Doubling down

Saw the weather forecast for the holiday weekend in Indianapolis this morning, and here is what I'm thinking, strange as it may sound:

I'm thinking Bill Elliott would have hated this.

I'm thinking he would have hated this not because NASCAR will be sharing the Indianapolis Motor Speedway stage with IndyCar this weekend -- Elliott's probably OK with that, it being historic and all -- but because it's supposed to be 92, 93 degrees all weekend, with a hammering sun and humidity like a wet sheet thrown across the roof of the world. It's gonna be the kind of weekend where the sky turns white in the mid-afternoon heat, and you bust a sweat just thinking about busting a sweat.

In other words, it's gonna be a lot like the day, some years ago, when we came upon Bill Elliott sitting on the steps of his hauler out behind Gasoline Alley.

It was late July, early August, back in the days when they ran the Brickyard then. Elliott was at the tail end of his career. And he was sitting there with his head down, mopping sweat, crabbing about the heat.

Bill Ellliott. From Dawsonville, Georgia. Complaining about the heat.

I say this because there won't be several hundred thousand more Bill Elliotts this weekend, roasting like rotisserie chicken in that panoramic sweep of grandstand. Which I guess is a blessing in an odd upside-down kind of way, as well as being weird and creepy and very much a curse, too.

See, this could have been the biggest weekend at IMS since the stock car boys came to town 26 years ago, or maybe even since they built the place on what was then nothing but farm fields. It's still hugely momentous -- IndyCar and NASCAR!  Dogs and cats, living together! -- and maybe only Roger Penske, with a foot in both worlds, could have pulled it off. But ...

But it will happen in a vacuum now, thanks to COVID-19. It will happen without fans.

The alto whine of Indy cars and throaty bass of stock cars will throw back only their own echoes, absent the accompanying thunder from the usual Mass O' Humanity. Simon Pagenaud gear will not go head-to-head with Brad Keselowski gear in the infield. Crotchety old bores like me will not watch the IndyCar Grand Prix on Saturday and then wonder aloud, for approximately the 2,431st time, why they don't just run Sunday's Brickyard on the road course, too.

Oh, wait. I guess I just did that.

In any case ... it won't be what it could have been. One more casualty of the Bastard Plague, and one more reason it's the Bastard it is.

But, hey. Think of the money everyone will save on sunscreen. And aloe.