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The New Johnson's Indy 500 Powered by TrackForum is coming! The content will remain the same, but the look will improve.
Latest updates - 12/12/09
News regarding the 2010 Indianapolis 500 is slowly trickling in. The pace car will be the Chevrolet Camaro SS...basically the same car is was last year. At least it's not a Corvette again.Also of note, the schedule is reverting back to the "two-week" schedule. This was first used from 1998-2000. Opening Day will be Saturday May 15. Both Rookie Orientation and veteran practice will take place on Opening Day (the fans have requested the latter for years). Time trials will be held over one weekend (May 22-23), and race week itself will remain largely the same. The 94th Indianapolis 500 is scheduled for Sunday May 30th.
Latest updates - 7/30/09
I get asked from time to time, "What happened to the Brickyard 400, IROC, and USGP information?" The quick and easy answer is that it's on a CD, sitting a drawer at home. It has not yet been incorporated into the new site. It all started with the 2005 U.S. Grand Prix Michelin tire debacle. I had only about two weeks to wrap up the update work from the 2005 Indy 500, and the F1 race piled more work on top of that. After evaluating the traffic for the site, it was clear the F1 section received very little traffic. The Brickyard 400 section was worse. On the contrary, the traffic for the Indy 500 material was on the rise. After the tire mess, updating the grand prix section seemed unimportant at the time. A priority was set to concentrate on the month of May only. In addition, I started splitting my time here.
Latest updates - 7/22/09
It has been two months since the 2009 race. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway has undergone significant reorganization in leadership over the past month, in hope for a bright future.Meanwhile, it has sunk in that Helio Castroneves is a three-time winner. Notwithstanding for a moment, his "controversial" 2002 victory, he has elevated into some elite company: Louis Meyer, Wilbur Shaw, Mauri Rose, Johnny Rutherford, and Bobby Unser. Interestingly, three of those men also argueably have an asterisk next to one of their wins. Rose was only co-winner in 1941. Rutherford won the rained-shortened "Indy 255" in 1976. Unser not only had a rain-shortened win (1975), but he also went through the other "great dispute" known as the 1981 race.
Are we looking at the next four-time winner? Perhaps. No other active driver is close, and in fact, no other active driver has won more than once. Castroneves is signed with Penske for the forseeable future, and Penske always shows up at Indy. The big question is, will he become the first FIVE time winner? He said he wants the "king of the Speedway" crown if he does. Deservedly so.
Latest updates - 7/17/09
Some new information is now on-line regarding television ratings. Confirmation from additional sources has been acquired. In addition, the comparison chart which includes the Daytona 500 and Coca-Cola 600 has been expanded. Not a lot of numbers and details are available for the 2009 broadcast, but the final rating was a 4.0/11. The primetime tape-delay broadcast shown in the Indianapolis area (WRTV) earned a 14.5/26
Previous entries
Background For those curious, the background behind Johnson's Indy 500 is very simple, and it exists for one reason only. The readers. Despite the ups and downs of popularity in the open-wheel racing world, despite the slumping television ratings, Because despite those who long for the mythical "good old days," there clearly is no shortage of passionate fans and followers of the Indianapolis 500.
This site went on-line August 6, 1998. It was a rather silly, unorganized, bare-bones personal HTML site of some simple Indy 500 statistics. An afterthought really, and 500 page hits was considered a milestone. The stats collection dates back to a notebook first assembled in 1985, and first typed up in 1991.
The original intent was to expand on the lists and stats from a bygone print era. There was nothing more frustrating than seeing a book of Indy 500 stats, which was two years out-of-date before you got your hands on it. I figured I could take the typed up lists I had, and expand them each year with the new figures achieved during each year's race.
It did not take long for the site to inflate, as more information was researched and added. Meanwhile, the page hits were getting into the thousands, especially for the months of April-May-June. Incidentally, the all-time page hit record for JI500 was 12,003 on race day 2005 (could Danica-mania have had anything to do with that?)
Media With the 2009 race over, and with the increasing multitude of web-media available, we may have some here posting outside pieces.
Get well Vitor Meira
Vitor Meira suffered a terrible crash during the 2009 Indianapolis 500. We saw it with our own eyes in turn 1. These spectacular photos were taken by Matt Dial of The Indianapolis Star. Read the story HERE.
Delta Force Intros
Paul Page took great pride in what most people refer to as the "Delta Force intros." From 1988-1998 and one last time in 2001, the opening tease for the Indianapolis 500 telecast featured the high-energy sound of the Delta Force theme. With current and historical footage, it would be narrated by one of Indy's most famous voices, Paul Page. The Page Teases (as they were known as at ABC) have become quite the YouTube sensation, and user champcar4ever has put many of them up to view HERE.This one from 1990 happens to be my favorite.
