Tomas Scheckter was sizzling and deftly guiding the best car left in Sunday’s Indianapolis 500. He had led 85 of its first 172 laps and, with a mere 28 remaining, was better than 10 seconds ahead of the field.
“The thing was on cruise control,” he said.
“It was a great day, a perfect day,” said crew chief Owen Snyder, “up until Lap 172.”
But on the next lap that all changed when Scheckter lost his car in the fourth turn and slid high and hard into its outside wall.
“I have no idea what happened,” Snyder said. “We were working on the handling the last couple of [pit] stops and that’s where it ended.”
“I turned the corner and the car swings straight,” Scheckter said. “I don’t want to say anything broke because I’m not certain. But I have no control whatsoever. [The wreck] wasn’t that hard. It was more hard on my heart that we lost this race.”
“He was running very high and there were a lot of marbles up there,” said Max Papis, his Red Bull Cheever Racing teammate who finished 23rd. “It’s the only place I can see that caught him out. You never know.”
“I’m disappointed that Tomas didn’t finish the race,” said Eddie Cheever, the car owner who himself finished fifth. “I saw him up there a whole bunch and thought he’d let me share his bottle of milk. That didn’t happen.”
But that is what often happens at Indianapolis, where the fates can be both cruel and capricious. Gil de Ferran, the talented Penske teammate of winner Helio Castroneves, surely knows that now. He was running a solid third when he pitted with 25 laps remaining, but as he pulled away, his left rear tire suddenly fell off.
That forced him to do a complete 2 1/2-mile lap on only three tires and doomed him to a disappointing 10th-place finish. Disappointed, too, was Michael Andretti, who started 25th, worked his way up to second and then faded to finish seventh.
“The car just changed, something went wrong with it,” he lamented. “I think we could have won the race if it wasn’t for that. We kept going backward and backward. Every time we’d make hay, we’d get pushed back again. We had all kinds of problems.”
Scott Sharp knows how that feels. He led three laps and spent the first half of the race in the top five, but he finished 27th after his car started smoking.
And so does Robbie Buhl. He started in the middle of the first row but finished 16th after he too lost a tire pulling away from a pit stop. And so does Sam Hornish Jr. He was running third when he inexplicably brushed the Turn 4 wall on Lap 74, which led to lengthy repairs and a 25th-place finish. “We could have won,” he said. “Would have, could have, should have. The car was fast. We just ruined it early.”
Tony Kanaan was one last contender fate treated unkindly, one more victim whose day was ruined early by Indy’s oft-inexplicable gremlins. He was leading after 89 laps and looking as dominant as Scheckter later would, but then, just in front of him, pole-sitter Bruno Junqueira blew an engine and spewed oil onto the track.
The caution this demanded was not raised quickly enough and Kanaan hit the slick and the Turn 4 wall. “There was a lot of oil on the track,” he said, “and, unfortunately, when you lead, you’re the first one to go through. I guess that’s the price you pay for being first. We did what we could, but unfortunately, we missed it. It’s a shame. But it’s just racing.”
It was that, and more. “It was,” Cheever finally said, “the most confusing 500 I ever participated in.”
