God speed — drop the flag!

(Originally posted by Paul to Planet-IRL.com.)

In the words of our friend Pressdog, “Let’s light the candle!”

It is New Year’s Eve for fans of the Indianapolis 500. For many of us, it is the biggest day of our year. This is the day by which we set our calendar. Forget January 1st — our year revolves around Race Day at Indianapolis. On this Night Before the 500, all race fans eagerly anticipate the coming storm that awaits on the other side of the night and pray for a safe race.

Drivers will be interviewed tomorrow and tell us that they approach the Indianapolis 500 as just another race. It’s not. They know it’s not, but they must try, likely in vain, to convince themselves it is. This is the race, the one race, that each of the 33 drivers would go to the ends of the Earth to win. When Eddie Cheever won the Great Race in 1998, he acknowledged that his father taught him early on, “If you’re going to win just one race, make it Indianapolis.” If there is a driver that would tell you otherwise, they are either lying or they have never experienced what Indianapolis is about.

When it comes to racing, nothing tops Indianapolis. The speeds are faster. The walls are closer. The stakes are higher. The consequences are more severe. But the rewards are greater than anything that can be measured by money alone. Much in the way that a golfer’s career can be defined in a single weekend at the Masters, the life of a race car driver will change forever tomorrow. For one driver, Monday will be the first day of a new life. For 32 others, Monday will be the longest of 365 days to be checked off until he can once again try for immortality. It’s that big. Every person involved with the race in even the most minute way tomorrow knows it. It’s not about the $3 million that will go to the winning team on Monday night. It’s about the chance to have your face forever etched on the roster of racing’s greatest fraternity.

We know that tomorrow’s race should go 500 miles. What was once a grueling seven-hour affair has become a three-hour sprint, but the goal remains unchanged — “A white line painted on a yard of bricks 500 miles away.” To reach Victory Lane, so many things must go right for a driver and a team. The 3.5L Honda Indy V8 engine must successfully rotate nearly 2 million times. The Firestone Firehawk tires must spin nearly 500,000 revolutions. The driver must successfully navigate 800 left-hand turns, and the pit crews must skillfully and perfectly execute six or seven pit stops. And, oh yeah, the winning driver will need a hefty dose of luck to control those thousands of aspects that are beyond his control. Though the Penske and Ganassi teams seem to have a distinct edge, nothing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is given freely to anybody. The countless hours of sweat and dedication come to a head tomorrow as man and machine stare down a challenge that is 100 years old yet as new as the spring crops that line the Indiana fields.

As you prepare for the race tomorrow, think of those who have come before us. Many lives have been given at this great speed cathedral in search of racing’s highest glory. Let us not forget them. Many lives have been sacrificed around the world at the altar of freedom. Let us not forget them. Many of us will think of those people that we have shared this race with in years gone by. Let us not forget them. For each balloon released as tears flow during Back Home Again in Indiana, a spirit of the Speedway rises to watch over the 94th Running of the Indianapolis 500. May those spirits bless this race, this track, and this family that we would all find our way home and begin plans to reunite here once again next year. We at Planet-IRL join the legions of fans, which number well into the hundreds of thousands, in wishing all drivers, crews, IndyCar officials, and fans good luck and God speed as the 94th edition of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing plays out before us tomorrow.