(no subject)

[rain_gryphon]

The Speedway is soliciting for favourite memories of the Five Hundred:

It was 1985, and my first time at the Five Hundred. We had seats in the old 1911 bleachers, in the south chute. The weather was magnificent, and everything that happened that day happened in front of us. I saw AJ Foyt, and Mario Andretti, and Johnny Rutherford, and Al Unser, all right there, right in front of me. I'd spent my childhood with Floyd Climer and Donald Davidson yearbooks, dreaming of the race, but on some level I'd never really been able to believe that it could be real. Now, here I was...

Just after halfway, Danny Sullivan passed my childhood hero Andretti on the inside for the lead, and lost it as he tucked back in front of him for the turn. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. I could see the gearbox and wing of Andretti's car, and nothing more, barely visible though the smoke. I waited for the inevitable crash, waiting to see the gearbox jump into the air with the impact, but it never came. Sullivan spun to one side out of the smoke cloud, Andretti coasted past him to regain the lead, and then, like something from a movie, Sullivan gunned it and took off after him.

We went insane. I could hear Tom Carnegie bellowing over the PA, but the words didn't register. Above the sound of the engines, from the north end of the track, I could hear the roar of the crowd carried on to us the afternoon air, moving toward the front straight, a distinct double wave of sound that followed Andretti and Sullivan around the track as they headed for their pits, and then returned to us at the south end as they resumed the race.

It was one of those moments. If I never made it to the Speedway again, I had still seen something for the ages.

Comments

[cathouse-blues.livejournal.com]

It's rather difficult for me to have any memories of my first Indy, because although I was seated about four rows up from the pits, I was 8 months along in my mother's womb. It wasn't the best view.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

I moved to the south Terrace entension the next year, and was about six rows up from Roberto Guerrero's pit when he stalled on his final stop in 1987. Again, it happened right in front of me :) The woman standing beside me had been holding a can of Country Time lemonade, and heedlessly poured it into my shoe while she stood there stunned. I didn't even say anything, as I knew it would result in an apology ritual that would make us both miss 20 seconds of the pitstop, and 20 seconds might as well have been a year right then.