The Little 500

Saturday night, Dano and I were in Anderson, Indiana, for the Little 500.  All my life, people have been telling me I had to see it.  TJ said I'd either love it or hate it.  2009 is the year for me to stop suppressing my racing gene's control of my social calendar, so when Dano said he was going, I invited myself along (I tend to do that).  And it was done.

First, I have to address one thing:  TJ was wrong.  I didn't love it or hate it.  It was a pretty equal mix of both at the same time.  I enjoyed the racing, but was deeply uncomfortable for at least the first 100 laps.  Sorry to blow that theory, Teej.  I didn't love it.  I didn't hate it.  I'll come back.  But probably not every year.

My level of discomfort was directly proportional to the number of cars on the track.  This is a very unusual race for sprint cars in general - it's 10x the number of laps of the longest sprint car race I've ever seen.  They start 3-wide, 33 cars.  There are pit stops.  The cars have no starters, so there are push trucks involved in these pit stops.  The push trucks circle the apron of the track, practically on the track.  Until a few cars drop out, it feels like there just isn't enough room out there for anything, and it made my stomach hurt.  But it got better.

Pit area:

Parade lap:

Oh, did you want to see that in video?  I can oblige.

A better version of my sunset picture from the Weather Report:

I was surprised at how very very different the crowd was from what I'm used to at a sprint car race.  (Dano will tell you that this is due to my astounding naiveté.)  The crowd felt much more like a stock car crowd.  The cheering at crashes, the excitement for retaliation for accidents.  The fist-pumping Git R Done sort of stuff.  I was taken aback, but I guess given that I've watched the Thundercars documentary about Anderson about 470 times now, I shouldn't be.

We were sitting in turns 3 and 4 in the really high grandstands right above the section of infield where the cars that were done for the night were parked or dragged or dropped off by the wrecker.  It would make for an interesting time lapse.

Here is a car getting pushed off on the apron while the race is underway, followed by a spin by a different car.  Lucky camera timing.

See what I mean about those push trucks? Very very hard to get used to.

Anyway, I had an awesome time.  One of my travel partners will be stopping in with her own comments a bit later.  TJ, I'm sad you weren't there with us, but getting married is a decent enough excuse.  A million congratulations to you both!

The race was won by Dave Steele, with Eric Gordon in second.  This is a video of them doing battle before the big controversial yellow pit stop pace car blocking thing. 

Not positive right now what my next race will be, but it won't be Angell Park tonight, obviously.  I got home at 3 am, woke up at 7:30 am, and I'm not even sure I'm awake right now while I'm typing this.