When He Finally Met Brickyard, It Was Head-On

They can’t call him “Hollywood” anymore. They can’t say, “What’s the matter, Sullivan, your surf board broke?” Or, “Hey, Danny, this isn’t a movie, this is real. Where’s your stunt man?” Or, “Hey, Danny, what’s the matter, no snow at Aspen?”

Danny Sullivan is a real live bona fide Indianapolis racer now. He hit the wall. He broke his arm. He could have been killed.

He not only came down the main straight in a March Cosworth, he came down in a stock ambulance. He’s been in Victory Lane, he’s also been in Methodist Hospital.

Danny Sullivan is the first guy who ever won the 500 here where everybody was convinced he really didn’t know how tough it really is.

They figured he was like the rookie who closes his eyes, swings--and hits Koufax for a home run. Like the golfer who shoots an unconscious 64 to win the U.S. Open, a fighter who decks Dempsey with a lucky punch.

You don’t win Indy on your third trip around this oval. Even the great ones take longer than that. Indy is nobody’s pushover. It’s a tough, canny old campaigner.

If it were a fighter, it’d be Fritzie Zivic. It sticks a thumb in your eye, it hits on the break, throws sucker punches, hits low.

If it were a cowboy, it’d be the guy in the black hat. It wouldn’t march down Main Street at high noon, it’d shoot you in the back from behind a fence.

It’s a killer is what it is. You don’t show up, figuratively, in a pair of dancing pumps and a ruffled shirt and take on this homicidal pile of brick and tar.

It’s like being locked in a closet with a starving jaguar.

Danny was too pretty, anyway. The profile was Barrymore, the shirts were tapered, the teeth even and sparkling, the hair blow-dry.

They figured Danny saw too many Clark Gable movies. They figured he’d go back to makeup as soon as he got an Unser or Andretti in his rear-view mirror.

He was a rich kid from Louisville, a college boy, he didn’t fit the profile of a race driver, he fit the one of a matinee idol.

You don’t get too many Indy racers out of military school, but that’s where Danny Boy came from.

You were pretty sure no one consulted the pretty ladies when they put this hunk in a race car.

Thus, when he won the race in only his third time around, the consensus was, he hadn’t paid his dues.

Johnny Rutherford won this thing three times. But he was in 11 before he won his first. Johnny had finished 31st, 29th twice, 27th twice and 25th before he finished first.

That is paying your dues. Through the nose.

I don’t know when Dempsey found out he was a fighter, or Red Grange or O.J. Simpson realized they were football players, but Danny Sullivan became an Indy race driver on the afternoon of May 11 at 4:11 p.m.

It was a nice day for it. Sun shining. Wind out of the northwest, but no factor.

Danny was standing on it in the back straight, revving up to 230 miles per hour, feeling good about his run when, all of a sudden, the right side of his Penske Chevrolet began to fly off.

At those speeds, this is a little like a door flying off a jet plane. The car went wildly out of control.

If Danny weren’t strapped in, he might have set free-fall records. Instead, he could only sit there while the car careened into a full spin, banged off the wall, slid some more, came apart in sections, hammered another wall and came to rest in pieces.

Danny Sullivan, meet the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. You are now a member of one of the least-exclusive fraternities in the world--drivers who have hit the wall at Indy at 200-plus m.p.h.

It was the first accident Danny Sullivan ever had at a race track. He only had accidents on things like water skis and horseback.

He broke the ulnar bone in his right arm. He suffered a concussion. But his car tumbled and bounced 645 feet in one explosion, then 480 feet more before it stopped pummeling him.

Your whole life is supposed to flash before your eyes when you are drowning--or spinning out of control in a race car. Danny doesn’t have any memory of the incident.

“The first thing I remember is somebody coming up and asking me if I knew what time it was. Heck, I didn’t even know what day it was.”

You’re not a soldier till you get a Purple Heart. You’re not a race driver till you get a plate in your head, a burn scar on your cheeks and/or a limp or a knee that can tell you when it’s going to rain.

Danny got his battle ribbon with oak leaf clusters. An arm with a stainless steel sheath and seven screws in it. He also had a concussion and a purple lump on his foot.

You’re still not an Indy race driver until you hobble up to Gasoline Alley after an accident, on crutches, or a cane, or with one or more arms in a sling and ask, “When will the car be ready so I can get back in?”

If you check out of the hospital--and check out of town--you are a dilettante. There have been guys here who drove with a wheel for a hand or fingers crimped by the surgeon so they will fit over a wheel. That’s the way real race drivers are.

And, Danny Sullivan will drive with a right hand that he can’t bend or twist.

His arm is wired to a battery device in his belt that will deliver a pain-killing charge to his wound at given intervals. He has more wires sticking out of him than Frankenstein’s monster.

His arm glows in the dark. Some nights, it can probably bring in Paris and set off metal detectors.

It might have cost him a start in Row 1 or 2, but he’s in the race.

As long as he can frost a glass, a real driver would want to be there, and Sullivan went right out and put his car on Row 9 (even though his 15th-best qualifying would have put him in Row 5 had he been able to make the first day of qualifying.

When Danny won the race in 1985, he survived a 360-degree spin at the end of the main straight.

That reinforced everyone’s belief he was leading a charmed life.

That’s something that could only happen to Clark Gable in a movie.

When you spin completely around at Indy, you’re supposed to trigger a 10-car crash. Certainly, not a victory.

Danny’s just one of the boys now. He’s like a fighter who gets up, a sailor who swims ashore, the soldier who got shot, a batter who knows the ball can curve.

No one said it was going to be easy. Danny knows this track is armed and dangerous. But, now, so is he. Even though what’s armed has screws in it.