After several years of arriving early to watch the Indianapolis 500 from the media center at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, there was a pleasant surprise in store.
A lot more people were focused on the Greatest Spectacle in Racing than they were the usual dog-and-pony show that is the pre-race program for the Coca-Cola 600.
Of course, when the 500 started, there were still more than four hours until the start of the Coca-Cola 600, so that played a role, but in terms of general excitement, it was quite apparent that Indy was what was capturing everyone’s attention.

For the first time in many years, Indy was a factor again, and there was, in my opinion, some unease down in Charlotte.

In one sense, it’s a sign that the unified open-wheel set has finally found its feet again, and that has folks in NASCAR a little bit on the defensive side. Nothing official, of course, but the real pulse of the sport is the folks who cover it for a living, and among them, the attitude was decidedly excitable.
Had Danica Patrick won the 92nd Indianapolis 500, it would have been the equivalent of the Donnie Allison-Cale Yarborough-Bobby Allison donnybrook at Daytona in 1979. For the first time in many years, Indy was a factor again, and there was, in my opinion, some unease down in Charlotte.
Realistically, there wasn’t any open indication of such, just a feeling on this writer’s part. Judging by how much attention was paid to the 500, and how many derogatory comments there were as the race progressed, there was some feeling that Indy was a threat again.
As Danica was eliminated in a pit-road accident and Tony Kanaan fell victim to his young teammate’s aggression, the tension lessened somewhat and folks went about their business almost as normal.
But you could tell that for the first time since 1996, there was a buzz in the air that had nothing to do with the 43-car field set to race that night.
The media attention was absolutely amazing. NBC did its national news broadcast from Indy and so did ABC — the network that broadcasts the race. Fox News had Scott Dixon’s victory on the banner of its Web site before the Kiwi had taken the first sip of ice-cold milk.
It is not yet clear if this is an anomaly because of the Danica-reunification hype or whether it is the first harbinger of a sea change. NASCAR has been top dog for more than a decade while open-wheel racing fought itself. It is too much to suggest that one race will fix a 10-year drain, but it isn’t too far to suggest that IndyCar went a long way toward stopping the leak.
NASCAR has its own problems, including a new car that the drivers don’t like much, a tendency toward racing that is more survival than competition and an absolute conviction that NASCAR is the big mack daddy and IndyCar is the red-headed step-child.
That sounds eerily similar to the way Indy-car racing was in the 1990s, before NASCAR exploded into the national consciousness with a poster-child driver (Jeff Gordon) and a consistent product that captured fans’ imagination.
Memorial Day weekend 2008 could be the start of the same cycle, just the other way around.
Is there a lot of work yet to be done, on both sides? You bet there is, and it will be who works the hardest and hits the magic formula first that will determine who wins this particular battle.
The Coca-Cola 600 suffered through its own spate of caution flags, just like Indy did, rendering the relative quality of the racing a moot point. Fox ran a graphic about midway through Sunday night’s race showing the number of lead changes in the three big Memorial Day races — at Monaco, Indy and Lowe’s. Monaco had three, Indy 18 and, at the time, Lowe’s had 20.
Does that sound like a little bit of nervous self-promotion or what? Monaco had 76 laps, Indy had 200 and at the time, the Coca-Cola 600 was just coming up on 200 laps. Apples and apples, it wasn’t.