‘Indy 500 Special’ fills Memorial void
INDIANAPOLIS – Whether you’ve sat in the stands for the Indianapolis 500 five times or 50, watched from home or listened on the radio, anyone with even a taste of the traditions surrounding the Greatest Spectacle in Racing knows the event is about so much more than 200 laps around a 2.5-mile oval track.
It’s a pilgrimage, a holiday, a family reunion. It’s the chills you get listening to “Taps,” to Jim Cornelison’s high note, to the Purdue marching band. Seeing the balloon release and feeling the vibration of the air as a flyover passes by.
That’s why, exactly one month before what was supposed to be the 104th running of the 500, Penske Entertainment Corp. senior vice president Allison Melangton knew she, Mark Miles, Doug Boles, Roger Penske and the crew at IMS Productions needed to come up with a better replacement for their four-hour time slot on NBC on Sunday than another rerun.
In part, because the Indy 500 isn’t just another regular season, postseason or even championship football, basketball or baseball game. Also because their broadcast partner had only a single 500, last year’s NBC debut, to program around – a race that had been shown on NBCSN during the cable channel’s “Racing Week in America” on April 9.
How do you pull together an extraordinary 240 minutes of television with NBC’s offices shutdown, with members of the company unable to travel anywhere outside of driving distance? How do you produce something worthy of the Indy 500 but isn’t the race, yet feels and breathes and emotes the way lifelong fans are used to?
You luck into a down-to-the-wire race from a year ago involving two of IndyCar’s most well-spoken athletes, have one of the faces of your network living a six-hour drive from Indianapolis in Michigan and lean into the pageantry, history and honor that fans have grown to expect for four-plus hours the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.
The final product: “Indy 500 Special: Back Home Again,” a made-for-TV event Sunday, shown from 2-6 p.m. ET on NBC that’s more cinematic masterpiece than athletic battle.
“There’s such a void in everyone’s emotions and feelings if you don’t have the Indy 500 in May,” said Melangton in an exclusive interview with IndyStar. “And this year, our marketing campaign was ‘That May Feeling,’ and that feeling is real and something folks are emotionally connected to with the track. It’s this month, it’s springtime, and people come out of their homes and want to celebrate this city and state that has the ‘Greatest Spectacle in Racing,’ the largest single-day sporting event in the world.
“As a Hoosier, that’s something to be proud of 103 years running, and to not do something special this weekend felt like a real void to all of us.”
Race fans won’t see all of what they’re accustomed to – partly from circumstance as well as design – but Melangton assures that “different” in these very different times doesn’t have to be less special.
“On Sunday, we want people to gather as a family,” she said. “We want them to gather together and celebrate Memorial Day weekend as they always do and still have a connection and community to this race. It’s the reason a lot of people come together every year.”
‘Filling the void’
The show’s producer, Terry Lingner, a motorsports TV veteran who previously worked on 500s with ABC as well as last year with NBC, understood the show’s goal for a tone before he was given the pitch.
“I’m the target market,” he said. “I’m going through a big withdrawal on the month of May myself. Almost every day when I’m driving to work or working from home, I’m thinking, ‘What would I be doing today at the track?’ ”
So when he, Melangton and Rich Feinberg, IMS Productions lead on content creation, connected soon after Penske Entertainment Corp.’s initial pitch, they were all in quick agreement the direction to move forward, even if the route getting there was circuitous.
In all, the 30-40 people who helped put every aspect of the production together were on the IMS grounds for three days. Those days began with curbside temperature checks, wristbands and masks and were aided by lengthy boom mics, drones and a blank canvas with IMS’ stands and track empty.
The familiar whirring of cars tearing out of the pits and around the four turns of the speedway last week set off rumors of what sort of testing was taking place inside the walls. In reality, it was last year’s Indy 500 winner, Simon Pagenaud, and Alexander Rossi putting in some for-camera laps, the only ones to be taken this month.
But as Lingner and Melangton promise will be apparent throughout Sunday’s show, it’s more about the people shown on TV – Pagenaud and Rossi included – and less about the cars that would traditionally be center stage.
“We weren’t thinking so much about racing, because that traditionally speaks for itself,” Melangton said. “We were looking to fill the void of what people were feeling while not having the race.
“For the world to come to a sports standstill, something big had to happen, something massive. And we were looking how to fill that void, and that void isn’t just a racing void.”
The city and state will be on center stage. Clips of the funeral for IMPD officer Breann Leath, held weeks ago at IMS, will be shown to pay tribute to her story, sacrifice and the unique role IMS had a chance to play in the moments before she was laid to rest.
That segment will lead into a scene of a lone bugler playing taps from an empty IMS flag stand.
The broadcast will cycle through segments honoring the USS Indianapolis to tie in the Memorial Day tradition of honoring the country’s service men and women. The U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels completed a fly-over as part of their tour of the country to pay tribute to folks on the front lines battling COVID-19 during one of NBC’s days on the grounds – an opportune moment to shoot video and incorporate one of the race’s most storied traditions, no planning necessary.
The production will include a video message from drivers to thank medical workers for their sacrifices the last several months, along with a piece that pays tribute to the historic sports town that Indianapolis has been, is and will be.
One of the biggest surprises, unveiled earlier this week, were the voices of Mayo Clinic orthopedic residents Dr. Elvis Francois and Dr. William Robinson, who themselves went viral with their rendition of the song “Imagine,” which Melangton discovered during a late-night scroll through Facebook.
They’ll sing “God Bless America” while standing on the yard of bricks.
“We needed the right (people),” she said. “Because, really, God bless America right now. There’s a lot going on in America.”
Two staples that viewers won’t see, though: Cornelison belting “(Back Home Again In) Indiana,, as well as the Purdue marching band. The latter, Lingner said, was more of a quality issue while also trying to follow the proper procedures around the pandemic. They didn’t want anyone getting together to practice beforehand nor what he called “another Brady Bunch” video with musicians playing remotely. Cornelison, though?
“No way were we going to do ‘Back Home Again’ to an empty house,” he said. “That’s just really special to people.”
Pagenaud and Rossi, Take 2
And the actual race footage, that’ll feel different, too.
Because for the first time since their back-and-forth duel, Rossi and Pagenaud will sit together, along with show host Mike Tirico, to discuss their thoughts and emotions, as well as the results of last year’s race.
There’s Rossi’s outrage during his team’s error-filled pit stop that set him back, as well as his fist in the air cursing a lapped, in-the-way Oriol Servia. There’s the two drivers’ back-and-forth tango over the final 13 laps after a restart. Pagenaud’s No. 22 Menard’s Chevy swerving low, then high and back down again to keep Rossi at bay.
And they relive it all together, including the final couple of passes, in place of having fans simply rewatch a race so fresh in the minds of many.
“Reruns would have been a nice crutch, but those guys had such a good go of it last year,” Lingner said. “You have two good late combatants and two manufacturers. Every good story needs that arc that has struggle and a goal.
“I think this is going to be a real comfy sweater, but also make people smile and put them on the edge of their seats a little bit. It may make them say, ‘Huh, I didn’t know that.’ ”
In the show, Lingner said, Rossi in particular, bares everything. After winning on fuel strategy that had him on his final fumes as a rookie, he was in his first serious down-to-the-wire battle at IMS, and the show’s producer said that, maybe more than ever, Rossi reveals the pain of that defeat.
“He was really on his game,” Lingner said. “Alex doesn’t come out and say it, maybe, but you can read between the lines that, until he wins again here, he’s not going to be fulfilled.”
In Lingner’s eyes, the original goal was, like normal, put together a live, compelling broadcast from IMS on the old race day itself. But when he stopped to think – not only on the hurdles that would be introduced to an already complicated project, but the opportunities at hand if they bucked tradition – the production quality and impact of Sunday’s show came fully into focus.
“You shoot it more cinematically and get good writers, good collaboration and make sure edits are tight … you make it like a movie,” he said.
Added Melangton: “We hope it’s something people will really love, coming from a place and about a thing they truly love and couldn’t have.”