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He couldn’t do this. Understand that right from the jump.
Memorial Day weekend in 2006, and Sam Hornish Jr. had lost the scent. He
was too far adrift in young Marco Andretti’s wake. He was simply too far back,
and that was the bare truth of it.
And so when we all drifted to the glass fronting the media center to
watch Marco come to the checkers that afternoon, the ledes to our stories were
already tumbling inside our heads like dryer lint. The Andretti curse,
reversed. The new generation, straight out of the gate, kicking Indy in its soft
parts. Marco’s dad, Michael, back there cheering into his radio, his own shot
having faded in the final laps; Grandpa Mario puffing up like a peacock down in
the pits.
And then, here came Hornish.
Here he came, a red-and-white blur, a 220-mph optical illusion because,
no, he couldn’t do this. He was half a straightaway behind coming to the white
flag. He was still out of contact as Marco winged into the north short chute, less than a mile
from the checkers.
I can’t say for sure what happened next. All I can tell you is, in the
14 years since that afternoon, I’ve watched the finish of the 2006 Indianapolis
500 a dozen times. And to this day I can’t explain it.
One second Hornish was out of it. Then you blinked, and somehow he was
RIGHT THERE.
There was a sense of motion up in
the north chute and into turn four, the red-and-white car abruptly gobbling up
the distance to Marco with cartoon speed. Suddenly Hornish was parked on
Marco’s tailpipes, and then – directly in front of us, less than 200 yards from
the finish – he was even with him.
Then he was beyond him, and the checkers dipped over his nosecone.
I’ve seen a lot of jaw-dropping finishes in my years at the 500. I’ve
seen Al Unser Jr. beat Scott Goodyear at the line and J.R. Hildebrand crash on
the 800th and final left turn and Helio Castroneves and Ryan Hunter-Reay go
down on the grass to pass one another in a fight to the finish. I’ve seen
Gordon Johncock hold off an onrushing Rick Mears, and Juan Pablo Montoya win a
clash of titans with Scott Dixon and Will Power.
But I’ve never seen anything like ’06. Never seen anything that pulled
so many disparate threads together into such a dense mosaic.
There was, to begin with, the sheer ridiculousness of how another
Andretti was bitten by a curse none of them has ever admitted exists, except on
those occasions when it does. Surely this was the curse at its cruelest and
most absurd, stealing the race when it was simply impossible for it to happen
this time.
And that it was Hornish who was the benefactor, Hornish who himself
never had any luck but the devil’s at this place …
Six times prior he’d started the 500. Six times he’d failed to finish
all 200 laps. And when he’d taken his shot at Marco down in turn three with a
couple of laps left and failed, falling out of contact, it was a mortal lock
that his luck at Indy was going to remain out.
And then the worst of all his chances abruptly became the one that paid.
I wound up that day writing about the magnificent absurdity of it all,
and how that absurdity made it the greatest finish in 500 history. I wrote
about Michael Andretti sitting back there in third thinking his boy had it won,
and about how he knew from the silence on his radio that Hornish had somehow
caught him. I wrote about him walking into the post-race news conference –
Michael, after all, was leading himself with four laps left – and seeing 19-year-old
Marco already sitting there.
Dad looked at Marco. Marco looked at Dad. And then, softly, he began to
pound his fist on the podium, a wordless gesture which everyone in the room
could translate: Damn. Damn. Damn.
On a day when there was nothing left to say, that said it all.
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