No Missing the Boat at Indy

For years, as the son of Ascot Park’s legendary promoter J.C. Agajanian, Cary Agajanian has prayed for sunshine on race day.

For most of this past week, and especially Sunday, Cary prayed for rain.

“It was definitely a change to be praying for rain all week,” said the co-owner of Billy Boat’s No. 98 Chevrolet, whose car may have been saved from being bumped from the Indianapolis 500 starting field by a late shower. “God was a little confused today, I think, but I know my dad was up there watching over Billy.

“I’m sure my dad was looking down at me, wondering what I was up to, but it was necessary, and it worked,” said Agajanian, whose family has had a No. 98 in the 500 nearly every year since his father came here in 1958 with Johnny Mantz.

For the third year in a row, Boat was the central figure of Indy’s traditional “Bump Day,” where non-qualified cars can knock one of the 33 qualifiers out of the race by posting a faster speed before the 6 p.m. gun sounds.

Boat, who accepted a surprisingly slow 226.589 mph last Saturday, was the driver on the bubble after George Mack bumped Billy Roe and left Boat as the 33rd slowest qualifier at 2:35 p.m. That meant more than three hours of sweating for Boat and his fellow team owners, Agajanian and Mike Curb.

“Not only were we praying and the whole team was praying, the entire state of Arizona was praying,” said Boat, a 36-year-old Phoenix businessman. “It was probably 105 degrees [there] today, but they were praying for rain, for us.”

Only two drivers, Oriol Servia and Jimmy Kite, made attempts at bumping Boat before a persistent rain shut down the track at 3:40 p.m. Servia aborted his run after two laps at 226.6, while Kite stalled three times because of clutch failure and by the time the problem was repaired, the rain was falling.

When track officials called it a day, Kite and Donnie Beechler were the only cars left in the qualifying line.

“When you go back to Pole Day, when we took that qualifying speed, we felt that weather was going to play a factor into who would get into this year’s race,” said Boat. “It looked like we were pretty accurate until I got here this morning and I looked up and the flags weren’t moving. The sun comes out and the track gains two miles an hour, and then I thought, ‘We’re in trouble.’ Until I saw those clouds coming in a little later I thought we were in serious jeopardy of being on the outside looking in.”

After a week of bitter cold and gusty winds that made high speeds all but impossible, Sunday turned milder and windless, an ideal day for speed. And not what Boat and Agajanian--nor Michael Andretti--were looking for.

Quickly, Arie Luyendyk, rookies Alex Barron, Higeaki Hattori and Dario Franchitti, along with veterans Paul Tracy, Airton Dare, Greg Ray and Mark Dismore, brought the field up to 32 with speeds in excess of 227 mph.

Billy Roe, gambling with a snail’s-pace speed of 212.283 that it would rain, filled the field as the No. 33 starter.

Andretti, whose first-day speed of 226.780 was second slowest, gambled by withdrawing his qualified car in hopes of putting his backup car in with a safer speed. It worked, Andretti clicking off a 228.713.

“I thought we were going to get bumped, and we knew we had a pretty fast backup car, so we thought we had better go out,” said Andretti, looking for his first win in 13 starts.

Mack was the surprise package. After never getting above 225.9 all month in 310 Racing’s G Force-Chevrolet, the rookie driver from Inglewood strung together four solid 227 laps for a qualifying average of 227.150. This bumped Roe and left Boat on the bubble.

“I can sleep tonight, because I’m feeling good,” an elated Mack said. “My team stayed up all night last night, not just last night but lots of nights, just to make this happen.... It’s the best feeling in the world.”

Agajanian said he had a special attachment to Boat because he came up from the short-track ranks, from places like Ascot where the Agajanian family promoted races for nearly half a century.

“Billy is special to us because he came to our racetrack, Ascot, with his father when he was 15 or 16 years old and we sent him home because he was too young. He was supposed to be 18. We did the same thing with Jeff Gordon and Little Al [Unser], but Billy came back and made us eat our words by setting track records at Ascot that will never be broken.”

Ascot was closed in 1990.

The 33-car field is the fastest in history with an average qualifying speed of 228.648 mph, bettering the 1996 record of 227.807. There are nine rookies and six former champions in the starting lineup.

For only the second time, the slowest qualifier has a faster speed than the previous year’s pole-sitter. Scott Sharp won the pole last year with a 226.037 mph speed. In 1972, Cale Yarborough was slowest at 178.864 mph, which was faster than Peter Revson’s 1971 pole speed of 178.696.