Age 82 or 2, Indy 500 Is Wiser, Faster

The second edition of Tony George’s Great Experiment in creating the Indy Racing League to alter the character of the Indianapolis 500 will be unveiled today with a marked improvement in the race’s health from last year.

The cars are faster and safer, engines more reliable, drivers more experienced--except for the front row of Billy Boat, Greg Ray and Kenny Brack--the crowds at Indianapolis Motor Speedway more enthusiastic and the weather more cooperative.

At least the weather was perfect until Saturday. After nearly two weeks of sunshine, thunderstorms threaten today’s race. Forecasters said there is a 60% chance of rain.

Things still aren’t as they were, but what can you expect for an 82-year-old?

Unlike in the glory days, tickets are readily available, hotels have rooms for only a modest increase in price, the lines for steak and shrimp cocktails at St. Elmo’s aren’t as long and the hawkers begging for tickets along 16th Street are missing.

Nevertheless, the Indianapolis 500 is still the race of the year, and the winner today will have his face etched on the Borg-Warner Trophy alongside those of A.J. Foyt, Louie Meyer, Parnelli Jones, Rick Mears and the Unser family of Al, Bobby and Al Jr.

Who will take the checkered flag after 3 1/2 hours of spinning around the 2.5-mile rectangular oval that was built in 1909 as a proving ground for passenger automobiles?

Foyt isn’t in the race. He retired in 1993 after winning the 500 four times, but his presence is still imposing. After five years of fielding not very competitive cars, he has Boat and Brack on the front row after Boat took the pole by averaging 223.503 mph for 10 miles and Brack followed with 220.982.

Between the Foyt pair is Ray, a driver from Plano, Texas, who took time off from his marine-related business to fly here and qualify an unsponsored car at 221.125. The front-row position attracted the attention of several sponsors who had ignored Ray earlier, so his car will be well covered with money-paying decals today.

The troubling thing is that all were rookies last year, making it the most inexperienced front row ever. Boat finished last year’s race in seventh place, but Ray completed only 48 laps and Brack didn’t complete a lap before he was involved in a wreck.

“Billy knows what he has to do. I’m sure he’ll bring the field down nice and smooth,” said Foyt, who has started from the pole four times in the 500.

Boat, whose pre-IRL experience was primarily in midget cars around Arizona and Southern California, said he did not expect any problems. “Brian Barnhart [IRL director of racing operations] had some pretty explicit instructions for us,” he said.

Tony Stewart, the consensus choice to win today’s race, will start right behind Boat. The former U.S. Auto Club triple champion had been the pole favorite, but engine problems caused him to slow dramatically from his practice speeds.

However, he showed he was race-ready when he went out last Saturday night and won a USAC Silver Crown race at nearby Indianapolis Raceway Park with remarkable ease over a field that included three other 500 starters.

“I want to win the Indy 500. Flat and simple, that’s the way I look at it,” said Stewart, who will be running in the NASCAR Winston Cup series next year.

Another worrisome thought is that there is speed far back in the pack, where defending champion Arie Luyendyk, last year’s rookie of the year, Jeff Ward, and brash rookie Jimmy Kite will be searching for openings early in the going.

“I think with the field being tighter than it was last year, it’s going to be difficult to get to the front,” said Luyendyk, who also won in 1990. “As far as the race goes, I’m going to lay back in the beginning rather than attack. You’re not going to see me out there running real hard in the first couple of laps.”

Luyendyk will be starting 28th, Ward 27th and Kite, the fastest of eight rookies, 26th. All qualified on the second day with speeds faster than most of the cars ahead of them.

The 33 cars averaged 218.305 mph, an increase of six mph over last year, the first time the field was restricted to the new IRL chassis and engines. And the differential between the fastest and slowest this year is 7.1 mph, compared to 10.8 last year.

Perhaps even more alarming is that Jack Hewitt, Andy Michner and Donnie Beechler, all rookies in the middle of the field, have never raced a rear-engine car, never raced on a track more than a mile in length and have never made a pit stop under racing conditions.

The chassis and engines, totally untested before the 1997 500, have gone through a season of racing that has proved their reliability.

All three front-row cars are Dallaras, built in Italy to IRL specifications. In fact, the first seven starters are in Dallaras, with Davey Hamilton eighth in the first G Force, built in England. Of the 33 cars in the starting grid, only one, Stan Wattles’ Riley & Scott chassis, was built in the United States.

“From the looks of qualifying results, the Dallara appears to be a much faster car, but when it comes to going 500 miles, I think the G Force will show up better,” said Scott Goodyear, who will start 10th in one of the English-built cars.

The quiet Canadian believes this might be his year. He has finished second in two of the three closest races in Indy history: to Al Unser Jr. by 0.043 of a second in 1992 and to Luyendyk by 0.570 of a second last year. And in 1995 he was first across the finish line, but was penalized back to 14th place for having passed the pace car during a yellow caution flag.

“They say if you keep finishing as close as I have, one of these days you should win,” Goodyear said.

The most radical difference in IRL cars from the CART era is in the engine. Designed to save money and reduce speed, the power plants are built around four-liter production-based engines. They are limited to 10,500 RPMs, with about 700 horsepower, 200 less than the turbocharged CART engines.

All but one of the 33 are Olds Auroras, although teams use different engine builders to find their horsepower. Only Jack Miller, an Indianapolis dentist, will have a Nissan Infiniti engine in his car.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

THE TRACK

INDIANAPOLIS 500

Course varies in width from 50 feet on the straight stretches to 60 feet on the turns.

TRACK LENGTH: 2.5 miles

RACE LENGTH: 200 pals, 500 miles

FRONT AND BACK STRAIGHTAWAYS: 5/8 miles

DEFENDING CHAMP: Buddy Lazier

RACE RECORD: Arie Luyendyk, 185.981 mph, set 1990

QUALIFYING RECORD: Arie Luyendyk, 236.986 mph, set 1996

*

WHEN: Today

TIME: 8 a.m.

TV: Ch 7