kitchtrips

Friday 23 May 2025

A cool but thankfully sunny day in Indianapolis for the final practice session before the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday afternoon.

It’s supposed to be very cold – around fifteen degrees Celsius at race time, with gusty winds – on Sunday, so I needed to get myself a wind-proof jacket. Thankfully there were some Under Armour ones on sale. A necessary purchase, and a good one. The difference when I put the jacket on was amazing,

Traffic into IMS was insane. We left later than we should have and were stuck in a long line trying to park as the final practice session got underway. Probably needed to leave an hour earlier. Lessons learned for next year.

A big crowd today translates to a enormous one on Sunday. It was announced late last week that every grandstand seat is taken and most of the infield tickets are sold as well – the last few will be snapped up between now and Sunday.

A crowd of somewhere above 375,000 people is expected. How best to illustrate the size of the crowd? Roughly 1 in every 1000 Americans will be inside the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday. The IMS will be somewhere around the fifty-second largest population centre in the United States when the green flag flies.

The last Friday before the Indianapolis 500 is called Carb Day, a nod to the days when cars had carburettors and they would be worked on one last time before the race. Nowadays, it’s a 2-hour practice session, a pit stop contest and a concert at the big stage set up in the infield. For the thirty-three teams and drivers, there is an enormous amount of pressure as they attempt to get their cars to a point where they feel they’ll be competitive on Sunday…without crashing or having some other issue befall them.

That was easier said than done for some teams, including, memorably, the 2012 winner Ryan Hunter-Reay, whose car was smoking and flaming as it came off turn four. He pulled into pit lane and jumped out just before things got really serious. Thankfully, the safety crews were there in an instant and had the entire car doused. Not what you want to see – a very scary incident.

We watched practice from the front straight, then headed into the infield for a while to grab some food. Once the session was finished, we went up to the Sid Collins Booth where the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network broadcasts from. It’s always a pleasure to be welcomed into that place, and we spent a few hours talking with some of the guys whilst the pit stop challenge played out in front of us.

I was especially fortunate to meet and chat with Paul Page, who is one of only two broadcasters to call the 500 on radio and TV. He has fond memories of Australia and the Surfers Paradise street race that was once a part of the series (he went to eight of them with ESPN), and getting to talk to him about his favourite Indy 500’s was pretty amazing. Also great to meet the returning Anders Krohn.

After things died down at IMS, we drove down Crawfordsville Road to Indianapolis Raceway Park, a short, moderately-banked oval where the Hoosier Hundred for Silver Crown cars ran for the seventy-second year. It’s one of the most famous and prestigious short-track races in America, and on the support docket are some of the feeder categories to the IndyCar Series.

Great to see my friend Rob Howden, who calls those feeder categories, at the track. We joke that we get to hang out once a year, and it’s by text the rest. Rob kindly organised us credentials for the evening, which gave us access to the paddock and hospitality areas as well. Thanks, Rob!

After a long day of racing and walking (I did over 25,000 steps today!) we headed back to Indianapolis to meet our friends at the Airbnb rental we’ll call our home for the next few nights. We’re all keeping one eye on the ever-changing weather forecast, too. There is some rain in the offing for Indianapolis on Sunday. When it comes in and how much it affects the race is the big question yet to be answered.