Q: What is your Indy 500 race day like? We like to walk around Main Street in Speedway on Saturday night, get some dinner, and get our Charlie Brown’s breakfast on race day. (Yes, it’s worth the two-hour wait).
Do you have any specific traditions or rituals? I’m sure it’s much more of a work day for you than for us.
Josh Meier, Louisville, KY
MP: No rituals, other than trying to rest up on Saturday, which I’ve failed at doing every time…
I’ve had a decent routine for the last many years where I get up around 4:30am, drive into the track, park in the infield and go back to sleep, all to avoid the hundreds of thousands of people who start flooding into the Speedway.
I’ll try and doze off in my rental car until 6:30 or 7:00, but it’s tough to get back to sleep, then head into the media center and hunt for coffee. Then, it’s setting up my laptop, finishing up a story or two — or work on the Mailbag — and saying hello to the wave of reporters who come in for race weekend. We’ve been doing meetups with my podcast’s listener group at the 500 for a little while, so that’s always a blast, and then I wander down pit lane before it gets too busy to see and give love to lots of friends and former teammates across the 33 entries.
I’ve worked with or known folks at each team for decades, so as an old mechanic and whatever else I was, there’s a bunch of great folks I love to see ahead of their biggest day of the year. Then, I’ll go find the historic Indy cars, drool, and marvel in our sport’s legacy. (I was meant to do a visor cam using my Cambox recording device with Simon Pagenaud, who was driving Gil de Ferran’s 2003 Indy winner, but it failed 30 seconds before Simon was due to put on his helmet.)
Next, I head out to the grid, look at the wing angles and setup choices made by the teams/cars that interest me, see more friends, and head back to the media center to get ready to digest 200 laps of racing through the broadcast and timing and scoring monitors hanging from the ceiling and take notes for use in whatever columns or sidebar stories I might push out once it’s over.
I’ll head back to pit lane with about 10 laps to go, watch how the race the finish plays out, film our end-of-day video, try and snag a few drivers for it, and go back to the media center to start writing. If the winner is someone who drinks real beer, I’ll film a video with us having something strong to drink and put a wrapper on the event with them. And if it isn’t (it wasn’t), I let IndyCar know via text that they can scratch my interview slot and give it to someone else (which I did).
Q: So if IndyCar really wants to capture more younger viewers and have a knockout 2027 engine formula that is cost effective to continue, look no further than to the University of Colorado research on new supercapacitor technology. Imagine if IndyCar continued its ERS systems and publicly teamed up with a university to push the technology? It’s a win for everyone.
Tell Roger and team please!
Mike, Columbus
MP: You’ve been told, Roger. And team.
Q: Why is it we usually see NASCAR drivers doing the double? Is it a fact that NASCAR owners don’t respect IndyCar drivers and their ability? Who would you all like to see do the double from the IndyCar side?
David Tucker
MP: Because most full-time IndyCar drivers don’t care about the Charlotte 600. Pato O’Ward’s the only one I can see throwing caution to the wind at Charlotte, so he’s my pick.
Q: Why don’t Penske Corporation vehicles feature a promotional wrap for the IndyCar series, its races and major sponsors? Expense? Implement it only relevant markets.
Johnny
MP: Great idea.
Q: What did the four “suspended” Penske people do during the month of May? Was it really a suspension, or did they work remotely? It didn’t seem to make much difference for Team Cheat.
Paul, Indianapolis, IN
MP: Hard to say since I wasn’t there with them. Per Penske, they weren’t allowed to be in communication with the team.