Heart and heartbreak

 May showed up in Indianapolis a little after 5 p.m. Sunday, when Jack Harvey rode the edge of a razor for ten miles, and Graham Rahal had to stop talking. Everything the month is and was and ever will be was right there in that moment.

Harvey, turning failure into triumph by the width of an eyelash after missing out by that same eyelash minutes before.

Rahal, knocked out of the Indianapolis 500 by Harvey at the very very very last second, having to walk away from an interview because, dammit ... hell ... crap-crap-crap- CRAP.

He was saying all the right things about class and not being good enough and how this place is hard, so hard, and then he had to turn away, because no one wants to see a grown man cry on national TV. He walked over to his car, sat down on the sidepod and buried his face in his hands.

You want to know what May looks like in Indy? 

It looks like that.

It looks like Graham Rahal weeping and holding his young daughter close, and, a few feet away, fellow Rahal/Letterman/Lanigan jockey Jack Harvey sounding dismayed for having knocked his teammate out of the biggest motorsport event on planet Earth. 

"It's not a good feeling, to be honest with you," he said.

But it was the very essence of Indy. 

In the next hour, the Fast Six would do their deal, and Alex Palou would wind up screaming for joy when Felix Rosenqvist failed to dislodge him from the pole with the last run of the day. But this day, this month, was defined by Harvey and Rahal, a split-screen look at the heart and heartbreak that has always been its bedrock core.

The heart, of course, was Harvey, who may just this morning be realizing what he did. Ten minutes before midnight struck, he went out and pedaled as fast as he could, and came up just short. The speed just wasn't there, as he suspected.

But because he had come up just short, they decided to give it one last shot without letting the engine cool. Why the hell not? It was a minute to 5 p.m. and they had nothing to lose except to lose again, so off Harvey went while Graham Rahal sat helplessly in his own ride.

And Harvey did it. Put together four laps that were nothing but pure raw nerve, because even the slightest bobble would have doomed him. As it was, he made the field -- and knocked out Rahal -- by just 0.0044 seconds.

And then didn't know how to feel about it, because over there Graham Rahal was sitting on that sidepod with his face in his hands.

You know how the Speedway folks always like to use the tagline, "This is May"?

This is May.