New Era A Jolt To Indy Routine

Condensing practice and qualifying into one week has messed with tradition and made preparations for the Indianapolis 500 more difficult for teams and drivers.

For the first time since 1952, the 33 starters for the world’s richest and most prestigious auto race will have just two days to qualify. Beyond that, they’re getting ready for the four-lap, 10-mile qualifying runs with just six days of practice.

The decision by Tony George, president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, chopped a week -- including one full weekend of time trials -- off the schedule.

The last time the schedule was shortened was in 1973, when George’s late grandfather, Tony Hulman, cut the opening week of practice off what was a full month of activity. That decision was prompted by a national gasoline crisis.

This time, George says it was a business consideration.

The race still draws a crowd of more than 400,000, but daily practice crowds and those for qualifying have dwindled in recent years, particularly since the fledgling Indy Racing League began running at the speedway in 1996 in place of the established CART organization.

“There’s always a right time and a wrong time to implement change,” George explained. “There were a lot of people (on the teams) who felt a part of the month of May was a strain financially and a waste of time being here.

“Certainly, some of the crowds had diminished over the last 10 years or so on certain days. What we’re trying to do is create more intensity.”

He has accomplished that.

Practice for the May 24 race began last Sunday. With qualifying coming up Saturday and Sunday, activity on the 2 1/2-mile oval has been nearly constant, with 5,000 total laps in the book after a seven-hour practice Thursday.

“I would love it to go back the other direction,” said Larry Curry, manager for Team Menard, which fields cars for two of the race favorites, Tony Stewart and Robbie Buhl.

“When I leave here, I’m used up,” Curry said. “This is really intense. If we’re not running a car in qualifying trim, we’re running a race setup. You’re flat out from the time they open the place.”

Curry said the teams were somewhat spoiled by the two weeks of practice and qualifying prior to this year.

“It was great,” he said. “You’d go out after the track opened at 11 (a.m.), then you’d go back to the garage and work on it and go back out again about 3 (p.m.). Then you’d make a couple more adjustments and maybe go out again once more before the track closed at 6.

“You’d kind of cruise through the day. Now, it’s totally different. It’s hard on everybody.”

For sure it’s hard on drivers like Johnny O’Connell. He’s walking around the garage area this week trying to find a ride.

“In the past, after the first weekend of qualifying, teams would have the luxury of looking at who’s available and making a decision,” he said. “Is it worth it pulling out a backup and putting another guy in the show? Is it financially feasible to do that? Does it make a lot of sense?

“The beauty of it was, OK, you get your guys in the show and you’ve got a couple of spare cars, you’ve got a whole week to work with the guy and get him comfortable. That’s pretty darn important around this place, because you don’t want to just stick a guy in a car and tell him to go for it.”

O’Connell says the other problem for the teams is getting their cars ready for both qualifying and racing in the same week.

“The biggest problem I see is that these teams that are strong and competitive, and have cars available, do not have the advantage of using that second week themselves for running full tanks and doing more race testing than just speed testing. My guess is that some of these teams will use Sunday as an opportunity to achieve those goals, to run out in the open practice when there’s nobody in the qualifying line.”

Not everybody is worried about the shortened Indy schedule, though.

Stewart, the 1996 Indy pole-winner and the defending IRL champion, gets bored by the long days of practice and car preparation.

“If it were up to me, it would be a two-day event,” the 26-year-old racer said. “We’d practice and qualify on Saturday, race on Sunday and then go back to our regular lives.”

But he has no choice.

“We have two weeks work we have to condense into one,” he said. “That means we have to make sure we don’t get too focused on one thing.”

Arie Luyendyk, the two-time and defending Indy 500 champion, is pragmatic about the change.

“It’s here and you have to deal with it,” Luyendyk said. “The teams that would be ready the first weekend (of qualifying) will be ready anyway. The teams that messed around the first week and waited for the second weekend could be in trouble.

“We’re going to see this weekend who can get the job done.”