Welcome to another Month of May! Unfortunately, we begin the month on a sad note. Merle Bettenhausen passed away this past Wednesday. Many of you know that Merle had a stroke about three weeks ago. Reports were that he was stable, but had a long road ahead of him. Apparently things took a turn for the worse. He was the last of the racing Bettenhausens. His older brother Gary, who had 21 Indianapolis 500 starts from 1968 to 1993, passed away in 2014. His younger brother, Tony, was tragically killed in an airplane crash along, with his wife Shirley (McElreath) Bettenhausen in 2000.
Of course, the patriarch, Tony Bettenhausen, had fourteen starts at Indianapolis from 1948 to 1960. He was fatally inured in a practice crash in Paul Russo’s car on the main straightaway in May 1961. From what I understand from the many people that knew Merle Bettenhausen, he was one of a kind, and his stories were legendary. Please keep the friends and family of Merle Bettenhausen in your prayers.
May 1st is a special day at Oilpressure.com. If you’ve been following this site for a while, you know that the first day in May is the anniversary of when I started this site. To be more precise, it was May 1, 2009 when this site launched. If I’m doing my math correctly, that was seventeen years ago today. But it makes it sound more dramatic to say that Oilpressure.com is beginning its eighteenth year of existence.
A lot has happened in that time. President Obama was just a few months into his first term in office. Helio Castroneves had just been acquitted of tax evasion a couple of weeks before I made my first post. He was only a two-time winner of the Indianapolis 500 when this site was born. Tony George was still in charge of IMS and what was then simply known as the IndyCar Series. All of the races were televised by either ABC or ESPN. My race tickets only cost $80 and the 2009 race program cost had just jumped up to $15, after selling for only $6 just three years earlier.
Since May of 2009, we’ve lost two drivers on the track to accidents, and several legendary drivers off the track to Father Time.
I’ve met a lot of interesting people over those years – some you’ve heard of, some you’ve met only through this site and some whose names would be totally unfamiliar to you. The old Blogger Row of the early 2010s in the IMS Media Center has been whittled down to where it is just me. Some faded away after attempting blogging for a few months, others like Bill Zahren (Pressdog) and Paul Dalbey (Planet IRL, More Front Wing and Field of 33) realized long ago that there was more to life than taking race notes and hiding behind a keyboard. Some like James Black (16th and Georgetown), actually turned blogging into a career in racing.
Then there is me. I reluctantly took this up as a hobby at the urging of family and friends. Once I started and it took off after just a few weeks, I couldn’t stop. I was thoroughly enjoying myself. Fortunately, IndyCar and IMS were of the mindset back then that the bloggers were a good thing and we were welcomed into the media centers and the pits with open arms – by those in charge, at least. Several of those in the traditional media, resented us infiltrating their domain that had been their territory for decades. Over time, many of them realized some of us knew what we were talking about and posed no real threat. To the few of us still left, there are still some who refuse to acknowledge our presence to this day. I guess you come across that in any walk of life.
Granted, there were several of us that abused their media privileges. They made their presence way too known in the pits as they continually pushed the rules. During Indianapolis 500 qualifying, when we were allowed to be in pit lane and wander freely while the cars were in line to qualify – a few pushed their way to the very front, just to make sure they were seen on television. I have been caught on TV a few times in the pits over the years, but it is truly by accident. OK, there was that time in 2010 at Barber, when I found myself in the shot and I chose to stay there – but every other time was legit.
But as quickly as those privilege-abusers showed up around 2015, they were all gone by the end of 2016. Then things really started to change in mid-season 2019, when the entire communications department for IndyCar was overhauled (translation: trimmed down) during an off-weekend. It probably was too bloated, but they let a lot of really fine people go. They were the ones who had always treated the bloggers as equals to the long-established media. It was probably needed to run it more like a business, but a lot of the fun went away then.
After that, COVID hit and ruined the entire 2020 season. The only race we went to that entire season was Road America, when we paid our own way as fans – since we were not allowed in the media center or granted credentials. It was the same with Barber at the beginning of the 2021 season. Lowly bloggers were not granted access, so we bought our own tickets and sat on the slope overlooking Turn 14 all day. The first race since Gateway of 2019 that we were allowed to cover was the 2021 Month of May.
The all-business approach was in full-swing by then. Most of my fellow bloggers were gone, but it was still a passion of mine to continue writing about IndyCar and the Indianapolis 500. For a variety of reasons that have already been discussed here, I decided to go part-time on the site in February of 2025. There would no more regular Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule that I had kept up for almost sixteen years. Instead, I would post when I felt like it. Sometimes that means twice a week, while I might go two weeks without posting.
Quite honestly, it has been liberating! I didn’t realize how this site had become an anchor for so long. Like Pressdog and Paul Dalbey, I realized there was life away from the IndyCar keyboard. Once I retired from my day job in January, I’ve really gotten a new lease on life. Looking back, I realize that this site had become a burden since 2020. That year also coincides with Susan’s cancer diagnosis, so there is probably some correlation there. As you all know, she has survived her cancer and is probably feeling better right now than she has in a couple of years.
Her health and my retirement from work has combined to where I am enjoying this site again. It’s good to sit down and write only when I feel like it, instead of when I have to.
I have never been accused of brevity on this site, and that was a long way of saying that things will continue here for a while. Best of all, nothing is changing for the Month of May. I will still post every weekday in May though Memorial Day. That means after tomorrow and Sunday, I will be here every day afterwards during the month until the day after the race.
There will still be a Trivia Contest – for those that like to plan, it will be posted Wed May 6, with the answers due back to me by Tue May 19. Then the answers and winner will be revealed on Wed May 20. Susan and I plan to travel to IMS for all three weekends, and I may be on the grounds during the practice week. I’ll decide over the next few days. There will be some posts of an historic nature (as Donald Davidson used to say), and perhaps a video chat or two with my good friend Paul Dalbey.
This will be my first Month of May as a retiree, so I have no work duties to distract me. Through much of April, Susan would come home from work to find me watching You Tube videos on television. One day it might be the full TV broadcast of the 1978 race, then the next she would find me watching several episodes of Indy 500: A Race for Heroes – an excellent series narrated by the late Bob Jenkins. Consequently, I am more excited about going into this Month of May than I have been in years.
So come back Monday, the be prepared to come back and visit for twenty-two consecutive days (including weekends) of celebrating all that is the Indianapolis 500. It’s the Month of May. For race fans, it’s the greatest month of the year!
George Phillips
