Your Probably Wrong Again Prediction

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Half-A-Loaf Indy, I suppose you can call this. Better-Than-Echoes Indy. Lights-Turned-Low, Roar-But-Not-A-ROAR!, Masses-On-The-Half-Shell Indy.

This Indianapolis 500 will be all of that, when the 33 come to the green early Sunday afternoon. There will once again be humanity, but only half the usual humanity. You'll once again be able, if you're standing down inside turn one at the start, to track the field hurtling toward you by the sound rolling through  the grandstand ahead of it -- even if it won't be quite the same sound as usual. 

And over whom will that sound wash, when the checkers fly 200 laps later?

Well, it probably won't be Marco Andretti. I'm not making that mistake again.

I'm also not picking Tony Kanaan for the umpteenth wrong time or Helio Castroneves for the umpteenth wrong time or Josef Newgarden, who is surely going to win this someday. I'm also not picking Graham Rahal or Simon Pagenaud or anyone in the last row,.

Even though 2018 winner Will Power starts there because he somehow showed up in a Soapbox Derby car this month.

This likely means he'll become the first driver in 105 years to win from the 11th row, because that's how my luck runs. I covered my first 500 in 1977 and my last in 2017, and in all that time my crystal ball has worked right four times. Which probably tells you more about my troubled relationship with technology than anything else.

This year?

Well, it ain't gettin' any easier.

That's because there are suddenly all these kids around, and they're all talented and engaging and fast, so fast. Five races into the 2021 IndyCar season, there have been five different winners, and four of the five -- Alex Palou, Colton Herta, Pato O'Ward and Rinus VeeKay -- are 24 or younger. Palou, Herta and VeeKay are 21 or younger.

Scott Dixon, your polesitter Sunday, may still be the Jedi Master of IndyCar. But suddenly he and the other old hands are surrounded by the most gifted crop of young drivers since Mario Andretti, Gordon Johncock and the Unsers showed up in the mid-'60s, And so probably two-thirds of the field has a legitimate shot to win this.

Sentiment dictates I pick one of the young'uns -- Herta, maybe, who starts in the middle of the front row and has won four times in just 37 IndyCar starts. Or maybe VeeKay, who starts on the outside of the front row and won the Grand Prix of Indianapolis earlier this month, or O'Ward, the only one of the kids to win on an oval so far this year.

Of course, I won't pick any of those guys.

Of course, I'll pick the Jedi Master, even though hardly anyone wins the 500 from the pole anymore.

I'll pick him because, well, he's Scott Dixon, and he's led 452 laps lifetime in the 500, including 111 last year. Also, he last won this in 2008, so he's way past due, and in the 13 years since he's finished in the top five six times and in the top 10 eight times.

Also-also, in the only two oval races this season, he finished first and fourth and led 369 of a possible 460 laps.

Which can only mean one thing, of course.

Enjoy the milk, Marco.