Oilpressure

Another Month of May at Indianapolis is in the books. A new champion in Alex Palou has been crowned and we are exiting the month with many storylines that will continue throughout the summer. It seems like maybe a week ago that Susan and I were up here for the Open Test. It was actually April 23-24, when Kyle Larson and Takuma Sato both crashed on Day Two. Sato’s crash may have been an omen as to what was to come. His car unexpectedly snapped around quickly with little warning, before hitting the outside wall hard exiting Turn One. It was a hard enough hit that it destroyed the car, forcing his Rahal Letterman Lanigan team to purchase a new tub from Dallara for May.

Last year, I can recall only one major crash during the week of practice – when Marcus Ericsson crashed out of Turn Four. The crash set him back for qualifying and he ultimately qualified on the back row, resulting in Ericsson getting caught up in the Tom Blomqvist spin on the opening lap.

This year, there were multiple crashes in practice and qualifying. Kyffin Simpson had an airborne crash coming out of Turn Four on Fast Friday, that looked eerily similar to the Ericsson crash a year earlier. That same afternoon, Kyle Larson had his second crash of the month, when he slapped the outside wall coming out of Turn One.

On Qualifying Day, Marcus Armstrong had a frightening crash in Turn One, where he simply lost the back-end of the car and hit the wall hard. He was visibly shaken as he was loaded into the ambulance, holding his head. It took several hours for IndyCar to medically clear him to drive. Once again, a promising week of practice was for nothing, as he could not get his Frankenstein car up to speed. He was forced to qualify the next day in the Last Row Shootout.

Colton Herta had perhaps the scariest crash in qualifying. His car did go upside down, before violently slapping Herta’s cockpit against the outside wall as it skidded seemingly forever in that position. Again, Herta was forced to a backup – but he was able to qualify the car without having to take part in the Last Row Shootout the next day.

On Sunday morning’s Pole Day practice, Scott McLaughlin had another spectacular crash exiting Turn Two forcing him to a backup and preventing him from partaking in Pole Day qualifying. By this time, I was losing count of how many major crashes we were seeing in the month.

Unfortunately, the carnage didn’t stop there. It merely set the tone for what we would see for the first half of Sunday’s race. McLaughlin inexplicably hit the inside wall just as the pace lap was starting. I can only imagine how helpless he felt, as his car suddenly hit the wall hard and damaged his car enough that he was out of the race. I’m sure it felt like a slow-motion nightmare as his car came to a stop in the grass just inside Turn One. Again, it was a sign that it was going to be that kind of day.

It was certainly a tale of two different halves in the race. The first half was plagued with cautions, many of them hard to explain. I’m still not quite sure what happened to Marco Andretti. I could not tell in the video replays at the track, who else was involved in the incident that ended Marco’s day. We watched the second half of the race-replay after we got back to our hotel after the race, but that opening-lap incident had already taken place. To be honest, we fell asleep before the replay was over. I guess we will watch the DVR sometime this week after we get back home, in order to find answers to a lot of the things we missed.

What made Rinus VeeKay spin and crash while entering the pits? From where I sat, it looked completely like driver error. It was also driver error that caused Kyle Larson to lose control and take out Kyffin Simpson and Sting Ray Robb in the process. The same can be said for Christian Rasmussen bringing out a caution. Just as the field was going back to green on a restart, Rasmussen lost control and made contact with the outside wall on the north end, then spun before he was able to collect it without hitting anything or anyone else. I have no idea what caused Nolen Siegel to crash on the final lap, but I thought it was appropriate that such a sloppy race should end under caution.

It made no difference. Marcus Ericsson nor any other pursuers had anything for Palou at the end. It’s kind of the way the entire season has gone. It was a fun and eventful Month of May. It was an odd race that ended it, but in the back of my mind – I always felt that everyone’s efforts were all to find out who would ultimately finish second to Palou. I have not seen a driver on this kind of roll in my adult life. You can’t blame him for it, but I feel like the crowd was a little deflated when he was handed to bottle of milk – which he thankfully only drank, instead of pouring it all over himself as has become the custom lately. As the laps wound down, everyone seemed to be pulling for David Malukas, Marcus Ericsson, Conor Daly or anyone else who might keep Palou from adding this win to his 2025 resume. It didn’t happen.

But don’t begrudge him for it. Instead, salute the man. He is doing what he is paid to do – drive a race car fast and win races. We’ve just never seen such consistent excellence from one driver. If you want to blame someone, blame the other teams and drivers who can’t find a way to beat him. Until they do, I suggest we appreciate the greatness we are witnessing.

TV Coverage: As I mentioned, I have only seen a small portion of Sunday’s race broadcast; and I was really too tired to pay that much attention to the TV crew. I have seen a lot of people on social media complaining about the announcers and the amount of commercials. Both are universal complaints that you will hear every year.

I’m not sure what is an acceptable amount and frequency of commercials, but I suspect the answer is close to zero to satisfy the Twitter and Facebook complainers; the Legion of the Miserable.

FOX has been all-in, providing on-air content anytime cars have been on-track all month. Perhaps everyone got spoiled by Peacock when days of practice went uninterrupted because it was on a streaming service people were already paying for. FOX has announced that they will be launching their own streaming service this fall, meaning it will be fully operational by next spring. Maybe FOX will move practice to that streaming service with no commercials. Then people will complain that they are being forced to pay for a streaming service in order to watch practice.

I’m preaching to the choir here, because the vast majority of regular readers of this site know that you’re not going to get non-stop coverage for free. In the portion that we watched last night, it did not strike me that we were being inundated with ads. When there were commercials, it seemed like we always had the race coverage in another on-screen window. From the hour or so of coverage we watched Sunday night, I saw nothing to complain about.

Congratulations! File this under the name-dropping department, but I wanted to extend heartfelt congratulations to my friend and fellow Nashville-area resident Russ Thompson. Russ has been the longtime statistician and historical guru for whatever network that has covered the series since the 80s. On Friday, he was totally surprised with the announcement that he was this year’s winner of the prestigious Robin Miller Award, along with Chip Ganassi racing’s Barry Wanser.

The award honors “an unheralded individual who has devoted a significant portion of their life to IndyCar racing, while bringing unbridled passion and unrelenting work ethic to enrich the sport”. That certainly describes legendary IndyCar journalist Robin Miller’s career, right up until his death in August of 2021; and it certainly describes both winners of this year’s award.

I don’t claim to be Russ’s best friend, but we’ve shared a few lunches in Nashville over the years, and we text back and forth freely throughout the offseason. Like me, Russ is cutting back some starting this season. But I saw and talked to him Sunday morning before the race. He was totally surprised that he was given the award and seemed truly honored to receive it. Russ Thompson is truly one of the good guys, and the sport is better off for him.

Pre-Race Performances: The singing of God Bless America, by Arturo Chacón-Cruz was outstanding, and possibly the finest version of it I have heard. Everyone near our seats commented how breath-taking it was.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for singer Natalie Grant’s rendition of our National Anthem. She apparently has several Grammys on her resume, but it wasn’t for singing The Star-Spangled Banner. In short, it was awful. She was flat, off-key and at times screeched like a cat with asthma. It was bad enough that those same fans around us that had praised Chacón-Cruz for his earlier performance were looking around at each other and laughing when they weren’t holding their ears.

In the past, I’ve received a lot of flack for criticizing these performers and telling me to keep my opinions to myself unless I can do a better job. I answer that with I’m no chef, but I can certainly tell a good meal from a bad one; and I will certainly let other people know when and where I’ve had a bad meal.

I’m not sure what the vetting process is when these performers are asked to sing in the treasured pre-race ceremonies, but it is obvious that Ms. Grant was never asked to audition. That was rough!

The Scoring Pylon: In the first half of the race, I became very irritated when I would look up at the scoring pylon to see where certain drivers were, or to see what lap we were on. More times than not, instead of the column of car numbers and positions, I saw a colorful brick background with the words “109th Indianapolis 500” running up vertically.

I know it looks great and it’s fine to run that with other graphics before the race starts. But I would sometimes wait several minutes for the running order to appear, while I watched the same brick graphics running. I don’t need to be told where I am or why I am there. I know that already. Give me some information I can use during the race. The new LED panels that were added to the top of The Pagoda during the offseason, have the Top-Ten running order, but it does not tell what lap we are on.

In the second half of the race, someone must have noticed (Doug Boles, perhaps?) or else they saw complaints on social media, because running order was much more frequent after Lap 100. It’s called a scoring pylon for a reason. It has been equipped with graphics for over a decade now. We know it has that capability; but just because you can, doesn’t mean you always should.

Concessions: This was probably my biggest gripe of the day. On Lap 20, during a caution period, Susan and I were both getting hungry. I saw that as a good time to run downstairs and get something to eat. When we arrived at our seats, my brother was eating a tenderloin from the concession stands and he said it was very good.

Susan had asked me to get her a hotdog, and I wanted the tenderloin. Much to my dismay, I found there were only three items available. The prices weren’t bad, relatively speaking – but I found the selection sparse.

They had a screwy system set up with two windows to order, and two windows to move down and pay once you got your order. It took forever for the not-so-long line to move. I had called Susan to tell here there were no hotdogs, so she asked for the cheeseburger basket. When I finally got up to the window and placed my order, I was told they were out of tenderloins. Disappointed, I asked for the chicken tenders. They were out of those too. Seriously? By the time I got back to my seat it was Lap 44. When you only have three items on the menu, that seems a little early to be running out of two of them. For the record, the cheeseburger that I eventually settled for was actually quite tasty.

Rookie Mistake: While I don’t think many people were actually expecting rookie pole-sitter Robert Shwartzman to win on Sunday – he seemed to be holding his own throughout the first half of the race. But on Lap 87, it all went terribly wrong. Shwartzman was pitting under the yellow-flag, and came into his pit stall at an odd angle and too hot. The replay showed he hit his left-front tire-changer and possibly others. In the process, he damaged his front-wing and bent his suspension. His promising day was over.

Scary Situation: Late in the first half of the race, it was obvious that Alexander Rossi had a good car under him. He was running fourth, when some tell-tale smoke or vapor was coming out from under his car. He pitted and while he was getting serviced and his crew was checking out an overheated gearbox, when the car suddenly erupted in flames. A frustrated Rossi got out and threw his gloves in anger. But his fueler, Mike Miller, caught the worst of it. He was engulfed in flames as the fire crew did their job and finally extinguished the flames on him. He was reportedly fine afterwards, but the whole scene was scary to watch. The flame retardant gear and the fire crews both did their jobs, and a frightening situation turned out OK…except for Rossi’s day.

The Unasked Question: As each crash of the month unfolded, with cars suddenly getting loose with little warning – rumors swirled throughout the media center among journalists that this was all caused by the added weight in the back of the cars from the hybrid component.

I can tell you that fans in our section were blaming everything that happened Sunday on the hybrid component – some of which was probably unfair, while some may have been justified. One thing was clear though – the fans don’t like the hybrid. I can also tell you from conversations I had in the Media Center all month – the drivers don’t like it either, but they are strongly discouraged from criticizing it publicly. Fortunately, there did not seem to be any cars taken out of Sunday’s race by the random “hybrid issue” which is usually fatal for the car. But with the cost of added weight and the lingering potential for a “hybrid issue”; I’m not sure it added a thing to Sunday’s race, other than giving drivers one more thing to worry about.

I was asked several times over the weekend if I thought they would get rid of the hybrids, and my answer was always the same – I don’t know. It also seems that is the one question that everyone dodges, because it is something of a political football.

I am told that car manufacturers want it, and it is vital in the quest for that elusive third manufacturer. That’s for people far smarter than me to decide. But my unscientific basis tells me that the fans and the drivers don’t want it. Those are two pretty important groups to listen to, but what do I know?

Drive of the Day: Based on the amount of boos I heard in driver introductions, and the loud cheers that rang out when he stepped out of the car on Lap 135 – this will probably be a very unpopular opinion. But my drive of the day goes to Josef Newgarden. He started in the middle of the last row, but methodically made his way forward. I know I saw him running as high as ninth, not due to pit stop shuffles – but it’s quite likely he ran higher than that. Say what you will about him, but that was a great bit of driving to do that halfway through the race. I really think if he had not suffered a mechanical issue on Lap 135 (I heard a fuel-pressure problem); he would have been there at the end of the race to battle it out with Palou.

I know he wanted his face on the Borg-Warner trophy for the third time in a row, but I would think getting the Oilpressure.com Drive of the Day is a pretty good consolation…isn’t it?

All in All: It was another very enjoyable Month of May, but a very odd and disjointed Indianapolis 500 Mile race. It had no rhythm in the first half of the race, and then when there was the long stretch of green in the second half – things became very static, as no one could really pass. The only real excitement in the second half came on the flurry of green-flag pit stops. In the end, it was the familiar site of Alex Palou celebrating, while most of the other thirty-two drivers climbed out of their car heartbroken. But isn’t that the story every year?

George Phillips

Please Note: Now that the race is over, I am done with my daily Month of May posting. I will now go back to my semi-retired status and post on a sporadic basis. Unless something drastic happens this week or in the next race at Detroit, I will probably take a break for the next week or so. I will post spontaneously whenever the mood hits me, or if something noteworthy takes place. So you will need to subscribe to this site or check back regularly to see if anything is new.

Our next race we will be attending in-person will be at Road America over the June 20-22 weekend. We will be posting regularly from any track we attend in person. But I’ll certainly be posting before then.

Thanks to everyone for following along this month and interacting. I also appreciate everyone who came up and spoke to use throughout the month. That’s what keeps me going. Check back soon and often. I’ll be back sometime relatively soon. – GP

This entry was posted on May 26, 2025 at 10:13 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.