Pole winner Scott Dixon leads Indy 500
History, pageantry make race paramount to city’s identity
To claim to be better than the Super Bowl is one heck of a boast for a sports event to make.
Yet the Indianapolis 500, cranking the gears in anticipation of its 101st running Sunday, is unflinching in that assertion and makes no apology for it.
To be fair to the NFL’s globally beamed showpiece, the Super Bowl has shown up in this corner of the Midwest just once, in 2012, when the New York Giants won a thriller that left Tom Brady shedding tears in a Lucas Oil Stadium locker room.
The Indy 500 has more than a century’s worth of history, and given that in excess of 325,000 loyal supporters are expected at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on race day, it must be doing something right.
“We love to host people from around the world and around the country,” IMS President Doug Boles said. “I would tell you that the energy level in Indianapolis right now is ... in a lot of ways better than the Super Bowl.
“The Super Bowl was in February, it was colder. People were excited, but I can’t go anywhere in this city without people telling me about the story of what the Indy 500 means to them and their family.”
The 200-lap extravaganza starts around lunchtime Sunday, but the returning masses turn up long before that. To be among those trickling in at 7 that morning is to be a latecomer. Thousands of campers (and glampers) already have set up temporary homes on the grassland situated a short walk from pit lane and the racing surface of the Brickyard itself, where the marbles ( balls of tire rubber) will roll, the milk will
be poured (over the champion’s head, by tradition) and the grandest prize in North American open-wheel racing will be awarded.
“When the Super Bowl was here, a lot of it was self-contained,” Ed Rudisell told USA TODAY Sports. Rudisell is a lifelong Indianapolis resident and owner of several eateries, including highly popular Black Market on Massachusetts Avenue, the city’s social hub.
“The NFL effectively brought in its own village, its own entertainment center, and it tried to drive people towards that as much as possible. We were surprised for the Super Bowl. Not only did it not help our business, it hurt our business. That’s not the case for the 500.”
While the Super Bowl reigns supreme in terms of television numbers, no other sports event on the planet can get as many onsite viewers in front of the action as “The Greatest Spectacle In Racing,” won last year by rookie Alexander Rossi thanks in part to a remarkable fuel gamble.
“There are a few things that are unique here,” said Fernando Alonso, the Spanish Formula One star who is skipping the Monaco Grand Prix to take a shot at Indy history. “A sports event that can host 350,000 people? (This) is the one and only. Not even the Super Bowl can achieve those numbers live in the event. This is a huge place.”
A century ago, cars, technology and American life in general were unrecognizable from today. To have survived and thrived for that period of time, the Indy 500 has had to move with the times, often when it would have been safer not to.
This decade has brought a wide-scale revamp of the speedway’s facilities and a wholehearted push to use social media and crossover publicity to bring the star drivers into the public consciousness.
Yet while the series traverses the country and the 33 drivers this weekend hail from 12 na- tions, this is the true heartland of open-wheel racing.
Indianapolis owns the soul of the 500 and vice versa, the citizens of the local area being far more effective at selling the wonders of the event to the uninitiated than any advertising campaign could possible manage.
“The race is part of the fabric and the culture of Indianapolis,” Mollie Eley told USA TODAY Sports. Eley is owner of Goose the Market, a specialty grocery store frequented by many racegoers.
“We have all grown up with it, and we love it. It is good for local business, and it enriches the lives of people here. We hope to pass those feelings on to the people who visit.”
Attendees have their respective favorites, and the unpredictable nature of the race means there are plenty of potential champions in the field.
Scott Dixon will start on the pole at the end of a week in which he was held up at gunpoint in a Taco Bell drive-thru. Helio Castrovenes and James Hinchcliffe are best recognized away from the track as former contestants on Dancing with the Stars (Cas- troneves was a winner). Alonso is the man everyone is talking about, as he takes his talents to an oval track for the first time.
Local interest lies in the form of Ed Carpenter, 36, sitting in second place on the grid and a genuine threat to top the podium. Carpenter admits he is biased, but he thinks the race sets the tone for the city and its other sporting pursuits.
“Indy has a lot of big events — the 500, Final Four, Super Bowl,” Carpenter said. “I think the 500 is a big reason why Indianapolis does such a great job of hosting those other events — just because it has 101 years of experience of doing this. Those events bring in a lot of people, but nothing like the energy that comes with the Indy 500.
“Living here and taking the kids to school you see the (motor speedway) flags on porches across the city. You don’t see Super Bowl flags on everyone’s house when the Super Bowl is here.”
“The race is part of the fabric and the culture of Indianapolis. We have all grown up with it, and we love it.” Mollie Eley, Indianapolis business owner