Oilpressure

With the month of May now in full gear, one of my many rituals is to browse YouTube in my spare time to see what obscure Indianapolis 500 footage from yesteryear I can find that I’ve never seen before. Just this past Friday night, I found a thirty-minute documentary on the 1958 race called The Man With The Lead Foot. It was about Jimmy Bryan and the Belond AP Special, as he went for his first Indianapolis 500 victory while the car sought its second straight. It was all-color and showed clips I’ve never seen before. It also did a good job of documenting the botched start of the race and the ensuing Turn Three pileup on the first lap that took the life of popular driver Pat O-Connor. There are plenty of mentions of rookie driver AJ Foyt, as well.

If you’re like me and don’t have the time or patience to try and decipher different methods of finding such videos on YouTube – you’ve probably wished more than once that there was a site that compiled any and all Indianapolis 500 related videos and grouped them in one easy-to-navigate place. Well, wish no more – our wish has come true. There is now such a place.

Over the years, I’ve gotten to know Matt Scheidler who worked behind the scenes at WFNI – 1070 The Fan in Indianapolis. Matt is no longer there, but his love of racing has led him to develop a new site that compiles videos from YouTube and other various sites, and presents them in a very organized and well-arranged format that even an old coot like myself can figure out

So what is the site, you ask? It’s RacingIndy.com. When Matt first told me about it this weekend, the first thing I did was check to see if he had the 1958 race I had just watched the night before. Sure enough, it was there. Anything else I could think of was there also. You don’t need to be a fan of the history of the Speedway to benefit from this site. Video from practice days this month are up there as well. Actually, just about any video you can think of from last week to last month to the last century is there.

As I say that, someone will surely comment that their favorite video from Fred Frame’s victory in 1932 isn’t there. Keep in mind, this site is still a work in progress. If what you’re looking for isn’t there, it probably will be. If there is something you think should be there and you notify Matt through the site, I’m sure he can get it there. Keep in mind there are some copyright laws that will prevent some videos from being posted on RacingIndy.com. Barring that however, I’m sure Matt will appreciate any help he can get to update his site.

Check out Matt’s site here. I want to extend a big thanks to Matt on behalf of all fans of the Indianapolis 500. You have made our month of May that much better.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on May 15, 2012 at 4:02 am and is filed under Indianapolis 500. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.