The Wide World of Dirt

The State of Indiana hosts the most prestigious motorsport event in world: the Indianapolis 500-mile race.

This near-annual tradition rattles the bricks that compose the start-finish line since 1911 when the entire 2.5-mile superspeedway was coated in a layer of bricks instead of asphalt.

Ever since then, the Month of May has become a prevailing phrase in the American Midwest as well as the rest of the planet, describing the long hours spent tuning race cars throughout the entire month to run them on the Sunday leading into Memorial Day.

Continuing the celebration for the last dozen years is the Sonsio Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course where Alex Palou officially launched his title defense with his first win of 2024.

The 2023 champion cycled to the lead during a lap 65 caution for Sting Ray Robb sliding off the tarmac in turn 10, handing the #10 car the lead for good and collecting his first victory for new sponsor DHL.

Palou’s victory gave the Chip Ganassi Racing prizefighter a bump in the points lead as he extended his points lead to 12 over second-place finisher Will Power heading into the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

Indianapolis always delivers on the oval in May, and this year was no different. Rookie Nolan Siegel entered his first Indy 500 this year, but the speedway met him with a not-so-warm welcome, flinging the teenager’s #18 Dale Coyne Honda into the air before brutally casting him aside in his final qualifying attempt last Sunday.

Joining Siegel in the Bump Day session was a driver that surprised many: Marcus Ericsson. The 2022 Indy 500 champion made the move to Andretti Autosport over the offseason with a heftier salary to boot.

Thicker pockets failed to make the Swede any more comfortable when he faced the immense pressure of Bump Day, even making the former winner forget what lap he was on and bailing out of his first qualifying attempt.

Keeping his engine cool, Ericsson returned to the track out of the big race, hauling his #28 Delaware Life Honda around the hallowed halls of the speedway he once mastered. Marcus locked himself in with a solid four-lap average that Siegel’s aborted run was unable to match.

Meanwhile, Team Penske locked out the front row for the first time since 1988 with New Zealander Scott McLaughlin snatching pole position away from teammates Will Power and Josef Newgarden.

Arrow McLaren occupied the first two slots in the second row with 2016 Indy 500 winner Alexander Rossi and 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson making his first IndyCar start here today at Indianapolis with AJ Foyt’s Santino Ferrucci flanking to Larson’s right.

Ed Carpenter Racing spent much of last Saturday repairing the tattered remains of Rinus VeeKay’s Chevy; miraculously, the Dutch driver received a much better car than the team initially brought to the circuit, which ultimately landed him a seventh-place starting spot alongside Pato O’Ward and Felix Rosenqvist.

Kyle Kirkwood is sandwiched between two Indy 500 legends: to his inside is Takuma Sato, the 2017 and 2020 winner and 2014 champ Ryan Hunter-Reay to his outside.

For information about the starting grid for the Indy 500, please here to be redirected.

An historic race brews beneath a backdrop of pageantry as 33 drivers tackle the world’s fastest superspeedway for 200 laps over 500 miles of adrenaline-peaking, wheel-to-wheel combat.

Driving through the former grounds of Pressley Farms takes bravery and courage of the highest magnitude, knowing full well one split-second mistake around the speedway’s 90 degree corners might spell doom for their fantasized happy endings.

Ripping down the frontstretch, drivers will cross the yard of bricks two-thirds of the way to turn 1 where drivers are offered a choice: to lift and fight another lap or keep their foot in the throttle and hope for the best.

There have been winners and losers on both sides of that choice, making the right path to victory hard to parse for most. The low-grade, sweeping 1/4-mile turn 1 welcomes the roaring pack into their first challenge: making it to the second turn.

Winding to the left near the grass helps roll the car through to the 1/8-mile short chute, a mild break until diving into the equally sharp 9.2 degree turn 2 that funnels out to the back straightaway.

Cars leak out of toward the wall on the exit of turn 2, straightening the car out slightly until letting the car head towards the grass in the middle of the straight. Drivers guide the flying machines back up the 60-foot wide straight toward the wall, sliding into turn 3 in upwards of 240mph.

Another short chute greets drivers lucky enough to survive the third turn only to whip their aerodynamic marvels into the dreaded turn 4 that ends so many promising efforts.

If a driver engages in a duel with another driver as they enter the homestretch, they normally did whatever they could on the final lap to keep their advantage, but now, cars are not permitted to go beneath the white-dotted line heading to pit lane unless they’re pitting.

This means IndyCar outlawed Marcus Ericsson’s “Dragon” technique of swerving all over the available track surface to cut the slipstream of air, also known as draft, from the car behind. Ironically, it took another driver in Josef Newgarden using the trick against Ericsson to win last year’s 500-miler to get the rule written.

Drivers will have the 60 feet wide strip of asphalt to spar one last time before crossing that original hard of bricks to claim a piece of tradition, history, and to log themselves into the annals of history as an Indianapolis 500 champion.

With the description of the circuit taken care of, let’s jog on over to the weather monitor and see the skies.

The Weather & Fast Facts

I’ve got some bad news.

Some really bad news. This race? It is probably not running on Sunday.

Bucking all of the trends over the past 10 years, rain descends upon Indianapolis today in the form of multiple thunderstorms scattered throughout the day in Speedway, Indiana.

Showers are due to fall around noon Eastern time, slightly before the race goes green at 12:38pm. A small gap in time between 1pm and 2pm might offer enough time to dry off the massive 2.5-mile facility, but rain is right around the corner until after 4pm when the storms return.

According to a report by the Associated Press, Indianapolis Motor Speedway takes roughly 90 minutes or an hour-and-a-half to dry completely, giving the drivers and teams a small window to fit in a race that typically runs for almost three hours.

On the off-chance cars hit the track today, the air temperature will hover around the low-to-mid 70s, a slight dip from the 10-year average. Sadly, this will be the first time that rain affected the Indy 500 since 2007.

The Brickyard averages a flurry of 6 yellows for 37 caution laps, far more than a standard IndyCar event. These caution periods offer up abundant opportunities for drivers to pass one another with last year’s event logging 419 passes for position at speeds exceeding any other oval-racing series.

Last year’s winner Josef Newgarden nabbed the victory last season with a nine-stop race, the most pit stops by a driver since his predecessor Juan Pablo Montoya wheeled his Team Penske #2 to victory lane in 2015.

The final lap of caution fell within the final 10 circuits in three of the last four Indy 500s with 2021’s installment going under yellow for the last time on lap 119. My calculations over the past dictate that the last caution occurs around lap 179 or with 22 laps remaining, giving drivers fresh tires to fight to the end.

Today’s race airs on NBC for those viewing the race in the US with the green flag slated to fall at 12:38pm Eastern time.

Let’s see what the oddsmakers at DraftKings make of today’s race and its contenders.

The Odds

Pole sitter Scott McLaughlin (+500) tops the oddmakers’ favorites list crafted by the fine folks at DraftKings. The two-time Alabama GP winner approaches the brick-laid pulpit as an uncommon presence to the front of the Indianapolis field, holding a best finish of 14th in his three career starts.

Receiving the wise words of 2019 winner and two-time IndyCar champion Simon Pagenaud, the Kiwi looks to make good on his immense promise by taking the Thirsty 3s to the top of the mountaintop.

Defending winner and Penske teammate Josef Newgarden (+550) lines up third for today’s centerpiece event after a tumultuous Month of May that led to his longtime strategist Tim Cindric being suspended for today’s race as well as the previous race at the Indy road course.

Being very welcoming to newcomer Kyle Larson, Newgarden wants to prove more than anything that last year’s result was far from a “set up” or a “robbery” as some lesser-accomplished guys in the paddock might say, and with a fast Shell Chevy, it might be more of the same as the Tasty 2s get win #2 at Indy with Joe New.

Next up is Kyle Larson (+700). This is the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champ’s first IndyCar event, so there’s not much historical evidence to fall back on to analyze his entry into the race.

The multi-skilled star rolls off an impressive fifth and has dazzled in his IndyCar practices. If he can run well in the wake of other cars, he very well might be able to pull this off.

Now, we’ll travel over to the writer’s pick where I’ll select two drivers that I think have the best chance to win.

Writer’s Pick

I have had a feeling all month long about Dutch driver Rinus VeeKay. The 2021 Indy GP victor starts on the inside of row 3 today after a rollercoaster month where he crashed out in qualifying for this event before patching his Ed Carpenter Chevy up and setting a blazing fast time.

In his four races on the Indy oval, the 23-year-old hotshoe holds two top-10 finishes to his credit, including in last year’s event in spite of a terrible pit sequence early in the day where VeeKay made contact with Alex Palou.

VeeKay (shortened from van Kalmthout) led a total of 56 laps over his four races at the historic circuit, and he even notched his first win at Indy on the road course in 2021 when he was just 20 years old.

If it’s not VeeKay’s day, keep your eyes peeled for a determined Pato O’Ward.

The Arrow McLaren headliner has had much of his thunder taken from the Kyle Larson moonlighting, and after coming oh-so-close to the top step of the podium in both of the last two years, the Mexican driver plans to attack early and often from the eighth starting spot.

Unceremoniously discarded from last year’s race with eight laps left via contact from Marcus Ericsson, O’Ward vowed in an interview afterwards to remember how he was raced by the 2022 Indy 500 winner.

If put in the same situation late in the race, I am interested to see how the young IndyCar star responds.

(Top Photo Credit: AJ Mast/Associated Press)