photo: Getty Images
INDIANAPOLIS - Once upon a time, Indianapolis Motor Speedway invited NASCAR to come play, and all was right with the world.
This Brickyard 400 will be the 17th. It's never been won by anyone who wasn't a damn fine driver. Fans call it boring, but it's never been uneventful, not even on that notorious day of infamy in 2008 when Goodyear brought balloons and called them tires.
To this point, it could be that the Brickyard 400 has never recovered from that day in 2008 when the Tire Makers bombed Pearl Harbor.
The early races were all sellouts. In the late 1990s, NASCAR insiders took delight in the notion that their race had become bigger than what otherwise could be considered the most prestigious race in the world, the Indianapolis 500. It put The Speedway - that's what it is here, The Speedway - in a sheepish situation: happy about NASCAR's success but a tad insulted by the tone.
Empty seats started appearing before Infamy '08, but last year when the green flag fell, it looked as if the race had started two hours early and they forgot to tell anybody.
Now it looks as if the crowd is going to be half what it was a decade ago, and that's ust too much to blame on the economy. When the Brickyard (then Allstate) 400 dissolved into 12-lap segments, this race fell into disfavor. Fans who once marveled at the spectacle started griping about the boredom.
The fans who saw that travesty should've gotten coupons or something. If not for tickets to the following year's race, they should've gotten discount cards for Steak 'n' Shake ... or the movies ... or, oh, maybe, some tires.
In a sense, this is a great shame. Stock cars at Indianapolis do not skirmish in a manner akin to the dogfights of Talladega, but it's breathtaking to watch the unwieldy beasts dive into those four distinct turns - Indy really has four defined turns, it honestly does! - and zoom below the apron, up against the wall, back down below the apron, back up against the wall, forever and ever, amen.
Righteous amen. Hymn of Invitation amen.
It's impossible to half-watch this race, tuned in to nascar.com, tweeting incessantly, and be entertained. It's not a reality show (yet).
But great deeds happen here. This is closer to baseball than football. No one can afford to miss a cutoff man or leave loose a lug nut. No one throws the long bomb at Indy.
Indy has become a simple pleasure in an age in which simplicity is so last century.
Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon talk on pit road during qualifying Saturday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Johnson, the race's defending winner, qualified second while Gordon, who has four wins at the Brickyard, will start in eighth place. (Photo: Gettty Images)
INDIANAPOLIS - Four drivers in particular bear watching in the Brickyard 400, and three of them have something to prove.
The fourth, of course, is the winner of the past two Sprint Cup races at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the past four championships. Jimmie Johnson continues to dominate, which means that his career is a gigantic engine whose fuel is the glory once associated with Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Juan Pablo Montoya.
"We come here thinking that this is one of the top two or three races we want to win each year," said Johnson. "The prestige of the event outweighs points."
It's easy for Johnson to say. Nothing so far in the season - this is the 20th race - suggests anything to detract from the notion that Johnson is headed for a fifth consecutive championship. He has won five races (equaled by Denny Hamlin) and ranks third in points behind Kevin Harvick and Gordon. It does Johnson no good to lead the standings. They become irrelevant when the Chase for the Sprint Cup begins at the end of the 26-race regular season.
Third with five wins trumps first with two. That's the way the card game is played under NASCAR rules.
"Where we are in the points right now, we're pretty comfortable in looking good," said Johnson, "so we can have that mindset (racing to win). We've been here other years where we weren't as strong in the points and needed a good run in the summer to get things situated for the Chase. Where we are right now, we're getting comfortable and looking for a home run."
In short, Johnson might as well be Alex Rodriguez.
Domination by one contributes to frustrations by the many, and Gordon, Stewart and Montoya have every reason to be frustrated. Gordon, like Hendrick Motorsports teammate Johnson, has won four championships and is the all-time Brickyard leader with four victories. Stewart stands at two apiece.
Montoya? He's conquered every series he ever entered save this one. Since shocking the motorized world with his decision to compete in NASCAR, the man who won the Indianapolis 500 and the Grand Prix of Monaco has won a grand total of one piddling Cup road race. It wouldn't have piddled as much if not for the fact that his Infineon Raceway triumph occurred more than three years ago.
Anyone who watches Montoya closely recognizes that he is a racer - yes, a stock car racer - of remarkable artistry, but he can't seem to put it all together. Last year's race, then known as the Allstate 400, was emblematic of his entire NASCAR career. Montoya led most of the laps but was inexplicably found guilty of speeding on pit road. It opened the door to another Johnson victory, his third in the last four races at this historic track.
Montoya won the pole. Johnson qualified second, Gordon eighth and Stewart 15th.
"I don't look at in terms of tracks that are good or bad to us," said Montoya. "I think, when you start doing that, you're going to feel jinxed or something when you get there, and I don't worry too much about that stuff.
"I like coming here. The fans are great here. ... The people who own the track here have maintained a lot of tradition over the years. It's one of the places you can go in the country where you're well-respected to be in this business in this city. That's what makes it special."
Others, of course, figure to contend. Mark Martin finished second last year and qualified third. Harvick is a former winner. Matt Kenseth has finished in the top five four times.
Johnson is the man who must be stopped, and Gordon, Stewart and Montoya are the three most likely, at least on this day, to do something about it.
Over at Ovalscreams today, a 400-mile-round' rant on what it means to polish a racin' tradition 'til it shines like a blood diamond.
Juan Pablo Montoya earns his first Coors Light Pole Award in four races at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and his second of the season. (Photo: Getty Images)
INDIANAPOLIS - Juan Pablo Montoya almost won the Brickyard 400 a year ago, which made one of the favorites at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
At one of the venues where qualifying matters, Montoya needed .037 of a second less time to get his Chevy around the 2.5-mile track than the winner of the past two races at Indy, Jimmie Johnson. In average speed, Montoya's lap was 182.278 mph; Johnson ran182.142.
No one came close to the track record, held by Casey Mears at 186.293 since Aug. 8, 2004, but both Montoya and Johnson were faster than Martin's pole speed (182.054) in 2009.
A pit-road speeding penalty cost Montoya a likely victory in last year's race, in which he led 116 of 160 laps.
* * *
MAYBE THEY'RE OUT THERE--Carl Edwards said a number of drivers have been supportive of his behavior at last weekend's Nationwide Series race. In other words, he isn't the only driver who has a problem with Brad Keselowski.
But you can't prove it by what drivers have said publicly. Apparently the "attaboys" have been strictly private.
Mark Martin said he didn't want to talk about it, but most everyone who did criticized Edwards. Ryan Newman called it "attempted manslaughter." Kevin Harvick said he would've punched Edwards in the nose. Jeff Burton said Keselowski was punished too severely and Edwards got off cheap.
WORD OF PRAYER?-- Denny Hamlin seems to be choosing his words carefully in the aftermath of a recent meeting with Imperial NASCAR.
Is the Chase about to change? Oh, yeah. A few weeks ago, Hamlin was outspoken in his belief that it shouldn't. He seemed a bit muted on Friday.
Though he said their ideas were "way out of the box," Hamlin also said, "I've got to be real careful of what I say. ... Everyone's got their opinion. ... I think they're going to do what they think is best, and we're just going to have to deal with that format and figure out how to win in it."
NO SUCH THING- The lone four-time Indy winner (in NASCAR, that is), Jeff Gordon was asked if it's "a fair race track."
"Fair race track? I've never known a fair race track," he said.
The start of the 2009 Sprint Cup race at the Brickyard. Races here were of a different order for this reporter in years past. (Photo: Getty Images)
INDIANAPOLIS - The horrors of air travel make a man want to sing the blues, but it's relaxing to look out the window of a plane and pick out little details of the land stretching as far as the eye can see.
The first time I visited Indianapolis Motor Speedway was in 1988. Back in those days, I didn't fly very often. In fact, my first Indianapolis 500 began with a long drive at the crack of dawn from Louisville, Ky., which was as close as I could get without paying more for a motel room than my budget would allow. I marveled at the flatness of southern Indiana from ground level then.
I always heard Kansas was flat, but years later, the flatness of Indiana impresses me more than the flatness of Kansas.
In 1988, the Indianapolis 500 was so big that, in order to purchase a ticket for the following year's race, it had to be postmarked the day after the one just completed. The first time I went, I sat in a seat provided me by others. I was so impressed that I wanted a ticket of my own. The next year, I watched from temporary bleachers on the inside of the second turn. The year after that I moved up, in the ticket-buying pecking order, to the third turn. Eventually, at about the time I could secure decent seats, NASCAR required that I be at this other race near Charlotte.
I miss those days, though. I miss sleeping in my car after watching something called the Little 500, a sprint-car race in Anderson, Ind. I miss stopping at a McDonalds and shaving in the bathroom, then making my way down to the Big 500 before the sun was up. I miss stopping on the way in Nashville and experiencing the free flow of suds and country music on Lower Broadway and Printer's Alley. I miss being short on cash and having to improvise.
It's a phenomenon of life, I think. As we get older and more successful, life gets so ... encumbered ... by mortgages and car payments and individual retirement accounts. Once I thought an IRA was the Irish Republican Army. Life somehow seemed happier when it was a challenge to keep the electricity on. It's amazing how many people, against all odds, remember hard times as happy times.
Prosperity hasn't cost me my sentimentality, though. Honest to gosh, as I looked down on the Hoosier landscape from a vantage of 33,000 feet, I found myself humming "Back Home Again in Indiana," which wasn't just sentimental. It was strange because Indiana isn't home.
I like Hoosiers, though. Just about everyone I know up here is a good fellow or a good old gal.
And I like Indianapolis. I like its minor-league baseball stadium, Victory Field, and the sentimental poetry of its laureate, James Whitcomb Riley, and the salt-of-the-earth sportswriters whom I seldom see more than once or twice a year.
Riley wrote in character and was a character:
I was brought up in the country off a family of five Three brothers and a sister - I'm the only one alive Fer they all died little babies; and 'twas one o' Mother's ways, You know, to want a daughter; so she took a girl to raise.
The sweetest little thing she was, with rosy cheeks, and fat We was little chunks o' shavers then about as high as that! But some way we sort o' suited, like, and Mother she'd declare She never laid her eyes on a more lovin' pair.
Some fans complain that NASCAR puts on a boring race at the Brickyard. This race, though, boasts a degree of difficulty that most others lack, and that counts for something.
Naturally, I liked the Brickyard 400 better when I watched from what was little more than a row of benches and tables hanging from the upper deck. Now the track doesn't even let us go there, and we're in this state-of-the-art press facility that looks more like Mission Control at Cape Canaveral than the old hideout at the edge of Gasoline Alley.
I still like Indy, but I loved it when I was poor and, comparatively speaking, the facilities were, too.
Clint Bowyer, who is currently in 12th place - the last Chase-eligible position, drives back to the garage during practice for the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He loves coming to Indy, but not the track. (photo: Getty Images)
INDIANAPOLIS - For Kurt Busch's taste, Indianapolis Motor Speedway is too smooth.
In March 2002, the ancient track went through a process called "diamond grinding" in order to make its racing surface smoother.
"Ever since they 'diamond-cut' the track, whatever they did to the asphalt surface, I've struggled horribly here," said Kurt Busch. "Add the Car ofTomorrow and it's twice as many struggles.
"Indy has definitely been a tough place for me. The first time I raced here, I got a fifth-place finish and didn't even know what I was doing. Sometimes ignorance is bliss."
Busch's first race at Indy occurred on Aug. 5, 2001, and he hasn't finished as high as fifth in the eight races since.
WHAT THE BRICKYARD MEANS-- Sixteen years after Indianapolis Motor Speedway opened its arms to NASCAR, it still causes stock car racers to "get all tingly."
"When somebody asks me what it would feel like to win here, I think about the open-wheel history of this track, and I think about drivers like (Mario) Andretti and (A.J.) Foyt and the guys even before them," said Dale Earnhardt Jr.. "I think about the history of this track and how it's survived the war, and closed down and opened back up, and everything that it's been through.
"When they first brought stock cars here to practice, it was a realization for a lot of people, including myself, being an aspiring driver at the time, that I may have a chance one day to race at Indianapolis that I otherwise didn't think that I would have unless I was to go in the open-wheel series."
A CONVERT-- Mark Martin, who by the way is just back from a brief European vacation with wife Arlene and son Matt, once thought NASCAR's dalliance with the Brickyard was a mistake.
"I knew what it would mean to the sport to have a race here," said Martin, "but I just didn't think it would happen. I didn't think this type of car, a stock car, would be good on that kind of track.
"I can honestly say now that I was wrong. I love coming back to Indy to race. It's been a tremendous addition to the NASCAR schedule, and I think it's great for all of the stock car fans that NASCAR races on this track."
BIG NUUMBER-- By the estimation of the people charged with making such estimations at Roush Fenway Racing, the team's entries have completed 1,000,000 miles in (now) Sprint Cup competition. It all began with the Daytona 500 of Feb. 14, 1988.
Jack Roush has fielded 2,688 Cup entries, employing 16 drivers.
WHAT TIMING--Beginning Sunday, Carl Edwards will analyze each Cup race on ESPN Sportscenter, joining Allen Bestwick, RustyWallace and Brad Daugherty at the cable-satellite channel's pit studio. Edwards is scheduled to make an appearance after each of ESPN's 14 races.
BUT THERE'S A RACE--Clint Bowyer's opinion of Indy: "I love coming to Indianapolis, but I'm not going to lie to you: I don't like the race track."
Will Brad Keselowski (l) and Carl Edwards (r) (shown here at Bristol earlier in the year) be able shake hands and race nice against each other at Indy? Enquiring minds want to know. (Getty Images)
INDIANAPOLIS - Perhaps, after all, there is some benefit to this NASCAR probation concept.
In NASCAR, the concept is one of little formality. Or, conversely, it's a designation of infinite formality, a ceremonial title of disrepute.
The application for entry into the Miss Cook Islands Pageant requires contestants to sign a form with the following requirement: "I will be an outstanding ambassador for the Cook Islands and shall not engage in any activity of any nature that may bring my country or my title into disrepute."
(Isn't the Internet a magnificent source of information?)
That's pretty much the agreement under which Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski now fall. They don't have to meet regularly with a probation officer. They won't have to go to jail if they violate the terms. Strictly speaking, they don't know what the terms are. It's something along the lines of "be good boys."
NASCAR is watching them lest they bring their sport into disrepute.
These intrepid lads, Carl and Kez, have eyed the other with sinister intention for outside a year now. Three times they have been involved in controversial, spectacular crashes, none of which seemed accidental. The latest occurred last weekend at Gateway International Raceway, where Edwards won a Nationwide Series race by returning Keselowski's love tap with a haymaker.
Edwards has already served three races of probation for another overzealous impact back in the spring.
Three races indeed. Think NASCAR wishes it had rolled in the probation fog over Edwards for the rest of the season back then?
Edwards also got a fine that would be onerous for you and me ($25,000) but is chump change for a big-time athlete. Edwards, when out of a race car and in his right mind, is respectful and courteous. If Jimmy Spencer, back in his modest heyday, had received such a fine, he might've peeled off some extra bills and said, "Here, take this, too. For the next one."
That, of course, is perhaps one of the reasons why Spencer's heyday was so modest.
Why did Keselowski get probation, too? Certainly the love tap earlier on the final lap wouldn't have merited punishment from Imperial NASCAR. The Grand Sovereigns decreed earlier this year that they would chortle and be grandly amused (as sovereigns are wont to be) at boorish behavior of a gentle nature.
In their infinite wisdom, the sovereigns realized some action must be taken against Keselowski, lest he deem it acceptable to continue this escalating war with Edwards. This they may have suspected because the Destructive Duo have a history approximating that of India and Pakistan, Hatfields and McCoys, and Holmes and Moriarty.
This could only be better if Keith Jackson still announced stock car races.
Jimmie Johnson has won three times at Indy - but he also has three DNF's negotiating a Sprint Cup car round the challenging Indy car track. (Photo: Getty Images)
INDIANAPOLIS -- Tony Stewart has seen Indianapolis both ways, competing in NASCAR's Brickyard 400 (which he has won twice) and the Indianapolis 500.
"In an Indy car you just don't lift ... if the car's right," said Stewart. "But in a stock car, even if it's right, you've got to lift and you've got to brake for at least two of the corners. With the other two corners, you just lift, basically.
"It's a challenging track in a Cup car. It's a challenging track in an Indy car, too, but if you can get it right in an Indy car, then you can run it wide-open around there, and that's one less variable you've got to worry about when it comes to getting around the racetrack."
ON THE FENCE--Speed (cable/satellite channel) analyst Larry McReynolds had an all-inclusive reaction to NASCAR's actions regarding Carl Edwards.
"... I would have been surprised if NASCAR did anything and surprised if they didn't do anything," he said in a quote circulated by the network.
In other words, McReynolds was bound to be surprised.
Edwards, who by all accounts wrecked Brad Keselowski's car intentionally in the Nationwide Series race on July 17 at Gateway (Ill.) International Raceway, received a deduction of 60 (Nationwide) points and a $25,000 fine. Keselowski and he were both placed on "probation" (in NASCAR's three major series) until year's end.
SIGN OF THINGS TO COME?-- NASCAR has announced a "multi-truck qualifying procedure" for the July 31 race at Pocono Raceway in the Camping World Truck Series.
The qualifying order will be the reverse of practice speeds, meaning the fastest truck will qualify last. The trucks will then be released from pit road in 25-second increments, meaning that more than one truck will be qualifying at the same time.
The rules will, obviously, have the effect of speeding up the qualifying process.
THINGS CHANGE--Bobby Labonte, who left the TRG Motorsports team in June, will rejoin it for four races later in the year.
Labonte, the 2000 Winston (now Sprint) Cup champion, will compete in the No. 71 again at Pocono, Michigan, Atlanta and Texas.
NUMBER FITS THE CRIME--Interesting, by the way that Edwards' penalty involved 60 points.
Edwards drives No. 60 in the Nationwide Series.
Former NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon (right, with team owner Rick Hendrick) hopes to find a victory this season, but he's not doing too badly in as the Chase nears. (Photo: John Clark/NASCAR This Week)
Jeff Gordon's hometown could be considered Vallejo, Calif., where he was born, or Pittsboro, Ind., where he grew up.
Based on his record there, Indianapolis Motor Speedway is another place where Gordon feels right at home. He has won NASCAR's annual visit to the Brickyard a record four times. (As an aside, Gordon has won five times at Infineon Raceway, the track closest to his birthplace.)
The most recent Indy victory for Gordon occurred in 2004. In the five races, though, Jimmie Johnson has won three times and Tony Stewart twice. Forty-eight races have passed since Gordon's most recent victory anywhere. He won at Texas Motor Speedway on April 5, 2009.
Still, a winless Gordon is better than most drivers who have won multiple races this year ... literally. Gordon, 38, ranks second in the Sprint Cup point standings, trailing only Kevin Harvick, and has more top-five finishes (10) than any other driver.
"Our team's been consistently running up front," said Gordon. "We just haven't had the car to win or all the pieces as a team to get ourselves into victory lane.
"At times we've had the car. For whatever reasons -- blame it on me, blame it on incidents, I don't like to point fingers -- but we haven't gotten to victory lane. ...We think we've got some things up our sleeve for Indy, but I'm sure that's what a lot of guys out there are thinking."
Only five drivers - Richard Petty, David Pearson, Bobby Allison, Darrell Waltrip and Cale Yarbrough - have ever won more races at NASCAR's highest level than Gordon. Three more victories would put him ahead of everyone except Petty and Pearson. But it's been "82 and holding" ever since the 2009 Texas victory.
Some have speculated that the end of Gordon's career is near. He disputes this.
"Man, I do (feel old) when I get out of that race car and everything aches," he said "but no, I mean, I'm still enjoying the sport very, very much. I feel like I'm way more comfortable with where I'm at in the sport today. That's fun. I like all the years of experience that now I get to benefit from.
"The only thing I'd change right now is getting some of those wins back. It's tough. It's very competitive. We know we've got to pick up the pace."
Asked about changes that might be on the horizon in both the Sprint Cup schedule and the Chase format, Jeff Burton admitted that he was a bit jaded.
"My perspective is different than other people's perspective," he said. "My perspective is that I'm a race-car driver, and I care about the sport and the well-being of the sport, but I don't view it from the same eyes as the fans.
"I have to be careful. When I say that something is better for the sport, a lot of times I'm thinking about it from a competitor's standpoint because I'm not sitting in the stands. I think by far, from a quality-of-race standpoint, the double-file restarts (and other changes) have enhanced the sport."
HEFTY SHARE OF THE MILLION-- Legends racing originated at Charlotte Motor Speedway, and racing the miniaturized, entry-level vehicles reached a crescendo with last weekend's Legends Million, which CMS touted as "the largest grass-roots race in history."
The total purse was $1 million. Daniel Hemric, of Kannapolis, N.C., won $250,000 for his victory in the A-Feature on July 17 on the quarter-mile track in the superspeedway's tri-oval area.
Doug Stevens, the fastest qualifier, finished second, followed by Steven Cantrell, Cup regular David Ragan and Tyler Green.
NUMERO DUO--Kyle Busch said the Daytona 500 is NASCAR's most important race but rated the Brickyard 400 second.
"It's number two; it's right there," he said. "Daytona is one, Indy is two ... they're both pretty close to each other. Daytona pays a little bit more because NASCAR has to do that.
"Indy is an important race track for a lot of people. The history ... has all been Indy cars, but still ... there's a lot there that everyone always wants to win."
FIRMLY ESTABLISHED - Tony Stewart, twice a winner of the Brickyard 400, said he thinks NASCAR has earned a stable position both at the Speedway and across the Midwest.
"I think our sport's grown nationwide to where it's not just what it does for the Midwest," said Stewart. "It's across the country what the sport has been able to bring. I think we're long way beyond the fact that this is not a Southern sport anymore. It's not like we've just been coming here (the Midwest) for two or three years; we've been coming up this way for a long time now."
WANTS IT-- Kevin Harvick, who Indy in 2003, said it's a race every driver yearns to win.
"It's kind of the second place, where you check off on the year, where you want to try to win the race, next to Daytona," said Harvick. "Growing up a fan of Indy cars and really wanting to race open-wheel cars ... to be able to win there -- and just to compete there -- is pretty cool."