The Indy 500 is Sunday, and we—you, me, your neighbor who you might think does not like the Indy 500 but most definitely likes the Indy 500 (they just may not be aware of this yet)—are excited. It’s a big day. The biggest day, for those who evaluate the size of days based on their significance to the Indianapolis metropolitan statistical area. Here’s what to know:
The Milk
Let’s cut to the chase. You’re here for the milk. You’re here for a lot of things, but the most important is the milk. Who’s going to pour milk all over their sweaty, deliriously happy face at race’s end? Down into their firesuit? All over the heads of their closest friends, family, and corporate sponsor representatives? That’s of secondary importance. The primary question here is what milk it’s going to be.
American Dairy Association Indiana Inc., perhaps known better as the #WinnersDrinkMilk people, provide three choices of milk for the drivers, some of whom then revolt and ask for things beyond the choices and/or or imply an absence of confidence in the Veteran Milk Person’s handlers to keep the milk cold. Though the tradition began with buttermilk, nearly a century ago, buttermilk is not one of the options (explanation: per ADAII, buttermilk has changed and no one actually wants to drink the stuff anymore, which sounds like federal overreach to me). Though three and a half drivers requested chocolate milk, chocolate milk is not one of the options. (Graham Rahal selected whole, but wrote in, “since chocolate isn’t an option and tradition matters,” which—Graham, does tradition only matter if chocolate milk isn’t an option? I want to hear more on your stance on tradition.)
The options are whole milk, two percent, and fat-free. Nobody requested fat-free. Juan Pablo Montoya stuck to his chocolate milk stance and designated no preference. Six drivers requested two percent. 25 requested whole milk. Honestly, I feel like given the adrenaline at that moment, and how thirsty these folks must be…they’re not going to know what kind of milk it is. You can tell when you drink it, but it’s not some obviously apparent thing in the heat of a moment like that. These aren’t different flavors of Gatorade. These are varying fat contents in standard, white cow milk (at the Cali 500, in Indy 500’s shadowy enemy series which doesn’t exist yet, they would definitely be drinking climate change-driving almond milk after making a hardworking dairy farmer offer sacrifice to the gods of food insecurity-driving ethanol). They’re not going to notice.
The Race
A fun thing about the Indy 500 is that the cars are really fast. Faster than stock cars. Faster than F1 cars (I didn’t make that up—F1 cars are slow compared to IndyCars, but that’s hard to tell when your only knowledge of motorsports comes from Netflix and your own insecurities). They’re running on an oval with wide turns and long straightaways. This thing is awe-inspiring to see in person. Awe-inspiring. It’s like a fighter jet flyover before a football game, except it’s on the ground.
The race is 500 miles, it lasts around three hours, the broadcast will start on NBC at 11:00 AM EDT on Sunday but the green flag is scheduled to wave at 12:45 PM EDT. There is no chance of rain (take that, NASCAR), the high is only supposed to be 85 degrees, which is hot but reasonable, if you block off noon Eastern until 4:00 PM Eastern you should be good (also, if you’re late to plans because you were watching the Indy 500, people will either think you’re cool or out themselves as losers).
The Drivers
There are five categories of drivers, as far as I can tell: There are the favorites. There are the Hoosiers. There are the Americans. There are the history-makers. There are the others. Let’s categorize.
The Favorites: Scott Dixon, Álex Palou, Pato O’Ward
Dixon’s on the pole, Palou’s the reigning series champion, O’Ward’s the guy the more authentic F1 fanboys are behind because he drives for McLaren and has a lot of breakout potential. If I was making a sweet graphic for NBC to preview the race, these would be the three faces on it. Dixon’s won once—back in 2008—but Palou and O’Ward have never won.
The Hoosiers: Conor Daly, Hélio Castroneves, Ed Carpenter, Marco Andretti
Ok, so Daly’s the only Indiana-born driver in the race, I’m pretty sure, placing it squarely on him to become the race’s first home state winner since 1940. Castroneves, though, has completed the portion of the Indiana citizenship test where you have to win the Indy 500 four times (he’s one of just four drivers to do this, and would be the first one ever to win a fifth), and Carpenter was born in downstate Illinois but he moved to Indianapolis when he was eight and graduated from Butler, so since Daly’s a longshot (I’m seeing 50-to-1 odds, and those might be bad odds because he’s popular because he’s from Indiana), we’ll include Carpenter here too, as well as Andretti, who’s never panned out the way his grandpa and father did but is still an Andretti. Basically, these are the guys we think would provoke the biggest roar from the crowd should they take the lead.
The Americans: Jimmie Johnson, David Malukas, Josef Newgarden, Santino Ferrucci, J.R. Hildebrand, Alexander Rossi, Graham Rahal, Sage Karam, Colton Herta, Kyle Kirkwood
These guys have varying degrees of IndyCar success behind them, from Johnson’s none to Newgarden’s recently-having-been-the-dominant-force-in-the-sport. Rossi won the Indy 500 in 2016, making him the only American driver in this year’s race with a win under his belt, which is kind of nuts.
The History-Makers: (Vacant)
Sorry, Christian Lundgaard, but nobody cares that there’s never been an Indy 500 winner from Denmark. No women driving this year, no Black drivers, no Native American drivers that I know of. We could get the youngest ever winner but I don’t think people actually care about that. That’s trivia, not history.
The Others: Rinus VeeKay, Marcus Ericsson, Tony Kanaan, Felix Rosenqvist, Romain Grosjean, Takuma Sato, Will Power, Simon Pagenaud, Callum Ilott, Devlin DeFrancesco, Scott McLaughlin, Dalton Kellett, Juan Pablo Montoya, Christian Lundgaard, Jack Harvey, Stefan Wilson
Look, this isn’t the IndyCar fan’s guide to the Indy 500, ok? Those exist elsewhere. If you’re primarily in this for the milk, you don’t need to be able to parse the significance of Takuma Sato compared to that of Rinus VeeKay. If they’re in the picture, you’ll get the general idea about them from the broadcasters. That’s their job.
The Vibes
For those of you watching and thinking, “Damn, I want to attend that one day,” you are entirely correct. The Indy 500 is the greatest sporting event I’ve ever attended in person, and I was there for the 2013 BCS National Championship, the 2018 NIT Final Four, the Cubs’ Game 1 victory over the Nationals in the 2017 NLDS, the Giants’ World Series victory over the Tigers in 2012, a Bulls game on St. Patrick’s Day in 2012 (I think), a bunch of freshman basketball B games in the Fox Valley Conference in 2008 and 2009…I’ve seen it all. The Indy 500 is the greatest. There is no other sporting event that so completely encapsulates a city the size of Indianapolis or a culture as large as that of Indiana.
One of the best parts of the Indy 500 is that it’s different depending on your age. If you’re a child attending with your dad, perhaps he gets the two of you grandstand tickets. If you’re a child attending with your extended family, you have an annual tailgate spot in the infield. If you’re a horny high schooler, you’re in the Snake Pit. If you’re a college kid attending IU, you’ve figured out access to your buddy’s uncle’s RV. If you’re a college kid attending Purdue, you’ve figured out how to build an RV yourself and you are in it with your only three friends in the world, all of whom built it with you, including that one friend you have that ended up at IUSB but is good for the manual labor stuff. If you’re an adult with a little free cash, you’re back in the grandstand. If you’re an adult with a lot of free cash, you’re tricking out an RV. The speedway is a city unto itself. A golf course works its way into the infield. You can walk across the front stretch before the race. You can touch the bricks. This is a massive college football rivalry game with three or four times as many people and the fastest automobiles in the world capable of driving 500 miles. And, as you know well, it ends with milk.
God bless it.
And He does.
