It’s a rare feet of racing endurance and skill, spanning two wildly different disciplines, that hasn’t been attempted since Robby Gordon made his sixth and final attempt in 2004, but 2004 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Kurt Busch is going to attempt to run the world-famous Indianapolis 500 on the Sunday of the Memorial Day Weekend in May, before flying south for the Sprint Cup Series’ Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Busch will be the second NASCAR champion since his boss at Stewart-Hass Racing, Tony Stewart, to attempt The Double, 1100 miles of racing in less than twelve hours. It’s not an easy thing to do, as evidenced by the lack of attempts in recent years – aside from Stewart and Gordon, John Andretti is the only other driver to take on the ambitious challenge – particularly because of the obvious differences between a light, nimble Indycar and the heavy, ill-handling NASCAR stock-car.
That Busch (who wanted to race Indy last year, but ran out of time to arrange a deal, and this year will race a Honda with the all-important blessing of his NASCAR manufacturer General Motors Chevrolet) is having a crack at a different racing discipline isn’t anything new. In recent times, he’s run the Rolex 24 at Daytona sports car race and even attempted the NHRA Gator Nationals in the pro-stock category.
Racing an Indycar at more than 220mph into the first corner at Indianapolis is nothing like those two disciplines, of course, but the NHRA experience surely widened his motorsports horizon, and that can only be a good thing. Too often, it seems that NASCAR drivers forget that there are other ultra-competitive forms of motorsports out there that might, just maybe, be worth taking a shot at.
The world-famous spectacle of the Indianapolis 500 should be on the Bucket List of every real racer-at-heart. It was on Stewart’s – and winning on Memorial Day rather than in August (when NASCAR visits the Speedway) surely still is. One day, we can all hope, Stewart, an Indy Racing League champion in addition to three NASCAR Sprint Cup Series titles, will return to the Indy 500, chasing that elusive win.
Although Busch will not contest a lead-up Indycar event in 2014, at least he is not coming in cold. The thirty-five-year-old tested a CART champ car in the old days, and shook down an Andretti Autosport current spec Indycar at Indianapolis Motor Speedway last year as a precursor to an Indy 500 attempt. At any rate, there’ll be plenty of testing and practice sessions on the Speedway leading up to qualifying, and then Carb Day before the race itself on the last Sunday in May.
Busch seems to be taking the approach of his new boss, Stewart, when it comes to an ‘anything, anywhere’ mentality to racing. Stewart famously missed the last third of the 2013 Sprint Cup Series season after sustaining pretty severe injuries in a sprint car race, and has, equally-famously, promised that, if the opportunity presents itself, he’d race a sprint car again, or anything else he decides he wants to, regardless of his NASCAR commitments.
It’s that sort of old-school mentality that garners the man known as Smoke so many comparisons to the great Anthony Joseph (A.J. Foyt). The great Texan remains one of Stewart’s idols, and Tony drives the #14 in the Sprint Cup Series in honour of Foyt.
Short of Stewart, the Columbus, Indiana native appearing at the Speedway for the 500, Busch’s presence on the grid will be the best sort of publicity that the premiere race on the Indycar calendar could buy. Here’s a NASCAR champion coming over, wanting to win the biggest open-wheel race in North America.
It’s publicity that will be eagerly benefited on by the Speedway. The Indy 500 is at an interesting crossroads. It’s still a big event, though not quite as popular as the glory days of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s when it was the biggest form of motorsport in America, and attracting international names like Emerson Fittipaldi and Nigel Mansell,, before the fractious CART-Indy Racing League split – around the same time: the national emergence of NASCAR – that nearly killed the sport for good.
The problem isn’t viewership for the Indy 500. It’s appointment viewing for millions of Americans. It’s always been the way: the Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend, around lunch time, you turn on ABC and watch the Greatest Spectacle in Racing, an event that remains the biggest single-day sporting event anywhere in the world, with a crowd nudging 300,000.
No, the problem is keeping those viewers interested, and getting them to tune in to events before or after the 500 in May. Kurt Busch might help with that. It’d be fantastic if he were doing a few more events – or even just one – but we must be realistic, given Busch’s overriding NASCAR commitment. Still, you’d like to hope that his appearance at the Speedway will at least raise the national prominence Indycar a little.
A win for Busch would just about raise it into the stratosphere. A NASCAR champion winning the jewel in the Indycar crown would work both ways, and arguably be a bigger story than, say, Danica Patrick going to Victory Lane at Indy. He has a good chance, too, for his team, Andretti Autosport, are historically fast at the Speedway. This isn’t just a go-for-show deal. Busch wants to win, and he gives himself the best shot, short of driving for Roger Penske, of doing so with Michael Andretti’s team.
There’s precedent for a good finish in Busch’s first crack at Indy (at least, first crack in an Indycar): the car he’ll likely drive, the #26, finished second last year, under the control of rookie Carlos Munoz. Let’s not forget that Munoz was close to eventual winner Tony Kaanan, but a late-race caution was a premature end to that challenge. Still, Munoz was fast. Lightning fast.
I see no reason why Busch can’t be similarly fast. Not meaning to be unkind to Munoz, but if you were asked who the better driver was, Kurt or Carlos, you’d choose Busch every time. His record speaks for itself. If Munoz can go out and nearly win Indy on his first shot, so, too, can a guy who’s proven he has what it takes to win a championship in one of the toughest motorsports categories in the world.
Obviously, there are things that Busch will need to learn, skills that are foreign to most NASCAR drivers: speed, pack racing, those tricky restarts, throttle and steering input, tyre wear, pit stops and a few other open wheel nuances, but that’s why they have practices, and he’ll get plenty of track time – and frequent flier points, shuttling between Charlotte and Indianapolis about twenty times throughout the month.
Importantly, Busch appreciates the history of Indy. He’s been to the race before, when he was a part of Roger Penske’s organisation, and apparently loved the tradition enough to seriously consider racing in it one day. Now he is – the biggest NASCAR name since Stewart in 2001 – and with 1995 race winner Jacques Villeneuve in the field for 2014, the Indycar public relations machine should be preparing itself for a lot of work come May.
Indycar’s president of operations and competition Derrick Walker believes that this might be the beginning of a trend: "I think if one of those guys comes up and has a good experience, a lot more will come."
How will it happen? Race-day logistics will be complicated, and timed with the precision of a military operation. Suffice, to say, it will not be an easy Memorial Day Sunday for Busch. He will start the day in Indianapolis – the green flag for the field of thirty-three waves just after midday local – and hope to still be running three hours later when the winner crosses the famed Yard of Bricks underneath the flag stand, with the checkers waving, five hundred frantic miles later.
Almost immediately – unless he wins, which is when things will get interesting – Busch will likely take a chopper straight from the mammoth Indianapolis infield, to Indianapolis Airport for a chartered flight to Charlotte, North Carolina. Then, he’ll board another chopper, this one to Charlotte Motor Speedway, where he should arrive in time for the driver’s meeting.
It’s unlikely that Busch will be there in time to attend the mandatory driver meeting, which means he’ll start from the back of the pack, though with 600 miles ahead, getting to the front should not be too difficult. Sometime after eleven o’clock local time, the racing day will be over, and, all things going to plan, Busch will have raced 1100 miles around two of the country’s most famous race tracks, and have added another page to his personal legend.
Iron Man, indeed. A.J. and the great racers of yesteryear would be proud.
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