of color as they rush around to get ready. At 5:30am the “Military Bomb” (cannon) goes off letting the hundreds of thousands of fans into the raceway for what is more than a mere spectacle. It’s a pilgrimage.
In a mater of hours the lots were full and fans were shoulder to shoulder filling the Pagoda plaza and Gasoline Alley.
photo credit: Walter Kuhn
The green Flag Flew and they were off. This year’s Indy 500 saw a number of records broken! Firstly, there were 68 lead changes, in addition, you have the highest average speed of any Indy 500 in history, the rookie who qualified in second finished in2nd, and Tony Kanaan took the checkers on yellow.
Ryan Hunter Reay (third place) was asked post race how he felt about Tony Kanaan’s win Tk is a great guy, great teammate, great friend of mine, it’s great to see him win. Ryan Hunter Reay would finish in third just behind Carlos Munoz Who has been a major force to be reckoned with. He led the last lap to finish in fourth place in the Firestone Indy Lights Freedom 100 on Carb Day, finishing 4 wide with a gap of .0026 seconds between First and Second place.
When Tony was asked about the win, he replied I don’t know how to start. But we had a great car. I knew that from the get-go. We had a great plan. I mean, it’s one of those days, man. Everything was so smooth
photo credit: Michael Roth
