Sullivan Comes Around Again : Indianapolis 500: Golden boy who won six years ago simply hopes for a good showing Sunday. He’s starting on the outside of the third row.

If Danny Sullivan needed a reminder of how racing’s other half lives, he’s getting it this season.

The golden boy with the silver spoon, the driver whose spin-and-win trick here in the Indianapolis 500 thrilled and amazed the racing world only six years ago, the longtime member of the powerful Penske team is, for want of a better word, struggling.

Part of that is because, as odd man out in a sponsorship shuffle, he no longer is affiliated with that powerful Penske team. And the other part is because the once-powerful Patrick team, his new affiliation, is in the midst of a development program with Alfa Romeo’s racing engine.

All of that leaves Sullivan a bit of an outsider when it comes to Sunday’s race.

“If you base it on everything that’s gone on the first few weeks, we’re sort of in a B group,” Sullivan said. “The other guys have been running awful strong, in terms of straight-line speed and average speed. And even though they’ve probably dropped off more than we have in the second week of practice, we’re still always behind ‘em.”

His qualifying speed of 218.343 m.p.h. is only 16th fastest, but because he was one of only a dozen who qualified on the first day, he will start well up in the field, outside in the third row.

And if he isn’t a red-hot contender at the moment, he is well aware that strange things happen in this race.

“You still have to approach every race the same,” he said. “You have to go out with the same motivation because even if you might not be a contender for the win, you never know, you might end up second or third.”

Second or third here would be the high point of Sullivan’s season. He ran fourth in the season opener in Australia, was 11th at Long Beach and finished seventh when a burned valve ended his best showing, at Phoenix, where he had the fastest lap of the race and actually led for a couple of laps.

“The big thing (here) is to run strong and stay on the leader lap but not use up your equipment in the first 350-400 miles,” Sullivan said. “There’s always somebody who wants to run out there, leading the race, but (with a slower car) you can’t get sucked into that. If you can only run at 215 and the others are racing at 218, you have to be satisfied with 215.

“In a long race like this . . . with the (caution periods), a guy has to lap you just to get an advantage. Let’s say he’s even 30 seconds ahead and a yellow comes out, all of a sudden that advantage is down to maybe five seconds. That’s why I keep saying it’s so important to stay on the leader lap.”

The unknown in Sullivan’s equation is the Alfa engine in his Lola chassis.

“We’ve had a fair amount of engine problems this month,” he said. “But a race engine in a race mode is different. You run it in practice and qualifying at a lot more r.p.m.’s than in the race, and we’ve had fair reliability with our engines in race situations.”

All of this, though, is foreign to Sullivan, who is accustomed to fast cars. Even fast cars, though, offer no guarantees, as evidenced by Sullivan’s last three races here.

In 1988, while he was leading, a front down-force wing broke and he wound up on the wall. In ‘89, the rear cowling blew off his car in practice and, again, he hit the wall, suffering a broken forearm. With his arm in a cast, he qualified poorly and completed only 41 laps before a broken axle took him out of the race. Last year, a suspension joint broke and Sullivan paid yet another visit to the wall.

“For every race car driver, a part failure is probably the greatest fear,” he said. “That’s particularly true here at Indianapolis, where we’re running 218-221. At those speeds, there’s not a lot of margin for error . . . and when you have a mechanical failure, you’re just a passenger.”

He was one very surprised passenger in 1985 when he looped his car and still won the race.

“I’ll never forget trying to pass Mario (Andretti) for the lead and spinning,” he said of his 360-degree maneuver. “Then the car came around, and I told my crew (on the two-way radio), ‘The yellow flag is for me but I’m OK. I just need new tires.’ That was my good luck.”

He later was able to regain the lead and win the race.

“Winning that race in 1985 was my biggest thrill,” he said. “ . . . (But) now I’m with Patrick Racing, and these guys have been in Victory Lane, too. They know what it feels like.”

And so, although his expectations may be down a bit, his aspirations are not.

“First place is what we’d feel good about,” he said. “When I say we’re in a B group, I mean we’re just a little down in speed. But as for the team and equipment, we’re OK. I’ll just have to go out with the attitude that we’re going to finish in the top three.”