The 104th running of the Indy 500 was apropos for the year 2020. It was bizarre with no fans, it was at times akin to a wrecking derby with a runtime of nearly 3.5 hours, and just when an incredible three car battle (mostly two car battle) was formed for a five lap charge to win the race, a massive wreck in the one spot in the track that cannot be easily repaired put the kabosh on everything and Takuma Sato won under yellow flag conditions. The truly good news out of this? Spencer Pigot is OK and will seemingly suffer no long lasting effects from a wreck that would have killed guys in early Indy 500 events.
The thing that made this one so flipping scary is the fact that Pigot hit the attenuator at the end of the wall that separates pit road from the track. He spun his car, got into the wall, and as the car traveled down across the track, he having no ability to steer, it hit that attenuator with such tremendous force it is stunning to watch. We assumed the car was going to break in half with the speed he was carrying.
The attenuator had been designed with this scenario in mind but no one had ever tested it. The design looks like a bunch of tires to us and Pigot sure shot off of it like he had mashed into something rubbery that had some give, right? You’ll see him get out of the car under his own power. He was checked out at the hospital but released on the same day.
Now, why did they no red-flag the race? It was already running long and the reports are that the attenuator would take at least an hour to rebuild (they had never done a field repair of it before) and there’s no way that NBC would have hung with the broadcast that long as it was already into “overtime” in terms of its allotted window.
Sato earned his win. His car was the baddest thing on the track over the course of the 50 laps preceding the wreck. Scott Dixon who came in second looked to be unstoppable for most of the race, leading more than 110 laps but it was not his day.
Cleanup crews looked like Cal Trans guys. 8 people standing around and 1 guy sort of doing something. Took forever for each cleanup.
The finish was garbage… how can you say, oh Sato would have won because he lead a bunch of laps in the last portion of the race? The crash would have set up an awesome two lap finish if they would have stopped the race to do the clean up. Just letting the laps tick off because of TV coverage is lame. And, while I am at it, how about all the fricken commercials? The whole commercial and “live race view” is horrible too… I guess we have all gotten used to goofy Zoom calls with all the postage stamp sized views of people!! Sorry my eyes ain’t that good anymore!!
This fiasco is a perfect argument for the tape delay of motorsports events, which can be too unpredictable for a specific time allotment in a live setting. Of course in today’s instant access world you’d have to insulate yourself from all media for a few hours to not know the outcome prior to a broadcast, especially of an event as prominent as The 500.
I was very disappointed in the yellow flag outcome of the race, coulda been an old fashioned Hoosier barnburner.
Congrats to 2 time Indy 500 champion Takuma Sato and the Rahal-Letterman team.
Let’s see
Boring, just plainly boring