Indy 500 - A Memorial Day Tradition

Ever since I was a youngster, Memorial Day weekend has meant auto racing. In the 1960s I followed the activity at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on an almost daily basis, because a co-worker of my father subscribed to the Indianapolis newspaper and I got to read them when he had finished.

1961 Indy 500
Eddie Sachs and A. J. Foyt battle for the lead at the 1961 Indianapolis 500.

It was the heyday of the roadster and the Offenhauser engine. My heroes were Rodger Ward, Parnelli Jones, Eddie Sachs and a young A. J. Foyt. My parents had a lake cabin in Central Minnesota, and we spent most summer weekends and holidays there, including Memorial Day. At that time Memorial Day was a fixed holiday, May 30th, and the race was held on the holiday, unless it fell on a Sunday. We had a big "portable" radio, slightly larger than the big box of Wheaties, that received AM stations only. Dad would tune in the station and for the next several hours we would pay close attention as "The Voice of the 500" Sid Collins and statistician Donald Davidson would call the action.

The early 1960s were times of change at Indy. Andy Granatelli was there with his Novi V8s and later the STP turbine cars. Colin Chapman brought a couple of his tiny, rear-engined Lotus cars in 1963 for drivers Jimmy Clark and Dan Gurney, and gave a glimpse of the future of open-wheel racing. Driver safety was becoming more important, as there were several drivers injured or killed every year during the month of practice and qualifying or in the race itself.

The 1964 race was particularly revealing to me. Eddie Sachs had been the pole sitter in 1960 and '61, and had finished second in '61 (to A. J. Foyt after a hard fought battle), third in '62. A late race crash took him out of the running in '63, but I was sure that 1964 would see Eddie Sachs' face added to the Borg-Warner Trophy. Instead, a fiery crash on lap one collected seven of the race cars and took the lives of Sachs and of rookie Dave MacDonald. I was devastated. It was okay if the drivers had mechanical problems or even had a crash because they could come back again next year, but I didn't want them to die.

It did not temper my enthusiasm for the race itself, however. A few weeks before the 1965 Indy, my dad announced that he had tickets for us to see the race live, though not quite in person. It was being broadcast via closed-circuit TV at the Hippodrome in St. Paul. There were huge movie theatre sized screens and the broadcast was projected onto them… in black-and-white.

The top three qualifiers were in Lotus/Fords, with A. J. Foyt, Jimmy Clark and Dan Gurney on the front row. Jimmy Clark won it in a walk in his Lotus/Ford, beating Parnelli Jones by two minutes. A rookie by the name of Mario Andretti finished third. Over the next few years, all of the Indy race cars were switched to the engine-in-the-rear configuration.

Since those days I have listened to or watched the Indy 500 nearly every year. On several of those Memorial Day weekends I was at the races myself, most often at Brainerd International Raceway. There were many years at the track that several of us crowded around a 5-inch black-and-white TV powered by the 12-volt cigarette lighter socket on someone's car in an attempt to watch the race.

The creation of the Indy Racing League a few years back quelled my interest in the big race, since the best drivers were not participating and the formula dictated by Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Tony George removed much of the technology that had held my interest in the 500. The Greatest Spectacle in Racing was a mere shell of what it had been, and I wasn't interested.

Fortunately many of the big name teams and drivers have accepted the IRL, and Tony George has relented on some of his earlier restrictive proclamations. The Indy 500 is back, and this year's race was probably one of the best ever. Sam Hornish has proven that he is one of the top drivers in the world, and certainly deserved the victory. The surprise was that Mario Andretti's grandson, Marco, would be so competitive in his first 500, and be named Rookie of the Year 41 years after his grand-dad won that title.