I got up ridiculously early on the Friday morning before the race and drove up north of Charlotte to pick up my friend who was riding with me. Then on to Indianapolis! We were stuck in traffic for an accident in the mountains near Asheville, it was a standstill for almost 45 minutes but that was the only difficulty we encountered. We checked into the motel south of Indianapolis around 6pm and I left to attend the graduation of a family friend who lived about an hour away. I was beat by the time I got back to the motel, I had driven over 850 miles that day.
We went into the garage area Saturday morning for the autograph sessions, the speedway had a display of midgets and sprint cars set up right behind the tables where the 33 drivers from this year’s race were signing autographs.
After that we made our way over to the Museum. They had it reconfigured into a “Winners Only” display for this event, I was disappointed that some of the other cars like the Cummins Diesel from 1953 weren’t on display.
Next was another autograph session, this one had invited every living driver who had never won the race (the session for former winners had taken place in the morning). I also saw the legendary Andy Granatelli going into the memorabilia show.
The pre-race festivities included having several former winning cars from all eras making a lap with a former winning driver behind the wheel. That’s Parnelli Jones in the Marmon Wasp, I think they said it hadn’t been on the track since 1961.
Race day was sunny and I was using a long lens. I uploaded these without trying to change the contrast or brightness, I should work on them a little bit but they’re not horrible.
At one point, Helio Castroneves got pushed offline on a restart and he chose to take the warmup lane through Turn 2. I thought he was going to bust his butt but he made it.
The experience was very good. I was staying an hour south of the track, on Saturday the GPS guided us straight in with no traffic at all. On Sunday the police had the back roads blocked off so we had to deal with about a half hour of traffic before getting parked. I had purchased a weekend parking pass in the Main Gate lot directly across 16th Street from the South Turn, my seat was only a 10 minute walk from where my car was parked. When the race ended I waited 45 minutes for the crowd to thin and for the post-race festivities to end then walked down to my car. We loaded up our bags and started the car, according to the estimated time of arrival on my GPS it only took about an hour longer than normal to exit the parking lot, navigate downtown Indianapolis traffic leaving the race, and drive back to the motel. I couldn't have asked for a better trip. |
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