He’ll Take Indy

Arie Luyendyk has won the Indianapolis 500 twice, but the most recent images of the Flying Dutchman are of him sliding down the straightaway on his head at Phoenix and of him hitting the wall head-on at 215 mph at California Speedway in Fontana.

“I guess I’m a testament to the safety features for both the IRL and CART,” he said with a wry grin while waiting for the Treadway Racing crew to prepare his G Force for a practice run at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“That lick I took at Fontana was the worst crash of my [25-year] racing career. I was lucky to survive. Being upside down was nothing compared to hitting the wall, and all because some guy [Arnd Meier] who didn’t appear to know what he was doing ran into me.”

Luyendyk, who won last year’s Indy 500 and ran the entire Indy Racing League season for Fred Treadway, drove as a replacement for the injured Alex Zanardi in CART’s Marlboro 500.

“It was a last-minute deal,” he said of the Fontana experience. [Car owner] Chip Ganassi called me Friday night at home and I got to run a few laps on Saturday and start in back of the field on Sunday. I could have had a great finish until Meier got in the way. I was definitely competitive.”

As the only driver to have raced in both IRL and CART last season, Luyendyk, 44, is in a unique position to compare America’s two open-wheel series:

* Drivers: “Criticism that IRL drivers are not high caliber is totally unjustified. There are good drivers and there are bad drivers in every series, and there are some very good ones here.

“Tony Stewart is a great driver. I don’t think anyone would dispute that. Billy Boat has been running great. And Buddy Lazier is a lot better than he gets credit for. He drove second-rate equipment for so long in CART that he got a bad image. But when he got on a level playing field in the IRL, he showed what he could do.”

Lazier won the first Indy 500 run by the IRL in 1996.

* Speed: “Sure, there’s a big difference between 218 [in the IRL] and 235 [in CART], but it didn’t take but a few laps for me to adapt [at Fontana]. I’d driven those speeds just a year ago, so it wasn’t like I was doing something new.

“The cars feel different, for obvious reasons. The CART cars have much more aerodynamic downforce and much more horsepower, probably about 200 more. When you have a passion for racing, which I still do, you’ll adapt to anything and try to take it to the limit.

“I thoroughly enjoyed going to Daytona in January and driving a Ferrari in the 24-hour race. It was a blast. Of course, it always is when you win.”

Luyendyk was on Gianpiero Moretti’s Momo team that won the overall championship.

* Sponsors: “If there is one place CART has it over the IRL, it is in the number of its sponsors, but we’re making strides. Getting Pep Boys as a title sponsor was important. It’s only a matter of time before we have more major team sponsors.

“I think many corporations have taken a wait-and-see attitude. People who make decisions as costly as sponsoring race cars tend to be conservative. They don’t like to make any moves until they’re certain of the results.

“The IRL has better support than a year ago, and I’m sure there will be much more by this time next year. Look at our team. You can’t have much higher-profile sponsors than Sprint PCS, Radio Shack and Qualcomm.

* Recognition: “Winning the Indy 500 makes you a much more recognizable race driver than if you win anywhere else. There are financial rewards that come along with it, but if there is one race in the world every race driver wants to win, it’s the race.

“Having Indy on its schedule has played a major part in my running with the IRL. If there was no Indy, I’m not sure what direction I would take. Ask the guys in CART and you’ll find just about every driver there will tell you that they would like to be here.

“You win Indy, people seem to respect you more, they put you on a pedestal. It gives me a good feeling to know that in 20 years, I can always go back to the [Hall of Fame] museum, and my name will be in there. I will always be part of the history of this race.”

Life wasn’t always so good to the native of Sommelsdijk, Holland.

Even after winning Indy for the first time in 1990, Luyendyk was hard-pressed to keep a competitive ride. He won while driving for Doug Shierson, but shortly afterward, Shierson sold the team to Bob Tezak.

“I couldn’t believe how things deteriorated so quickly,” Luyendyk said. “From my standpoint, it was disappointing. The team had no budget for testing, so we never capitalized on our Indy win.

“I got all kinds of personal attention, like getting on the [David] Letterman show, things like that, but it didn’t pay off with sponsorship money.”

When Tezak joined Vince Granatelli, the situation didn’t get any better.

“It was nice to have the team based in Phoenix, not far from my home in Scottsdale, but from a racing standpoint, it was more frustration. I kept thinking that winning Indy would bring sponsors. I was sadly mistaken.”

He kept running at Indy, but by 1995, even thought he’d qualified second and finished seventh, he drove in only one other CART race.

“The only offers I had were for second- or third-rate equipment, and I finally decided it wasn’t worth it to run along at the back, knowing you had no chance to get up front.

“When Tony George started the Indy Racing League, it opened up a new life for me. Being asked to run second-rate equipment the last few years I was in CART made it easy for me to join the IRL when it came along. That, and getting the opportunity to run at Indianapolis, made it an easy choice.

“It’s important to any driver to be in the right environment and when Fred Treadway provided me with a good crew, good mechanics, good engineers, it put me in an environment where I feel comfortable. He also went out and got the best engine man in the business to build our engines.”

Treadway’s Aurora engines are built by Jack Roush, whose company in Livonia, Mich., also builds Ford engines for NASCAR Winston Cup teams.

Despite having won the pole and the race last year, Treadway and Luyendyk are taking a totally different approach to the 500 this year.

With the entire field restricted to using new chassis and engine combinations last year, none of which had ever run a 500-mile race, Treadway was leery of breaking equipment or blowing up an engine. In previous years, teams that blew engines bolted on spares and kept practicing.

With few Auroras and almost no Infiniti spares, preparation took on a new look.

“We came here [last year] with the idea that we were just going to run on opening day and see how it went. If we weren’t as fast as some other guys, we were going to concentrate on our race setup. Then it turned out that we had the fastest car on opening day, which really surprised us. That changed our focus. We decided we would go after the pole position.”

His four-lap average of 218.263 gave him the coveted No. 1 starting position, edging out 1996 pole-sitter Stewart and the surprising Italian rookie, Vincenzo Sospiri.

Luyendyk then improved on that, winning in a controversial finish by .570 of a second--the third-closest finish in Indy history--over his Treadway teammate, Scott Goodyear.

With 11 laps to go, Luyendyk was fourth behind former motocross champion Jeff Ward, Goodyear and Stewart when a yellow caution flag was waved. Ward and Stewart pitted for fuel. On the restart, Luyendyk drafted Goodyear down the backstretch and passed him for the lead going into Turn 3.

“People have told me it looked like a daring pass, but actually it was pretty easy,” Luyendyk said. “I got a good run on Scott coming out of Turn 2, and I was able to get a good draft on him. The pass was routine.”

On a later restart, with one lap to go, Luyendyk guessed right when warning lights on the track flashed yellow while the flagman at the start-finish line was waving a green flag. He took his cue from the flagman, ignored the lights and sped off to his second 500 win.

Goodyear reacted a few seconds too late and his chances of winning were gone.

“That last restart was a mistake,” Luyendyk said. “It caught everybody by surprise. I was in the wrong gear and so was Scott. It didn’t change the outcome, but it must have confused everybody.”

This year, with chassis and engines that have been raced and tested for a year, the Treadway team came out running.

In an open test at the Speedway last month, Luyendyk put 149 laps on his No. 5 G Force-Aurora, and Goodyear ran 154 in the companion No. 4 car. Luyendyk had the fastest lap, 222.657 mph.

“Last year, we didn’t work as hard as we could have, and we won the race anyway,” Luyendyk said. “This year, we’re working a lot harder and we may end up finding ourselves chasing the other guys.”

Whatever the result, even if he does chase the other guys without success, he still has two rings and his face embossed twice on the Borg-Warner trophy.

“When I came to the States, the Indianapolis 500 was the race,” he said. “To even get in it was a thrill.”

“This will be my 14th 500 and the electricity, the excitement, the thrill of being a part of it hasn’t waned at all. I still get a chill the first time I walk into the garage and the first time I pull out of the pits for my first lap. There’s a feeling you get that you don’t get at any other track in the world.

“It’s just Indy, that’s about all I can say.”

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Indy 500 Facts

* Saturday: Pole day qualifying, 8 a.m.-3 p.m. PDT. (Channel 7, 10-11 a.m.; ESPN, 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; ESPN 2, 2:30-4 p.m.).

* Sunday: Bubble day qualifying, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. PDT. (Channel 7, 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; ESPN2, noon-2 p.m.; ESPN, 2-4 p.m.).

* May 21: Carburetion day, final practice, 8-10 a.m. PDT.

* May 24: 82nd Indianapolis 500, 8 a.m. PDT. (Channel 7).

Arie Luyendyk