2013 Indy 500 winner Tony Kanaan goes through turn 1. Click for larger image.
First off, congratulations to Tony Kanaan on his first Indy 500 win! He's been a fan favorite for at least the last few years, with everyone rooting him on hoping for a victory. After some close finishes, he finally got it done.
Our day started out as we left home a little after the planned 6:30 am departure time. A quick stop for some breakfast snadwiches, and not long after we found ourselves sitting in traffic. I tried a different route to the track this year, one which didn't require us to sit by and go through the neighborhood parties north of the track. Hannah was thankful, as she saw some "scary" things last year - mostly large, shirtless individuals covered in tatoos gunning their motorcycles already half wasted.
We're fortunate that due to my photography gig we get to park in the media lot inside the track, which makes life a LOT easier. We entered gate 2 on the south side of the track thanks to my credentials, and was in our parking spot in no time. No waiting in lines, no bag checks, no hassles. Yes, we're lucky, and we know it.
First thing we did was hang out in the garage area, actually above the garage area. Hannah and Laura didn't have garage access, but we were able to go access a balacony that overlooked the garage area. This year the Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing garage was on the west end of the garages, so from our elevated view we could see what was going on there. We had our only "celebrity" sighting of the day there, when Sarah Fisher rode up in the golf cart with Sarah Palin and her husband. We did get a chance to see Josef and were able to get his attention.
After hanging out there, we decided to start heading towards our seats. That was a long process as we stood for awhile to be able to cross Gasoline Alley, only finally being told that we wouldn't be able to, and if we wanted to cross, we had to go up a very full stair way. We eventually got around that road block and headed towards our seats. Our seats were on the outside of the track, along the main straight, across from Pippa Mann's pit. The tickets were provided by Josef, we got to sit with his aunt and her boyfriend, her ex-husband, her son, and his fiance. They were super nice, and we got to learn a little more about them. Our seats were high in the lower section, so we couldn't see any of the TV screens, which made it a little difficult to keep track what was happening around the track. I decided to rent a track-scan radio, and an extra set of headphones so Hannah could listen in. We tuned to Josef's radio frequency so we would know what was going on with him. Towards the end of the race we switched it over to Tony Kanaan and Marco Andretti. They only cost $30 to rent and $15 for the extra headphones. I highly recommend it if you're going to a race sometime.
The Indy 500 is a pretty long race, and it usually has some ebbs and flows. The start obviously is really exciting with the field packed together, then it settles down as the cars spread out a bit, and then the last 20 laps or so are pretty intense. It was no different this year.
Josef got off to a great start, and we were all yelling everytime he went by. He started 25th, but made is way up to 19th pretty quickly. Things were looking very good and it was smiles all around. Then something went wrong. Thanks to having the track-scan, we knew he had developed some understeer and very harsh vibration at the left rear. It made the car very nervous, which surely cannot be fun to drive. It was really interesting hearing the back and forth between Josef and his engineer, as they were trying to sort out what the problem might be. Unfortunately they couldn't see anything in the telemetry. Josef said he about lost it a couple of times, and the vibration got worse. They eventually brought him in to do a closer inspection of the car, but didn't find anything significant. They also made some changes to the rear suspension, which helped some, but also made the front worse. At one point they thought the problem might be a broken weight jacker, but as of the end of the race, they didn't know for sure. Josef went several laps down with the lengthy pit stops, but did bring the car home, finishing 28th. For sure a disappointing result for him and the team, as expectations were high. Every race is an opportunity to learn, and I'm sure he got some valuable experience from the two weeks at Indy this year.
With Josef's fate pretty much sealed, attention turned towards the lead pack of Ryan Hunter-Reay, Carlos Muoz, Marco Andretti, and Tony Kanaan. Hannah was really rooting for Kanaan, and I would have been okay with Kanaan or Andretti winning it. We both would have liked to seen a race for the checkers rather than it ending under yellow, but there was bound to be some drama at the end the way the lead was changing hands throughout the race.
What a great day! We made Laura a racing fan - she's already looking forward to going back next year. Hannah had a lot of fun - her excitement at the start is just so fun to see. And I got to spend the day watching race cars go around with my two favorite people. Doesn't get any better than that.
Sunday, June 9, 2013 at 7:43PM ;)
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