Patrick Eyes Piece of History

A tiny woman with a pleasing smile, an engaging personality and the ability to drive very, very fast has given the Indianapolis 500 and open-wheel racing in general a feeling of anticipation that has been lacking for the past decade.

The retirement during the ‘90s of the giants of American racing -- Foyt, Unser, Andretti, Mears and others -- followed by Tony George’s creation of the Indy Racing League in 1996 left an acrimonious split in the ranks of Indy car racing that is still festering.

Danica Patrick, a name few outside racing’s inner circles had known a month ago, has changed all that.

After posting 229-mph practice runs that none of her competitors could match on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s 2.5-mile rectangular oval, and then coming within the blink of an eye of winning the pole for today’s 89th running of the “greatest spectacle in racing,” Patrick has created an interest in racing not seen since the death of Dale Earnhardt at Daytona in 2001.

A 5-foot-2, 100-pound rookie who has never competed at Indianapolis, Patrick has not won a race of any kind since the Long Beach pro-celebrity event three years ago and has never driven in a race longer than 300 miles.

Despite those shortcomings, she will be the most watched person in today’s race, both by the more than 350,000 in attendance and the millions seeing it on television.

She will start in the second row, driving a Honda-powered Panoz for Rahal Letterman Racing, No. 16, behind pole-sitter Tony Kanaan.

“I think it is important to keep in perspective at what point I’m at,” she said. “This is my fifth Indy Car [series] race. I’m a rookie. Do I think a rookie could win this race? Sure, if things go right all day long. Why not?”

Rookies have won two of the last five 500s, Juan Pablo Montoya in 2000 and Helio Castroneves in 2001, but both had much greater experience than Patrick.

Never has a rookie attracted such attention at the Speedway. In fact, it is doubtful whether any driver, not even A.J. Foyt or Mario Andretti in their glory days, brought racing to the front pages of newspapers and the covers of magazines as the 23-year-old from Phoenix by way of Roscoe, Ill., has done.

During a promotional visit to New York on Monday, she made 27 TV appearances.

While most fans will be keeping an eye on Patrick’s progress, the rest of the field will bear close watching. It is one of the most competitive in recent years with more than a dozen drivers having solid credentials to be the winner.

Three powerful teams -- Andretti-Green Racing, Marlboro Team Penske and Rahal Letterman Racing -- have a corner on the favorites.

Kanaan, one of five Brazilians in the race, is the anchor of Michael Andretti’s powerful foursome. He finished third in 2003 and second last year, then two weeks ago won the pole with a 10-mile average of 227.566 mph in one of the team’s Honda-powered Dallaras.

His teammates include Dan Wheldon, winner of three of four IRL races this year; Dario Franchitti, whose driving talents are sometimes overshadowed by being the husband of actress Ashley Judd; and veteran Bryan Herta, who was plucked from semi-retirement last year to provide leadership to the team.

“Having four cars, we have four chances to win,” Kanaan said. “We’ll help each other when we can, if we can, until the last 50 miles or so. Then it’s every guy for himself and hopefully we’ll drink the milk.”

Said Herta: “We all want to win, but we want to win especially for Michael. He raced here 14 times and never won. Every guy on our team wants to win for him. He has meant so much to all of us.”

Roger Penske, with his imposing record of 13 Indianapolis 500 titles, has Castroneves, who won two of the 13, and Sam Hornish Jr., whose two IRL championships have not been reflected at Indianapolis. In five starts he has not finished better than 14th, but today he will start next to Kanaan on the front row.

“Everybody is so close, so competitive and it’s such a long race anything can happen,” Castroneves said. “It’s not always the fastest car that wins; it is about being the strongest car, the best balanced car. We think that’s what we have.”

Castroneves and Hornish have Toyota engines; the Andretti and Rahal teams are powered by Honda.

Rahal Letterman has been the focus of attention all month with Patrick, the injured defending champion Buddy Rice, and his replacement, former winner Kenny Brack, coming back from the accident that nearly ended his career two years ago.

“Things have been happening so fast for Danica and Kenny that all I can say to them is, ‘Stay cool, keep your focus and remember what we came here for,’ ” said Bobby Rahal, a 500 winner in 1986. “It’s not easy when everyone is chasing after you, wanting a piece of your time, the way they have with Danica. It can be tiring.”

Vitor Meira, the third driver on the Rahal Letterman team, has been overshadowed along with everyone else but qualified seventh and ranks among the contenders.

A sleeper team is Newman-Haas Racing, although Paul Newman has distanced himself from this race, coming from the rival Champ Car World Series. Their drivers, Sebastien Bourdais and Bruno Junqueira, are as capable as any in the race but they are suffering from lack of track time.

While all the others were running laps here last weekend, they were in Monterrey, Mexico, where Junqueira won a Champ Car race driving a Lola-Ford. The only time Bourdais, the Champ Car champion from France and winner of this year’s Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, and Junqueira were on the track since the first weekend was Friday, when they ran 24 laps during Carb Day.

“We were quite hopeful that the car would be as good as it was when we left two weeks ago but it was not,” Bourdais said. “The track has changed and I can’t say we were really happy with the balance.”

There are other interesting elements in today’s race, although drivers such as Marty Roth, the oldest driver at 46; Ed Carpenter, Tony George’s son-in-law; Jeff Ward, who was racing supermoto before being called by George to be a teammate of Carpenter on his Vision Racing team; and A.J. Foyt’s pair of namesakes, Larry and A.J. IV, would not appear to have any chance of winning.

The average speed of the 23 qualifiers was 223.895 mph, 6.074 mph faster than the 2004 field.

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Indianapolis 500 lineup

Lineup for the Indianapolis 500, to be held today (10 a.m. PDT, Channel 7; prerace show, 9 a.m.):

*--* ROW 1 PP NO. DRIVER CAR MPH 1. 11 Tony Kanaan Dallara-Honda 227.566 2. 6 Sam Hornish Jr. Dallara-Toyota 227.273 3. 8 Scott Sharp Panoz-Honda 227.126 ROW 2 4. 16 r-Danica Patrick Panoz-Honda 227.004 5. 3 w-Helio Castroneves Dallara-Toyota 226.927 6. 27 Dario Franchitti Dallara-Honda 226.873 ROW 3 7. 17 Vitor Meira Panoz-Honda 226.848 8. 55 Kosuke Matsuura Panoz-Honda 226.397 9. 95 w-Buddy Lazier Dallara-Chevrolet 226.353 ROW 4 10. 2 r-Tomas Enge Dallara-Chevrolet 226.107 11. 4 Tomas Scheckter Dallara-Chevrolet 226.031 12. 36 Bruno Junqueira Panoz-Honda 225.704 ROW 5 13. 9 Scott Dixon Panoz-Toyota 225.215 14. 5 Adrian Fernandez Panoz-Honda 225.120 15. 37 r-Sebastien Bourdais Panoz-Honda 224.955 ROW 6 16. 26 Dan Wheldon Dallara-Honda 224.308 17. 24 Roger Yasukawa Dallara-Honda 224.131 18. 7 Bryan Herta Dallara-Honda 223.972 ROW 7 19. 10 Darren Manning Panoz-Toyota 223.943 20. 70 Richie Hearn Panoz-Chevrolet 222.707 21. 44 r-Jeff Bucknum Dallara-Honda 221.521 ROW 8 22. 51 Alex Barron Dallara-Toyota 221.053 23. 15 w-Kenny Brack Panoz-Honda 227.598 24. 33T r-Ryan Briscoe Panoz-Toyota 224.080 ROW 9 25. 83 r-Patrick Carpentier Dallara-Toyota 222.803 26. 20 Ed Carpenter Dallara-Toyota 221.439 27. 21 Jaques Lazier Panoz-Toyota 221.228 ROW 10 28. 14 A.J. Foyt IV Dallara-Toyota 220.442 29. 25 Marty Roth Dallara-Chevrolet 219.497 30. 41 Larry Foyt Dallara-Toyota 219.396 ROW 11 31. 22 Jeff Ward Dallara-Toyota 218.714 32. 91 Jimmy Kite Dallara-Toyota 218.565 33. 48 Felipe Giaffone Panoz-Toyota 217.645 Note: Lap length: 2.5 miles. w-former winner; r-rookie.

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