In those last hours, I remember standing behind Al Unser Jr.'s pit, watching the men in their matching shirts work. The sun was sliding down the late afternoon sky, slipping toward the great bank of grandstands to the west. They had bought a car -- a Reynard, if my hazy memory serves -- and now they were trying to get it shaken down, trying to find some speed before the day, and the month, ran out on them.
"You gonna have time to get this ready?" I asked one of the crewmen, as he leaned close to grab a tire.
He looked up blankly. Shrugged.
And that's pretty much when I knew the unthinkable was going to happen.
Roger Penske -- Roger Penske! -- was going to miss the Indianapolis 500.
Al Unser Jr., the defending champion, never did find the speed to get into the field. Emerson Fittipaldi, a two-time 500 winner for Penske, qualified and was bumped. And the lesson, that strange May of 1995, was that Indianapolis is a hard old place, and it doesn't play favorites. And that stuff just sorta happens sometimes on Bump Day.
Which brings to yesterday, and the first real Bump Day at Indy since 2011. There were two cars more than the allotted 33 in line, which meant you still had overwhelmingly decent odds to make the race. Pippa Mann, unfortunately, didn't beat those odds.
Neither did James Hinchcliffe.
Who won the pole position just two years ago. Who was expected to be in the Fast Nine, the nine cars who will run for the pole today. Who is, along with Helio Castroneves, indisputably the face of IndyCar, an engaging, witty guy you saw on "Dancing With The Stars" and see now on all those Honda commercials.
The last thing Indy needed was for Hinch not to make Race Day.
Which of course raised speculation that an exception might be made to expand the field to get Hinchcliffe and Mann into the show.
I doubt very much that's going to happen. And the reason I doubt it's going to happen goes back to 1995, when no exception was made to get Penske into the race, and to all the years before when no exception was made to get any number of fan favorites into the race.
Indy is a hard old place, to reiterate. And if you're going to make a big deal out of having an actual Bump Day for the first time since 2011, as the Speedway has, you can't turn around and wuss out on it because the wrong guy failed to qualify.
"Should they just start everyone? To me, I'm definitely a traditionalist," said Ed Carpenter, stepson of Tony George, who did expand the field back in 1997. "As tough as it is to watch a guy like Hinch, who has had great moments here, really tough moments, I feel for him, I feel for Pippa. We've all worked very hard to be here. I really feel for them.
"At the same time, Indianapolis, that's part of the lure of what makes this race so special and important to all of us. Growing up around this event, seeing years where Team Penske struggled and missed the race, Bobby Rahal missed the race one year, it's happened to great teams."
Even Hinchcliffe understands that.
"Everybody has been hoping for a Bump Day since 2012. It's part of the tradition of this race, the excitement of about this race. Thirty-three cars start, that's the deal. It always has been," Hinchcliffe said. "The purist in me, the motorsport enthusiast in me thinks this is good for the sport. That's more important than what's good for James Hinchcliffe today."
Hinch could, of course, get into the race by taking teammate Jay Howard's ride. Howard is racing Indy as a one-off; Hinchcliffe is fifth in the points right now and a threat to win the IndyCar title. So broader canvas considerations could move Schmidt Peterson Motorsports to put Hinchcliffe in the car Howard qualified.
That would be wrong, too, of course. But at least it would be a defensible business decision.
Expanding the field because Bump Day didn't come out the way you wanted it to?
Not defensible at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment