The Official Blog of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway

The #Indy500orBust campaign for the 2013 Indianapolis 500 has been a tremendous success. It has generated hundreds of millions of impressions and people from all over the world have submitted their photos to our Instagram campaign. While searching through the photos, one fan began to stand out to us. Felipe Guerra was a fan traveling all the way from Chile to the Indy 500. He was documenting his trip on Instagram using his homemade #Indy500orBust sign. He was utilizing the campaign in the exact way we hoped fans would. Here is the story of Felipe’s journey.

Felipe, 31, and his father became fans of IndyCar when Eliseo Salazar began racing in the series. Salazar was a native Chilean. He raced in the Indianapolis 500 from 1995 – 2001; the only exception being 1998 when he did not qualify. His best finish was third in 2000 while racing for A.J. Foyt Enterprises.

Felipe and his father, Moises, at the beginning of their journey

Since then, Felipe has always been a fan of IndyCar and the Indianapolis 500. “I like the Latin American drivers,” said Felipe. He was rooting for Carlos Munoz on Sunday and was happy to see him finish in second place.

Felipe owns his own social media company in Santiago, Chile, but his 8,000 mile journey began with his father, Moises Guerra, in Los Andes, Chile. Moises, 75, and Felipe had never been to the Indianapolis 500 and they decided a year in advance that 2013 was their year to make the trip.

After stopping in New York to meet up with friends, Frank and Nick Cannizzaro, they were Indy bound! They made it to Indy on Saturday and attended the 500 Festival Parade. Then on Sunday they arrived at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “The Speedway is cool. All the people are very helpful,” said Felipe.

Felipe holds up his #Indy500orBust sign at the Statue of Liberty

Felipe said he definitely plans to come back to the Indianapolis 500. He said he wants to return with more friends in 2016 for the 100th running of the race. “The race was perfect,” he said.

Felipe found out about the #Indy500orBust campaign through the IMS twitter feed and then continued to the #Indy500orBust website for more information. “My idea was to take pictures during the whole trip and the last one would be taken here,” he said. “This is mission complete.”

Felipe with his father and friends at IMS

1984 Chris Kneifel

He had one of the most improbable goals ever in sports.

Chris Kneifel came to the Speedway with the dream of winning the Indianapolis 500 and playing in an NBA Finals game.

He came as close as anybody could expect with that combination. He finished 12th at Indy in 1983 and was invited to the Indiana Pacers training camp. He is also the answer to a great “500” trivia question: Who was the last driver to make the field with a speed slower than 200 mph?

It came in 1984, when he was first alternate and Jacques Villeneuve (uncle to the 1995 Indianapolis 500 winner and former Formula One champion) crashed and was not cleared to drive because of a head injury.

“He had trouble counting to two,” Kneifel said. “I started 33rd and finished 15th, but we weren’t running at the finish. I was in the top 10 most of the day before a shaft broke in the gearbox.”

His four-lap qualifying speed was 199.830, thus making him the last driver to make the field at under 200.

He was colorful, so much that his PR rep, the late Lynda Havens, started an informal contest among media members on who could get the funniest quote from Kneifel.

Example, at Elkhart Lake: “This car is set up perfectly for a racetrack. But not this one.”

His height – 6-foot-6 – became a problem to solve along the way.

“They had to raise the roll bar for me, and they soldered pieces on to it to get it through tech,” Kneifel said. “Then I went to England in ’85 and went to both March and Lola. They both tried to fit me in, but they couldn’t do it.”

His basketball career suffered a setback from his racing career.

“I was invited to the Pacers’ camp, but unfortunately, it was the week after my accident with Rick Mears at Michigan,” Kneifel said. “I was too sore to go to it.”

He had been scrimmaging regularly in Chicago with some of the Bulls, including Scott Pippen and Reggie Theus. Although the NBA was not to be, Kneifel was not completely through with basketball. He was the only race driver to participate in the Foot Locker Slam’Fest in 1990 at the Breakers Hotel in West Palm Beach, Fla.

“It was really a neat deal,” Kneifel said. “Wilt Chamberlain, John Havlicek and Oscar Robertson were some of the judges for the slam-dunk contest. I lost in the first round to Ken Griffey Jr. They had some beer in the locker room, and I had my first one with Ed ‘Too Tall’ Jones, who also got knocked out early.”

Although he made just two starts at Indianapolis in 1983 and 1984 during his limited Indy car career, Kneifel switched to road and endurance racing and made his mark there, from Daytona to Le Mans. Later, he became the chief steward of CART.

“What Wally Dallenbach had decided was that he wanted to be done in January of 2001,” Chris said. “Wally called one day, and I thought he was going to congratulate me on Daytona. And he said, ‘Are you ready to do that?’ I said to give me a day or two to think about it. I had just signed a contract to drive, but that was my future.”

He had a vivid description of his duties as CART chief steward.

“I loved every torturous second of it,” he said, “and I can’t say that sentence without using the word ‘torturous.’’

Kneifel resides in Cave Creek, Ariz., where he has lived since the mid ‘90s. He dabbles in racetrack design work and recently spent two weeks in Singapore working with a client.

“I spent some time with them in 2007 and 2008,” he said. “They want to get a future motorsports venue in Asia.”

He is now 52 and he said (quietly), “I got an invitation to join the Oldtimers Club.”

Kneifel doesn’t return to Indy for the month of May.

“I haven’t been back since I stopped driving there,” he said. “I can’t just stand around.”

Pancho Carter was destined to be a racer, almost before he was born.

“My mom was pregnant with me, and she was down there when my dad ran the Mexican road race,” Duane “Pancho” Carter Jr. said. “So I got the nickname really before I was born. I was born on the way to the Milwaukee race in Racine, Wis.”

Racing has stayed in the Carter family for many years. Duane Carter Sr. made 11 starts in the Indianapolis 500, with a best finish of fourth in 1952.

Pancho made 17 starts in the “500” with a best finish of third in 1982 and six finishes in the top seven. He also won the pole in 1985.

1985 Pancho Carter

Pancho married Carla Forberg, daughter of the late Carl Forberg, who finished seventh in 1951 in his only start at the Speedway and fielded a sprint car for many years.

And his son Cole is running a midget as the third generation to strap on a helmet.

“I was brought up in a racing family and just got used to it,” Pancho said. “I never thought of doing any different. I’d been around the Speedway since I was a kid, so I wasn’t in awe of it like other drivers (when he first raced at the Brickyard in 1974). Dad helped me, and so did my teammates, Jimmy Caruthers and Jerry Grant.

He was involved in some strange happenings in his Indy-car career.

Pancho won the inaugural Norton-Michigan 500, but it came after a long audit of scoring results as the late Tony Bettenhausen Jr. thought he had won. Then there was a race at Sanair in Quebec where the caution flag was out, and suddenly the green light came on as the field came off the fourth turn to the checkers. Johnny Rutherford was leading, Pancho saw the light and took off, beating Rutherford to the line. That finish went to an appeals hearing, which determined Rutherford had won.

Carter’s runs at the Speedway ran from short to long. When he won the pole in 1985, the car lasted six laps before an oil pump failed on his Buick-powered machine.

“It was running good up until Race Day,” Pancho said. “Something was wrong with it that day. It was like any other racing engine. It’s tough to predict, like it was with any other racing engine.”

Then came a harrowing upside-down trip through the north short chute between Turns 3 and 4 in 1987.

“I just tried a little too hard (going into Turn 3) and spun out,” Pancho said. “It spun once or twice, got backward in the air, and it turned over. It didn’t hit the wall ‘til the fourth turn.”

Carter drove everything from midgets to stock cars during his career, but he had a favorite machine.

“The champ dirt cars on the mile tracks I enjoyed because they seemed to be more challenging to me,” Carter said. “I enjoyed my career, that’s for sure. I would like to have won more races, but that’s just my nature.”

For the last decade, he has served as a spotter for IZOD IndyCar Series drivers. He’ll be on the radio with JR Hildebrand of Panther Racing on Race Day. He also does a little driver coaching “depending on if someone needs it.”

“I don’t want to say I’m retired because that sounds too old,” Pancho said. “The biggest thing is the cars these days. It’s hard to see out of them. Basically, I’m the eyes because you can’t really tell if someone’s behind you.”

The Carters live in Indianapolis, and the Speedway is Pancho’s home away from home in May.

“I was judging the old cars they had out there the other day,” he said of the Celebration of Automobiles on May 11. “I had a good career there, and I had a chance to win it when I was driving for (Dan) Gurney.”

Johnny Rutherford in 1980

He is an artist, doing all kinds of oil portraits, pencil drawings and other creative things.

He once owned two P-51 Mustang World War II fighter planes, in which his wife said he conducted a few “strafing runs” in isolated parts of Texas. He has taken rides with the Blue Angels, Thunderbirds, Canadian Forces Snowbirds, an F-15, an F-105 Thunderchief and others.

At one time, he was a TV analyst. And when he wasn’t busy with art and aviation and TV, Johnny Rutherford etched his name in the record books as the winner of three Indianapolis 500s.

“I do (miss it) very much, Rutherford said of his aviation enthusiasm. “It was the best release. You get up there and have a good time.”

Then he laughed about “strafing runs.”

“Down in Texas, there’s plenty of places to do that,” he said.

Rutherford knows his stuff about aviation. When INDYCAR started racing in 1996 at Walt Disney World Speedway, Rutherford grabbed two friends and took off for nearby Kissimmee when he heard there was an aviation museum there. He proceeded to be the “tour guide” for his friends.

Along with that, Rutherford, 75, and his wife, Betty, have worked endlessly for children’s charities both in racing and their home in Fort Worth, Texas. Betty was the leader of drivers’ wives in founding CARA Charities among the Indy car community and now is working on Speedway Children’s Charities at Texas Motor Speedway.

The Rutherfords always have been considered among the sport’s best ambassadors.

Johnny Rutherford always was a fan favorite at Indianapolis. But his first victory at Indy, in 1974, finally ended a long run of disappointment.

“It was a great thrill being involved with Team McLaren,” Rutherford said. “The atmosphere they exuded was to go to the track and win. We went to Milwaukee the next weekend and won again. Then we went to Pocono and won again. Three straight. And another big thing about Indy was that it was my 10th year there and the first time I finished 500 miles.”

In ’76, his second victory for Team McLaren was sponsored by HyGain, which manufactured CB radios, among other things. It came at a time in history when the speed limit was lowered to 55 mph, a guy named C.W. McCall made a record called “Convoy,” and people were swarming to stores to get CBs to avoid speeding tickets, joining a unique culture and becoming Robin Hoods of the “superslab” (Interstate highways).

It helps to avoid tickets when someone driving on the other side of the road says, “You got a Kojak with a Kodak (officer with radar) at the (milepost) 134.”

Rutherford spent time during May 1976 just talking to folks on the CB.

“It was a great opportunity to be in on something like that,” Rutherford said. “Everybody had a CB handle (nickname) and we were sitting around one day, someone said I had to have a handle, and someone suggested ‘Lone Star JR.’ Betty became ‘Yellow Rose.’ They were a fun bunch of people. I’d be driving around and identify myself as Lone Star JR, and somebody would always ask, ‘Rutherford, is that you?’”

In 1980, Rutherford got his third victory in a newfangled machine called the Pennzoil Chaparral, a cutting-edge car with ground-effects aerodynamics fielded by Jim Hall. It was called the “Yellow Submarine.”

“The Yellow Submarine was the future of Indy car racing,” Rutherford said. “It was the birth of ground effects, although Mario Andretti may have had some in Formula One in 1978. It put you in a whole new realm of aerodynamics.

“It was so great. It took me 10 years to win the ‘500’ for the first time, I broke my arms in a sprint car, and I had to keep going and looking for the right set of ingredients to do the job.”

Today, Rutherford serves as the pace car driver for the IZOD IndyCar Series and occasionally helps rookies. And he uses his “semi-retirement” to assist charities.

“It’s always good to be involved with charities and give something back,” he said. “It’s helping the kids. I do some speaking engagements with the Boy Scouts and organizations like that.”

Even with all their activities, the Rutherfords have had their fun through the years.

When the TV show “Dallas” was in flower with J.R. Ewing as the principal character, it sparked an idea. At Michigan International Speedway, Betty Rutherford walked out on the pit road wearing a T-shirt that said, “I sleep with the REAL JR.”

“Everybody got a good laugh out of it,” Betty said.

Arie Luyendyk 1985

He holds the top three speed records at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and has two victories.

One qualifying lap – 237.498, 1996
Four-lap qualifying average – 236.986, 1996
500 miles – 185.981, 1990

And Arie Luyendyk figures his 500-mile mark will stay for a while – it’s already stayed 22 years.

“That (500-mile) record will stay there for a long time,” said Luyendyk, 59, now living in Fountain Hills, Ariz. “Back then we didn’t have a pit speed limit. Now it takes time.”

But for qualifying?

“They could change the cars to make that happen,” he said. “The fans want to see it (broken). Those records are there, but I would like to see someone break them.”

He wasn’t always an ovalmeister, starting with when the Dutchman came up with the former Provimi Veal team.

“We had a small team, and there wasn’t one guy who had worked with a car on an oval,” Luyendyk said. “When I started in ’85, we had a little help from Lola, but no one had worked on a car for an oval. The big change came when I got with a team that could prepare a car for an oval. That started in ’87 with Dick Simon when I got with Larry Curry. You change your attitude and confidence. I had good races with Simon.”

But the 1990 victory at Indianapolis was his first in Indy cars – and Luyendyk could feel it coming.

“I really did feel good about it,” he said. “The whole month went well, qualified third and after some really good days, I thought we could be right there. The communication was good between me and Doug Shierson (the car owner). It was good and professional. We didn’t change that much during the race. Teams like Penske and Newman-Haas knew we were fast.

“I didn’t feel that confident in 1997 (with Treadway Racing). I had the pole, but I was always on the edge. Going into that race with that feeling isn’t good. We worked on the car during the whole race.”

Everything didn’t always work fine. In a race at Texas Motor Speedway in ‘97, scoring had Billy Boat winning in A.J. Foyt’s car, but Luyendyk thought he had won and also went to Victory Lane. An argument ensued, and Foyt pushed/hit Luyendyk into a flower bed. Video of the incident played on sports shows all week.

Eventually, a scoring audit showed Luyendyk to be the winner. After the first day the next weekend at Pikes Peak, Luyendyk came back to the hotel and said: “A.J. and I were talking out on the pit road, and you should have seen it. There must have been 50 photographers there.”

And at Christmas, Texas Motor Speedway promoter Eddie Gossage outfitted his whole staff in officials’ uniforms and the track’s Christmas card showed them all in Victory Lane, Gossage in front with a whistle.

It was rumored at the time and has been confirmed by some that Foyt still has the trophy for that race … he didn’t give it back.

Luyendyk is still in the sport, sharing some INDYCAR race control, rookie coaching and two-seater driving duties. He also said he is “playing around with some real estate.”

“In race control, it really opens my eyes on what goes on there,” he said. “Dispatching safety vehicles and calling cautions. If you’re an active driver, you don’t see it.”

In 1990, a friend of Luyendyk walked on to the pit road on Opening Day at the Speedway and went through Victory Lane, which was, at the time, at pit center. He looked down and saw a coin. It was a Dutch dime. He put it in his pocket and forgot about it.

After Luyendyk won, the friend glued the dime to a block of wood and gave it to Luyendyk the day after the race, telling him the story.

“Oh, that’s spooky,” Luyendyk said at the time.

Earlier this month, the Dutchman was asked about it. Even after 23 years, Arie said, “I still have it.”

1983 Steve Chassey

He drove a car called the Genesee Beer Wagon. He drove for a rookie woman car owner. He is one of two Vietnam War veterans to make a “500” field. He sold insurance to teams for on-track crash damage.

Steve Chassey made his mark at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with three starts in the hallowed Indianapolis 500 and has stayed involved in different ways through the years.

He had a best finish of 11th in 1983, but he took a lot of different cars to the line, innovations, like the two-tone blue Jet Engineering Eagle, one of arguably the prettiest race cars ever to run on the 2 ½-mile oval.

“I was pretty proud of that,” he said of his ’83 finish. “In ’83, we finished the race with a stock block (engine).”

That was the Genesee Beer Wagon, fielded by Dick Hammond.

The whole experience at the Speedway is something Chassey treasures.

“Growing up in open-wheel  racing, that was the pinnacle of racing,” Chassey said of the Indianapolis 500. “In our careers, it’s what we all looked for. I love the Speedway. They treat me nice.”

Chassey built stock cars, then went into the service. He was scheduled to go to Vietnam as a communications specialist, but that changed and he became part of a howitzer battalion as a sergeant E-5. Pete Halsmer is the only other Vietnam War veteran to make the show at Indy. He was a helicopter pilot.

When Chassey returned to the United States from the war, he started racing sprinters, on his way toward the Midwest and Indy. In 1981, he drove for female car owner Lydia Loughery, but they failed to qualify for the Indianapolis 500.

Chassey started the “500” in 1983, 1987 and 1988. After he retired as a driver, he went into the racing insurance business for on-track physical damage. Generally, at that time in the late 1980s, teams figured about a crash and a half per season in their budgets.

“At one time, we had 16 to 18 cars insured,” Chassey said. “There’s not one of the teams now that I know of that is insured for on-track crash damage now. They look at the premium and say, ‘I can buy a whole car for that.’ But what if you knock off the same corner four or five times during the season?”

Chassey moved from Indianapolis to Glendale, Ariz., in October. He was elected a year ago to serve on the Board of Directors of the Indianapolis 500 Oldtimers organization.

He would get back into insurance if he found a company that wanted to get involved in motorsports. And he’ll certainly be at the Speedway this month.

Billy Boat 1998

Billy Boat went through some trials and tribulations before he grabbed the pole position for the 1998 Indianapolis 500.

“We crashed in practice right before qualifying,” Boat said. “I knew we had the speed, but we had some other issues. I knew we had an awesome race car.”

The pole came when the legendary A.J. Foyt gave Phoenix native Boat his shot at Indianapolis.

But mechanical problems in the race kept Boat from Victory Lane that year. But the pole was quite an achievement, and kitchen magnets featuring his picture appeared the next year.

“Any time you can see the leader with 25 laps to go, you’ll have a shot to win it,” Boat said. “We had the best car in ’98.”

In 1999, Boat finished third, his best in seven starts at Indy.

“The third behind Kenny (Brack) was a great accomplishment,” Boat said. “In the heat of the moment, you always want to win.”

Boat joined IndyCar at a time when opportunities opened up for sprint and midget drivers around the country.

“That was always my goal,” he said. “I was at the right place at the right time. I was happy to be there. I did my own team with Cary Agajanian and Mike Curb in 2001 and 2002. But for 2003, the budget was going to go from $1.8 million to $3 million, so we just couldn’t do it.”

Boat was operating an automotive exhaust business in Phoenix before he came to the Speedway.

“I started Billy Boat Performance Exhaust in 1990,” he said. “Since then, I’ve taken a more active role in the company. We work on Corvettes, Camaros and BMWs, high-end performance cars.

“My son Chad was only 8 or 9 when I was racing Indy cars, and I’ve taken an active role in his racing. Now he’s living in North Carolina. He’s going to be 21, and he’s been running some NASCAR and ARCA. He hopes to be in the Nationwide Series next year.

“My brother Mike is still here doing sales for us. My daughter Trisha works in the social media department for Chip Ganassi in Charlotte. My other two daughters, Emily, 17, and Brooke, 18, are into cheerleading, and Brooke goes to Arizona State next year.”

Boat said his IndyCar Series victories at Texas were rewarding, and he was in Victory Lane with Foyt in ’97 when a scoring question arose and Arie Luyendyk came to Victory Lane with his team to protest. A.J. promptly shoved Luyendyk into a flower bed. Through a long audit, Luyendyk was declared the winner.

But Boat confirmed something that has floated around the paddock for a long time: A.J. still has the trophy.

Every Memorial Day a flood of memories comes back to me.

I grew up on the west side of Indianapolis. In high school we would skip school and go to Carb Day and have a blast. We really didn’t watch much of the track action to be honest. There was too much to watch in the infield!

I remember walking through the infield and seeing Mario Andretti’s transporter and watching them load it.   We started talking towards the guy standing by the transporter and realized it was Michael Andretti himself!  This was before he raced at Indy and he was working for his dad. He was a very nice guy, he answered all our questions. You would have never guessed he was racing royalty. It was just like talking to my neighbor. This was back when the Coca Cola field was filled to capacity days before the race.  In the mid to late 80′s.

Balloons on Indianapolis 500 Race Day

A few years after high school I met my girlfriend,  her grandfather was a car owner. Most of her family was involved with the team. Her brother and dad were members of the pit crew.  It was also interesting to hear the gossip going on behind the scenes. They would always chat about what they were struggling with to get the car setup and ready to compete. The guys basically lived at the track the whole month, sometimes working around the clock. It was pretty intense. A few times when I was at the shop I was asked to help them load the transporter before they headed out to a race. I remember bracing myself to pick up a rear wheel as if I was picking up something heavy and the wheel practically flew up in the air. I was amazed something that big could be so light.

The whole month of May was special. Lots of energy in the city, tons of nightlife, race parties etc.  Nonstop fun.  It wasn’t uncommon to see celebrities out on the town during the month of May.

Years later I was forced to move from Indianapolis after being laid-off from my job. Since then I have traveled all over the country as a computer consultant for the last 12 years. I try to make it back to the 500 every chance I get. It always reminds me of all the great times I had when I was younger. When the balloons fly and the fighters fly over – there is no way you can resist being proud to be American. To this day, the spectacle of the Indianapolis 500 is one of the most electric things I have ever witnessed.

I’ve been to the 500 several times since I left Indy. I always park in the same complex that I lived in back in the day and walk the same path I did back then. I love taking in the sights and sounds of the race. Of course I have to pick up some White Castles and some King Ribs to make my trip complete. I can’t explain it, but my eyes always tear up during the invocation. I will always miss it. Sitting in the stands, getting burnt to a crisp. And having not a care in the world.

When I am unable to make it back to Indy for the 500, Memorial Day is filled with mixed emotions.   It’s just not the same watching it from 1000 miles away. I remember when I was a little kid we would sit out in the back yard listening to the cars engines roar in the distance (probably 10 miles away) and listening to the race on the radio.

It was a great time to grow up in Indianapolis. Thank you for the memories and giving me one more thing to be proud to be a Hoosier and most of all, an American.

- Chris

Gary Bettenhausen 1980

It was a family affair that lasted for several decades, and the Bettenhausen clan became legendary at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

It was also a sport that wasn’t kind to them. The family patriarch, Melvin “Tony” Bettenhausen, died in a practice accident in 1961 at Indianapolis.

Gary Bettenhausen followed in his father Tony’s footsteps to Indy and made 21 starts in “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.” His favorite race wasn’t 1972, when he led 138 of the 200 laps and fell victim late to mechanical bugaboos.

It was 1980.

“Probably more so,” said Bettenhausen, 71, from his Martinsville, Ind., home. “We took a 5-year-old car, started in the last row and finished third. We changed two tires the whole race, had no radios, so we used hand signals. It was an old Patrick car that Wally Dallenbach had driven.

“Sherman Armstrong already had four cars, and we really didn’t have any time in it. We changed the fuel injection and other things for Race Day, and it ran like a rocket.”

That was his best finish at the Speedway.

Bettenhausen was handicapped by a left-arm injury from an accident on the dirt mile at Syracuse, N.Y., but it didn’t stop him.

“A whole half of my career was with one arm, and I won the dirt title twice,” he said. “My first race back was a 100-lapper indoors at Fort Wayne, and I won it. I got smoother, and that helped me. The first couple years, I couldn’t drive it down the straightaway. As the years went on, it got stronger. For a while, I actually used Velcro on my glove to hold my hand on the wheel. I learned how to compensate.”

In 1992, the paddock was buzzing before the month of May even started. Bettenhausen was hooked up with Nelson Piquet as his teammate. Everybody wondered what stories would come out of the matchup of the sophisticated former Formula One road-racing champion paired with the master of the American dirt oval.

It was surprising. There weren’t any stories.

“It was quite an experience,” Bettenhausen said. “It took about five minutes to decide we liked each other. He’s a fun guy to be around. He called on my birthday or around Christmas two years ago out of the blue. His son is running NASCAR’s Nationwide series, and I watch him all the time.”

Gary B said he doesn’t miss racing in Indy cars.

“Nope,” Gary said, “not the way it is today with all the computers. Half the fun was getting a car set up.”

His brother Merle, who also raced, retired last year as marketing manager for auto dealer Ray Skillman. Sadly, his youngest brother, Tony Jr., was killed in a plane crash in 2000.

Gary’s twin sons, Cary and Todd, started a health-care business and patented an innovative tray that allows surgeons to have tools in exactly the right places when they come out of a sterilizer.

Sadly for his legions of fans, Gary said he doesn’t come by the Speedway anymore.

“It’s too hard on my legs and back because I’m not walking very well,” Gary said.

But the fans never will forget the popular Gary B.

Although I grew up in Alabama, my father was a Hoosier.  In fact, you could say that he was a Hoosier’s Hoosier.  My great uncle once told me that the definition of a Hoosier was a guy dribbling a basketball around the Brickyard looking for mushrooms.  Could have easily been my Dad!  Anyhow, when he and my Uncle returned from WWII, they started attending the Indy 500.  For many years they watched from the infield, because they could not afford bleacher seats.  I remember vividly hearing of one race where they moved around the infield and everywhere they stopped to watch, a wreck happened!  They definitely felt like “The Flying Dutchmen” that day!

1967 Indianapolis 500

For some years they worked on the safety crew because, by this time, my uncle was the fire chief of Bainbridge, IN.  When they finally achieved some affluence they started getting reserved seats.  They basically saw every race between 1946 and 1970, and missed in 1971 only because my sister graduated from high school in Alabama during race week.  They were back again in 1972 but missed again in 1973, when I graduated.  The two of them had practically photographic memories from races and could describe details of individual races with such precision that you’d swear you had been there yourself.

As I was growing up, attending the 500 with my dad and uncle was a rite of passage for all of us kids, and 15 was the magic number.  On May 29, 1967, however, the night before the race, my dad told me that I was going to get to go the next day.  I was only 12!  I didn’t sleep a wink that night and watched the race get called for rain with Parnelli Jones beginning to dominate the field in the #40 STP Turbocar from Sec 20, Row LL, seat 5 in the Paddock.  We were back the next day to watch the race resume and I’ve been hooked ever since.  While I was in college, several times we would leave Chattanooga, Tennessee, drive all night, drive into the line to park, watch the race and then drive back to Chattanooga to go back to school!  For many years, I watched from the infield and even took my new wife to the race on our honeymoon.

For the most part, the only races that I’ve missed since then were because I was stationed overseas with the army, from 1981-84, 1991-1994 and 2000-2003.  I can vividly remember being on duty in Germany and listening to Rick Mears winning his second race on the Armed Forces Radio Network in 1984.  When we returned from Germany in 2003 I took my son to his first race in 2004: Paddock, Box 63, Row H, Seat 1.  I’m now 57, and I hope to see every Indy 500 until I die and when I’m buried, there will be two tickets to the race in my breast pocket.  It runs in my family and it’s in my blood.

-E.J.