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0.061 MPH
By Bill Zahren
(Posted 05/21/01)
Warning: This column is about the Indianapolis
500. If you think racing is just turning left four times and
don’t secretly lust to go 226 mph around a 2.5-mile track
amid sundry other car-sized projectiles with nothing between
your brain and the pavement but hair, skin, tissue, skull
and a fancy helmet, please stop reading now.
If you’re still with me, rush to your checkbook
and make a sizable donation to the Billy Boat Muscle Relaxant
Fund (make checks payable to Bill Zahren). Our goal is to
have Mr. Boat stop pooping toothpicks sometime before the
race on May 27.
He’s got a little cramping going on down
there thanks to spending 48 minutes on Sunday in what we Indy
fans call Full Pucker Mode. You tend to get that while hanging
out in Indy car racing’s version of purgatory -- the Bubble
at Indy.
To wit: only 33 cars get into the Indy 500.
Eleven rows of three. Places in line are determined by qualifying
times. Each driver goes four laps around the track (10 miles,
total). The 33 cars with the fastest average speed on those
laps gets in.
So, after 33 cars are in, along comes entry
number 34. Well, if the driver goes faster than the slowest
person already in, that person gets “bumped” and loses his
or her spot to this new driver.
When Indy car drivers and crews wake up
at 3 a.m. screaming and bathed in their own urine, you can
bet their nightmare was getting bumped from the field at Indy.
For legions of race people, winning the Indy 500 is the holiest
of holies. Getting into the field and then getting bumped
is, as one driver said Sunday, “the 21st Century version of
water torture.”
Getting bumped can make people who drive
200 mph one-handed while sipping a Coke break down and weep
like small children. On Sunday, Boat’s average qualifying
speed of 221.528 mph stood up as 12 challengers tried to bust
his bubble.
Shigeaki Hattori did his best to extract
a quart of pink urine from Bill Boat by going 221.467 mph.
Let’s do the math: Boat’s speed was good enough by 0.061mph.
Sixty-one thousandths of a mile per hour. That’s 44 hundredths
of a second. You gotta be (rhymes with “hitting”) me.
Shigeaki, I want to party with you cowboy.
He did everything but get out and push to get that extra 0.061
mph. You know he was slamming himself repeatedly into his
steering wheel to give his car just that fraction of extra
speed. Would have thrown his helmet off if he thought losing
the few ounces would make the difference.
Meanwhile, his pit crew threw severed chicken
feet and pig entrails all over heck, chanted to sundry deities
and promised to enter the priesthood if Shigeaki could just
hit 222. The chief mechanic is probably under suicide watch
today.
Sorry. 0.061 mph and 0.44 second, as comically
thin as that is, is still good enough to keep Boat in and
Hattori out. Nothing personal. There are no subjective judges
involved. No referees once the car heads out to qualify on
the track, alone. No bawling about bad ref calls or whining
about someone screwing you.
Either you got the speed or you don’t. Next
question. Fastest 33 get in. The rest (usually about 10 or
so) are left to weep all over their logo-festooned fire suits
and little racing booties.
Despite the other Billy’s cramped sphincter,
I remained remarkably calm on Sunday because my favorite driver,
Jena, er, Sarah Fisher, had already qualified on May 19 with
an average speed of 222.548 mph. Exsqueeze me? I baking powder.
A 20-year-old woman driver going 222.548 mph? Whose idea?
There have been other female drivers in
the field, most recently Lyn St. James who retired from Indy
this year. Problem was, Lyn would qualify pretty fast and
then, on race day, be technically two laps down by the time
the cars came out of turn three. Still, as the father of two
girls and huge fan of the underdog, I rooted for Lyn.
But Sarah, well, different story. She qualifies
fast and stays fast. She’s starting in the middle of the pack
at Indy and -- back the truck up -- has a genuine chance to
win. Back in April, Fisher finished second at the Infinity
Grand Prix of Miami. Toward the end of the race she BLEW by
veteran Eliseo Salazar, much to the chagrin of Salazar’s team
boss, A.J. Foyt. Foyt (five-time Indy winner who has had pretty
much every bone in his body broken from racing crashes) yelled
at Salesar via radio: “You just got passed by a girl!”
So I’m all like: “Yeah, how does it feel
El-isssss-SAY-oh? How’s the rear of Sarah’s car looking there,
Sparky?” OK, I admit fantasizing about my youngest, Jena,
climbing out of her car in the winner’s circle and swigging
the Indy milk before punching each of her teammates in the
head in celebration. (I’ll be the one on the stretcher, foaming
at the mouth while they carry me to the field hospital.)
This year a lot of people might get passed
by a girl. Racing, at least, is one sport where the physical
differences between men and women mean nothing. The car does
all the work. You just pilot the thing. Reflexes, strategy,
control, knowing when to put your sex organs on the line and
when not to.
Sarah’s strategy is usually to stay on the
lead lap and bide her time until when it really matters, the
last 20 laps. Let the idiots roll their cars while trying
to lead lap 37 of 200. Just try not to get caught up in their
crashes. Probably half the cars that start Indy won’t finish.
Some of them will just break down, some will shake hands with
the wall.
Wouldn’t it be cool if Sarah Fisher won
the Indy 500? Can you imagine what the macho boys like Foyt
would do? They’d explode into little bits. There’d be clumps
of chauvinist bits all over the grandstands. Good old boys
in cowboy boots would stomp away in disgust. A “little lady”
blowing the doors off everyone else? Talk about striking.
It's just part of the magic of Indy. It’s
the one race of the year that makes my back hair stand up
and salute. I can remember listening to the race on the radio
and then watching it tape delayed on ABC in my youth. Jackie
Stewart screaming into the mike like some kind of coked up
Mr. Scott from Star Trek. “It’s a very fahst Motur
Cah,” he’d say. “You kenna go fahstah tha that, laddy. It’ll
fly apart an ya.”
And Jack Arute, the ageless trackside reporter.
He’ll be there again this year. I’m pretty sure nobody has
seen Jack’s ears in upwards of 15 years since he constantly
wears his big ear protectors with a little antenna coming
off them even in bed and in the shower.
The power, the speed, Jim Nabors singing
Back Home Again in Indiana, the military fly-over, the
hung-over fans and finally, “Lady and gentlemen, start your
engines.”
I’ll be perched in front of the TV at noon
on Sunday, ready to fling severed chicken feet and pig entrails
to get Sarah Fisher across the finish line ahead of the pack.
Glorious, glorious.
© 2001 Bill Zahren
Other Indy-related columns:
Pressdog
does the Indy 500
How
Can You Be So Calm?
On Being
Sarah Fisher
Catch
Sarah Sorenstam Fever!
223.471 MPH
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