06/18/2024
I didn't grow up watching, thinking or caring about the Indy 500. It wasn't interesting to me, even though I remember famous names and historic events that happened especially as a little kid- Jim Clark, Johnny Rutherford, Danny Ongais, many others.
I wanted to be Giacomo Agostini or Mike Hailwood, I admired Barry Sheen and others that could lean their machines over so perilously close to losing the tires grip and still rotate the bike over to attack the next corner... but I was never ever that good.
When I started driving racing cars at the tender age of 40 I still had no interest in the ovals. Nascar did nothing for me and Indy Cars seemed a second rate circus to Formula One. And then I was convinced to come to Indy.
The SVRA has an event every year at the Indianapolis Motor Sports facility. It's a big event- I'm not sure how many cars were entered but the paddock was completely filled. I brought out my 1965 Brabham BT-14 F2 car (or Formula B as it's called here) and went out to learn the circuit for the very first time. For a variety of reasons I had to retire the car and faced yet another disappointing race weekend.
Step into the situation is the friend who convinced me to come to Indy in the first place- Charles Test of the Ragtime Racers who generously offered me his 1912 Packard to take the car out with the whole group and do the classic Indy Oval.
It's difficult to explain the sensation and the feeling of going around the Indy 500 Oval in a car that likely did that in it's day. Trying to replicate how drivers took each corner- cutting the grass at every apex and washing the car out as close to the wall as you could- but in an ancient dinosaur that can barely turn 80MPH. But then rounding turn 4 and coming down the main straight surrounded by a canyon of grandstands- it didn't take much imagination thinking of what it must be like when the stands are packed with hundreds of thousands of spectators.
I confess it was almost a religious experience.
