Well, today I actually arrived in Indianapolis and consequently the Indy Motor Speedway. I met up with Jana, my friend at Indy who invited me, and she gave me the tour of the place.
The first thing you think when you arrive is, “Oh my God. I’ll be lost forever.” Seriously, the track is 2.5 miles long, and the entire complex is just massive. But after you spend a little time there you can pretty quickly figure out where everything is. Of course, I think that getting the VIP treatment helped speed up my learning curve… but the bottom line is that tomorrow when things get started I’ll be able to find my way around just fine.
So, today I wandered around a bit, got my bearings, and went over to the garage to see if any of the drivers and crews were doing anything interesting. Here are some photos from around the Garage area to give you a general sense of what was going on.
In addition to normal stuff, I happened upon the HP+McAfee team practicing their pit changes! It was awesome to be able to stand 5 feet from these guys and just take photos and watch them change the tires over and over. In fact, I was able to take some video to share with you guys! Enjoy!
By the way, this is the team behind driver Davey Hamilton. He’s an amazing story! In 2001 a crash at the Texas Motor Speedway nearly killed him. And although he spent a year in a wheel chair, had 21 surgeries, and wasn’t expected to ever drive again – he refused to go out like that! In 2007 he came back, and now he’s racing at Indy.
Here is his horrific wreck in case you want to see it:
Ok, after tomorrow hopefully I’ll have a lot more photos and video to share. I was a little down today that I couldn’t get more stuff, but I arrived too late to capture some actual cars on the track. See you tomorrow…
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Good stuff so far. Did you get a pass for Gasoline Alley post-race? If not, hunt one down — that’s where the great post-race stuff is happening: drivers hanging out, getting close to fans, breaking down the cars, hot ESPN reporters running around.
Excellent pics, cant wait to see what comes out of today and especially race day. Get some good shots of the Pagoda if you can and get Jana to tell you about the project of getting that thing built, it was pretty impressive. Architecturally, it’s a bigger challenge than it looks like!