Pressdog.com

How Can You Be So Calm?

By Bill Zahren
(Posted 05/06/04)

I can't believe you all are sitting there so calmly in front of your computer screens. Probably well groomed and successful, well insured, calm -- placid even -- with heart rates around 70 beats per minute. I'm in shock to imagine that you're so composed as to fritter (yes, fritter!) away your time reading this when, in fact ….

… there are less than four weeks until the Indianapolis 500.

Oh, you have ice water in your veins, a thoracic cavity full of antifreeze.

DON'T YOU REALIZE THE INDY 500 IS ONLY 24 DAYS AWAY?

For the love of all that's holy, are you people androids? Vulcans? Emotionless automatons?

I'm talking about the Indy 500. The Greatest Spectacle in Racing. The ultimate in American auto fixation. The festival of speed held in the shadow of the Grim Reaper. For race freaks it's HUGE. Huger than huge. And it's uber-huge this year because …

… I'm going.

Oh yeah. Pressdog does Indy, bay-beee! Gonna hang with my 3.0-liter, 700-horsepower, 221-mph, methanol-snorting (striking) homeys at The Mecca of All Racing on May 30.

Hold on a second, I gotta breathe into a bag.

I want to drive an Indy car. Lord help me, I do want to drive it so. I mean, 220 mph through the corners. Think about it. YRDY As my fav driver Sarah "Flying" Fisher says, it's like having that feeling you get when an airplane first starts its serious takeoff roll -- for about two hours.

I'd have to make sure my racing suit came with Depends undergarments. I'd be screaming "I CANNOT *%$#*&@ believe I'm driving at Indy" into my car-to-pit radio and soil myself several times.

Let's just consider it for a second. 221 mph is literally lethal speed. You're traveling the length of a football field every second, covering five miles every 78 seconds. If something on the car is a half-turn off, or you enter the turn 10 feet out of position, you're bloody graffiti. If something busts or you get together with another car going 220, you're very likely to get a debris-flying, bone-busting, end-over-end ass kicking.

I am so there. I got my tickets in early February. Reserved my motel room in June of last year. My wife, Rhonda, gave me the trip for my 40th birthday in February. I've started plans for a lighted shrine to her in the backyard. She's coming with me to the race and bringing a portable fire extinguisher.

What you'll want to do, now that you realize Indy is less than four weeks away, is rush to www.indyracingleague.com. There you can find complete reports on the two-day "open tests" on April 28 and 29 and the speedway that had me in mild freak-out mode for most of those days. Let's not even talk about May 9, when daily practice sessions start.

I seriously want to party with the cowboy designers of indyracingleague.com, because their site offers LIVE stats during practice and races. They have a page that refreshes every 30 seconds and shows each driver's fastest lap, last lap, rank from fastest to slowest and more.

I can't believe you're still reading this when you could be at indyracingleague.com scrutinizing the results of the open test. I, of course, had the live real-time info open on my computer at work all day during the tests.

I can tell you, for example, that the fastest lap of my main Indy squeeze, Sarah Fisher, posted on April 29 was 214.784 mph, which, I gotta say, ain't exactly like driving a big Buick in the right lane of the interstate. BUT that was only 17th fastest on the day. The fastest on the day was Sam "Looks Like My Buddy Art" Hornish, Jr. who managed a jaunty 220.113 mph. The garage guys will probably squeeze a few more miles per hour out of it before qualifying on May 15. (Read more about the toothpick-pooping Indy qualifying here.)

Now, I'm a little nerved up because I want Sarah Fisher to actually win the Indy 500 while I'm in the crowd. When I regain consciousness, I'll realize that I was present at the making of history, because no woman has ever won an Indy Car race, let alone the Indy 500, which is like 100 Super Bowls packed into one for the drivers. It's the race that makes grizzled, ex-Marine auto mechanics weep like small children.

NASCAR? Too slow. Too many often-changing rules; too much fender banging. You can't be mashing into each other in an Indy Car because when you start doing that, Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset, and when Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset, people die.

Winning Indy is all about staying on the lead lap, having great pit stops, constantly tweaking the performance of your car during the race, staying out of trouble, having your driver just drive out of her head and being in the top 3 to 5 with 25 laps to go.

That's when everyone puts his or her sex organs on the line, pit crews break out the sacred talismans and ceremonial severed chicken feet and everyone starts acting all sick and twisted. (Insert the sound of drivers screaming obscenities to their spotters over the radio here.)

OH. MY. GOD. Only 24 days until Indy. I'll wave to you from my seat in the Paddock section of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway grandstands.

Fly Sarah, fly.

-- end --

Other Indy-related columns:

Pressdog does the Indy 500

On Being Sarah Fisher

Catch Sarah Sorenstam Fever!

0.061 MPH

223.471 MPH

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