Chronicles of IndyCar Racing from Japan #83 by DNF

Originally written in Japanese on June 2, 2018, this essay traces one chapter of IndyCar's story translated into English with the help of AI. While some nuances may differ from the original, the translation preserves the spirit of the text. Learn more about this long-term archive on the About page or follow @IndyCarEssays on X.

Date: May 27, 2018 Race: 102nd Running of the Indianapolis 500 Series Round: Round 6 of the 2018 IndyCar Series Venue: Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Sam Hornish Jr. claimed the Indy Racing League championship — the series now known as the IndyCar Series — in 2001. More than five years had passed since the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, seeking a return to a more American identity, had announced its breakaway from the CART championship, which had once held the "IndyCar" name and carried an increasingly international flair. In its inaugural year the IRL staged only three races, fielding hastily assembled teams and anonymous drivers. However, you'll recall that the concept of an all-oval series, coupled with the prestige of its parent — the IMS, guardian of the greatest spectacle in racing, the Indianapolis 500 — gradually drew stronger teams and better drivers into its orbit, and it was becoming a major force. But it was also a difficult period: the "cooling-off" clause imposed after a courtroom battle with CART over trademark rights meant that even as the series centered on the Indy 500, it could not officially call itself "IndyCar."

In that year, when the very outline of what "IndyCar" meant still floated vaguely and its future was uncertain, the 21-year-old in his sophomore season immediately won the opener, and then the next race as well.By year's end he had taken three victories and eight podiums, soundly defeating reigning champion Buddy Lazier, the "first winner" of the Indy 500 under the IRL banner, and thus ushering in a new century. The following year, Hornish Jr. became the first driver in IRL history to win back-to-back titles. Then, in 2006 — CART gone, the IRL having adopted the rightful, resonant name it still bears — he took on the Indy 500. Six attempts, five retirements, and not a single race in which he had completed the full 500 miles: that was the weight of history he carried into the world's greatest race. What befell him that day, cliché though it may sound, can only be called a miracle.

Think of it: when the final yellow caution lifted with four laps remaining, he was still running sixth. To finish there would have been his best result yet, and worthy of praise. But as the green flew he slipped between two cars into fourth, and everything began. On the next lap, down the frontstretch, he passed Scott Dixon. Next, he overtook Michael Andretti, who had just surrendered the lead to his son Marco, unable to increase his pace, and with two laps to go, Hornish was in position to challenge for the lead. But in Turn 3 on Lap 199 he went for the inside, only to be aggressively squeezed and forced to lift, and that seemed to be the end. In an instant Michael, whom he had once pulled away from, closed the gap behind him, while Marco pulled 0.8 seconds clear, into the distance. By every visible measure, it seemed to be over.

And yet, no matter how many times one replays it, it still feels miraculous. When the white flag flew, the gap was easily over fifty meters. Even at the entrance to Turn 2, little had changed. But out of its exit, Hornish seemed to be fired from a catapult, charging into the backstretch and slashing the seemingly hopeless gap in half. what happened in Turn 3 is unknown. But in the next instant, Marco, who was about to exit the turn, definitely slowed. By the time the short straight toward Turn 4 ended, the space between them had almost vanished, and the two cars flowed together into the 800th corner of the day. Marco took the low line; Hornish took a line half a car-width outside. That difference in line choice immediately translated into a difference in exit speed. With a touch of drafting, Hornish dove to the inside. Marco twitched left in a brief feint, but seemed to realize the reality that he could not respond in time to the opponent attempting to draw alongside him, who paid no mind to the feint. One second — barely a dozen meters — from the checkered flag, fate reversed itself. Achilles drew level with the tortoise. And passed him, beyond dispute.

If the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the Brickyard, truly houses a goddess, then this was a victory only explainable as being invited by her soft hands, lifted up, and blessed. Indeed, perhaps that is exactly what it was. Marco Andretti, carrying the family's hopes, was a mere 19-year-old with no real accomplishments to his name yet. The goddess does not favor men without a spine of history; she only keeps beside her those who possess a story of their own, proven in achievement. Had it been Michael who led into the final stretch — the father, a CART champion, who had endured disappointment in F1, and who held the record for most laps led at Indy without a win — perhaps Hornish would not have been the one drawn to the bricks at the finish. Marco, then — and perhaps still, which is a fair point, but let's put that aside for now — was too unformed. How heavy, by contrast, were Hornish's championship trophies, and the narrative that brought him there.

So it has seemed, in the 21st century, that the Indy 500 invites the drivers who ought to win — the race itself, the goddess of the Brickyard herself, issuing the summons. After Hornish's repeat came Scott Dixon, Tony Kanaan, the late Dan Wheldon, Dario Franchitti, and Ryan Hunter-Reay. Every one of them was a series champion, and they achieved victory at the Indy 500 by offering that title as a tribute. Some of these wins seemed bound by miracles, if one may drown again in that cliché, as if a superhuman force had been at work. In 2011, the 100th anniversary of the first Indy 500, rookie J.R. Hildebrand was poised to win. But in Turn 4 of Lap 200, more than five seconds ahead, just a moment before stepping into Victory Lane, he was pulled into the wall, and the victory passed to Wheldon, who had been running second. The goddess had changed the address to which the victor's milk would be sent, as if she were being choosy about the man worthy of her. The next year, Takuma Sato fought Dario Franchitti to the final lap, diving fully alongside into Turn 1, and seemed to touch the tip of the milk bottle, but his rear tire crossed the white line, lost grip, and spun. It was as if he had been rejected, the goddess deciding it was too soon for a former F1 driver without an IndyCar win to stand at America's pinnacle. And the following year, in a race with difficult weather conditions where the field's over-downforced setups made passing in Turn 1 unusually common due to low top speeds, Kanaan passed Hunter-Reay with three laps left in the restart by slipping out of his draft, just before a crash by Franchitti brought out another caution, freezing the race under yellow to the finish. "I was lucky," Kanaan said, the winner having fulfilled a 15-year dream. The following year, Hunter-Reay, who had been toyed with by that fickle prank, avenged the unfinished duel by winning an epic battle with Hélio Castroneves in Turn 1 of Lap 199, as if to demonstrate what would have happened had the battle with Kanaan, which had become an illusion, continued…

There were also results that seemed improbable. Alexander Rossi entered the 100th running of the Indy 500 as a rookie, freshly failed from F1, a nobody who did not possess any special personal story to be told by others. Yet he was driving for the same team and carrying the same car number as Wheldon — the driver who had won the centennial Indy 500 in a breathtaking upset and passed away in the final race of that year. The fateful convergence of milestones —the 100th Anniversary Year and the 100th Running— felt as though he carried the blessing of the departed hero as a result of that fateful connection. He alone stretched his final 36 laps without a fuel stop, an audacious gamble, and made it to the checkered flag. And for Sato last year, of course, there was still the unforgotten business of 2012 remaining. All of them have brought their past as an offering, giving the 500 miles a story that extends beyond the race itself, and earning the goddess's smile in return, thus being invited into Victory Lane. Though it is not a saying about the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Indy 500 is not something you "win." It is always something granted — in exchange for your life.

Every series champion of the 21st century had won the Indy 500. When Will Power became champion in 2014, he should have earned, in this sense, the right. But at the same time, it would have been hard to concretely imagine him being blessed by the Brickyard then. Coming over from the Champ Car World Series — the inheritor of CART's collapse, unable to halt its own decline — Power had been every bit the product of his résumé: dominant on road and street courses, even called their king, but consistently exposing his fragility on ovals. That very contrast defined Power as a driver. The deep braking for which he was unmatched found no home within an oval, and the waves of his concentration, which was high but fragile, could often be fatal in high-speed races where the slightest lapse meant an irreversible accident. His speed made him a perennial championship protagonist, but his fragility always found him cast somewhere in the role of fool. With Team Penske he finished runner-up to Franchitti three years in a row, all title losses where he was overtaken on an oval in the season's second half — results that best summed up Power at that time. Asked about "Will Power on ovals," some might imagine New Hampshire 2011, where, after spinning away fifth place in light rain at a restart, he famously flipped both middle fingers toward Race Control — earning a heavy fine and revealing the emotional volatility beneath. Loveable, yes, but far from perfect. Up to 2013 he had only two oval wins. Was such a driver, simply because he had won a single series title, really enough to make him a favorite for the Indy 500?

Yet, the two impressive oval races he showed in 2014, his championship year, must have surely guided Will Power's future. At Texas that year, he was hit with a late-race drive-through for pit-lane speeding, dropping him to the back of the lead lap, but with sheer pace he carved back to second in no time, and he undoubtedly opened the oval door. In fact, that same year at Milwaukee he dominated, becoming a champion who mastered both types of circuits, despite their different characteristics. Still, it takes time for others to notice when a person is changing. Even after those displays, whenever someone assessed Power, the talk often turned to his oval weakness, as if to say: the Indy 500 is still far away.

Perhaps, then, the next three years were a necessary period of lying in wait, needed to wipe away not just public perception but perhaps even the misunderstanding that the Brickyard goddess might also harbor. Since his championship, he left his mark on ovals one by one: a second place at the 2015 Indy 500; back-to-back Phoenix podiums; fierce fights at Iowa; reclaiming an illusory win at Texas; and consecutive Pocono triumphs — especially last year's dominant victory, in which, despite a wing-adjuster failure and being twice forced to pit for emergency stops after being involved in others' crashes, he simply left the field behind on pure speed. It must have inspired a sense of awe, convincing everyone that there was no one alive who could run 500 miles on a superspeedway better than this man. The series champion was now the ultimate oval master. Everything was in place. He had gathered everything necessary: the trophies and the bearing worthy of the Brickyard.

I could recount in detail the moment Power sealed victory in the 2018 Indy 500. Eight laps from the end, at the restart, he was still running fourth. The three cars ahead were a fuel-saving group that had skipped a pit stop, but on this day, with new aerodynamic rules failing to take effect and the air turbulent on the course, making every car extremely evil-handling, they were not easy prey. While he somehow managed to subdue Oriol Servià, he could only close on the remaining two cars slowly. The remaining number of laps was surely decreasing, and opportunities were becoming limited. The taste of an unacceptable defeat began to fill his mouth. And then, the teasing goddess who had kept him waiting suddenly beckoned. With four laps to go, Stefan Wilson and Jack Harvey dove to the pits, and Power was restored to where he belonged. That's how the story unfolded. That is one way to tell it. But to say "Will Power, great driver, won the Indy 500" is not enough. Like every winner before him, he too had walked a far longer, more exhausting road to make the goddess of the Brickyard turn her head. The tense, trial-ridden race, undecided until the final moments, was merely "the last 500 miles" of that journey.

Once more, to lean on the cliché: racing is often called an unscripted drama. That much is true. This victory of Power's, too, might have vanished if there had been a caution somewhere in the final 20 laps. The oval, that simple ellipse of a course, strips bare the difference between fortune and sheer, merciless speed. In a world beyond 200 mph, an extraordinary world, nothing can be predicted. And yet the Indy 500 — this greatest race in the world — laughs at that knowing cliché. For Power to reach Victory Lane, he had to prepare a grand script, didn't he? — not for a single race, but for his whole career. If he had been a driver without a spine until reaching this point, he would surely not have reached this win, which is understandable now. Hornish Jr., Wheldon, and naturally Takuma Sato, all brought what they had accumulated as racing drivers into the Brickyard as their script, and the goddess favored them, granting them victory. Devote your life to the 500 miles. What she blessed in Will Power was the entirety of his driver's journey. Watching the leader, careful to the line through the turbulent air from a lapped car on Lap 200 as he proceeded to the finish line, I realized it — and as a spectator, I felt the tears rise, swelling with deep, immense emotion.

From Round 5 in Indianapolis → Here at Round 6 → Looking ahead to Rounds 7–8 in Detroit