97th Indianapolis 500

Some vintage sprint and dirt cars

We returned to Indianapolis for race weekend. Friday was Carburetion Day and we watched the teams do the final tweaking before the race.

A nice crowd for Carb Day

We watched a really exciting finish to the Indy Lights Firestone Freedom 100 race where the top four finishers crossed the finish line four-abreast and the winner won by one one-thousandth of a second. It was the most exciting race finish we had ever seen.

In the garage area

After the race we watched the pit competition which was again won by Helio Castroneves of Team Penske for the 6^th consecutive year.

Ready for technical inspection

The Carb Day concert this year featured Brett Michaels and the band Poison, but we opted out and went back to our motel. We returned to the track on Saturday. The only track event we watched was the parade of vintage cars then we toured the garage area.

Checking out the bottom

We watched the cars being presented for the mandatory pre-race technical inspection before being impounded until race time. Capt. Larry found the inspection process really interesting. In trhe sponsor exhibit area Jane was able to amass a horde of freebies that were being handed out.

This year's pace car

We returned to our motel and got ready for race day. We returned to the track early on race day so we could breakfast at the American Legion hall like we did last year, and a couple of hours before start time, we entered the track and found our new upgraded seats. We really liked our new seats which are in the middle of pit row and give us a great view of the action. Tony Kannan had his first Indy win after numerous attempts in what turned out to be a really exciting race with 68 lead changes during the 200 laps.

Capt. Larry would like to inspect this!