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Category: Motorsports

Our Great Race weekend had one great race, so far

The Formula One race at Monaco was follow the leader from start to finish and in Charlotte, well we must wait until noon Monday because rain kept NASCAR's stars off the track.

But the 98th running of the Indianapolis 500 played out as though it was scripted by a Hollywood screenwriter.

Carbon fiber flew in multiple wrecks. Vitor Meira broke two bones in his back in a spectacular crash. Another Andretti disappointed. Ashley Judd and her sundress were back on Dario Franchetti's arm. Tony Kanaan was cheated by the fates again. Danica Patrick's maturity as a race car driver nudged her closer again to what seems will be her inevitable place in history as the first female winner of this race.

And, Helio Castroneves earned his third Indianapolis 500 victory , along with an amazing public redemption.

His parents, sister and girlfriend prayed. He smiled and pumped his fists and climbed the fence. And then, after slinging the victor's garland over his shoulder, he collapsed back into the cockpit of his race car on the elevated victory platform and sobbed.

ABC's Jack Arute jogged him back to reality by offering the traditional victor's bottle of milk. Castroneves thanked the Lord and Roger Penske, in that order.

"They gave me my life back," he said of the Almighty and the Captain. Penske no has backed 15 winners of the Indy 500.

To the fans Castroneves added, "You kept me strong."

Only a month ago, this man was not only staring at the ruin of his career and fortune, he also was faced with the likelihood of years in a federal penitentiary.

I cover courts for a living as a reporter here at The Detroit News. Trust me. The feds usually have tax cheat cases sewn shut before they indict the guy. And that's exactly what I told Castroneves's good and worried friends Ryan Briscoe and Gil deFerran when they visited Detroit this winter.

Castroneves rose on his immense skills as a race car driver and his effervesant personality. Danica is the fascination of the sport, but Castroneves was its smiling and dancing emissary. His public humiliation in the courts was spectacularly disappointing. He was exonerated by a jury, but that doesn't always undo the damage. His restoration on Sunday was miraculous and complete.

Empty seats and sunshine

There were still empty seats at The Speedway, but they probably were more a reflection of the economy than the lingering effects of the civil war that ripped American open wheel racing apart for so long.

A friend of this blog, who asked to remain anonymous, started sending me text messages about an hour before the race, when he scored a high seat from a Georgetown Road scalper in one of my favorite locations -- J Stand -- for just $50.

He reported, "Plenty of empty seats."

Later, when Graham Rahal crashed right in from of him, he texted, "Rahal pounds the wall here every year?" The answer was, "Same mistake, same spot two years in a row."

I think the classically hot and humid Hosier afternoon was getting to him when he messaged, "Don't understand why everybody around me smells bad, but I don't."

So many story lines

A shallow as TV can be, ABC did a whole lot of story-telling in it's coverage of the 500.

There was the story about Danica and her dad that went far enough to ask how he felt about all the extracurricular racy exposure his little girl has been getting. His answer, "I just tell them it looks like me."

Dario admitted he was pretending he didn't miss open-wheel racing and the Indy 500 during his failed shot at NASCAR. He said he didn't realize how difficult the transition would be -- which gives you an idea of how tough it's been for Sam Hornish.

Forty years after Mario Andretti's win at Indy, the TV announcers were citing the legendary "Andretti bad luck" when Marco crashed before completing a single lap. Mario Moraes didn't hold his line, but what was Marco doing sticking his nose between the wall and a rookie on the start?"

As for the Andretti luck: Any family that has earned a more than comfortable living at the top of the racing game through three generations should be considered extraordinarily lucky.

And what about the very pregnant wife of driver Alex Lloyd? Doctors sent the couple home from the hospital shortly after midnight, according to Lloyd's Twitter announcement. Samantha Lloyd's contractions on the infield during the race apparently were cause by the stress of the day.

I even liked the commercials. Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the Indy Racing League and its sponsors, like Firestone, are working hard to rebuild the franchise by wisely capitalizing on the coming 100th anniversary of the race. This was the 100th anniversary of the construction of the old track.

Tell me how many other sporting venues can claim the hallowed history of The Speedway? Even the House that Babe Built got replaced this year. Indy's many, many ghosts have never been asked to move from 16th Street and Georgetown.

I got tired of hearing about Brazil and its commerce. But, I guess we'd better get used to hearing about the greatness of the emerging giants now that we can see the might of our nation has been traded overseas for tax credits -- but that's another story.

And I suspect the baseball purists were upset by the hijacking of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." But I loved it.

Take me out to the Brickyard.

Take me out with the crowds.>/p>

Buy me some ear plugs and a checkered cap.

I don't care if we never get back.

Take me out to the Brickyard.

Take me out where it's loud.

This place has a history that stirs the soul,

a one hundred year legacy that never gets old.

So let's root, root, root over the engine's roar.

Let me cheer for every driver and car.

For it's three hundred, four hundred, five hundred miles,

round the old Brickyard.