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Indy 500, Coca-Cola 600 offer tons of racin’

THIS IS A WEEK my Daily News sports colleagues dread. I frequently remind them Sunday is “the greatest day in sports, the Indianapolis 500 followed by the Coca-Cola 600?…?1,100 miles of racin’ !” From early afternoon until late night, race cars go, go, go. First, IndyCars hurry around famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway. A little after 6 p.m., the NASCAR Sprint Car rumble at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

THIS IS A WEEK my Daily News sports colleagues dread. I frequently remind them Sunday is "the greatest day in sports, the Indianapolis 500 followed by the Coca-Cola 600?…?1,100 miles of racin' !"

From early afternoon until late night, race cars go, go, go. First, IndyCars hurry around famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway. A little after 6 p.m., the NASCAR Sprint Car rumble at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

The Indy 500 is gradually regaining the appeal it had before the sanctioning-organizations split in the mid-1990s of the Indy Racing League and Championship Auto Racing Teams.

In the closest pole duel in Indy history, Team Penske's Ryan Briscoe was clocked at 226.484 mph, 0.0023 of a second faster than Andretti Autosport's James Hinchcliffe. Two other Andretti drivers, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Marco Andretti, qualified third and fourth for the 96th running of Indy 500.

Only three former Indy 500 winners are in Sunday's race: Helio Castroneves (three W's), Dario Franchitti (two) and Scott Dixon (one). Penske driver Will Power has won three of the season's first four races.

IndyCar is now in Danica Patrick's rearview mirror as she competes in NASCAR's Nationwide series, with limited Sprint Cup appearances, including the Coca-Cola 600. Still, three women entered the Indy 500: Ana Beatriz starts 13th, Katherine Legge 30th and Simona de Silvestro 32nd.

Indy is honoring Dan Wheldon throughout the week. Last year's Indy 500 winner died in a multicar crash in the season finale at Las Vegas in October. His widow, Susie, will accept his champion's ring during ceremonies this weekend.

Reigning Sprint Cup king Tony Stewart did double duty at Indy and Charlotte in 1999 and 2001. The former IndyCar champion (1997), now a three-time Cup titlist, is the only driver ever to complete all 1,100 miles of both races in the same day/night.

Asked whether he'd ever run Indy again, Stewart, 41, replied, "In my heart? Absolutely. I would love to do it. The problem is that IndyCars have become so competitive now. There are so many things that have changed since I ran IndyCars so many years ago, I'm not sure I would get competitive enough, quickly enough. To really do it right, and have a legitimate shot to win the Indy 500, you would have to start at the beginning of the year with the team you're going to race with during the month of May."

In 1999, Stewart said he was hallucinating during the last 100 miles of the Coca-Cola 600.

"Obviously, I'm not Mr. Olympia: I'm not the healthiest guy in the world compared to a lot of the other drivers on the circuit," he said. "The first year, we were so worried about dehydration that I drank and drank and drank. I just never ate enough solid, nutritious food the night before.

"The day of the race, I wasn't hungry, because I was drinking so much to try to ensure that I was being hydrated. I got my body so out of whack that by the time the 600 was done in Charlotte, I'd had enough. I was hungry 50 laps into the race and there wasn't a drive-thru in sight.

"We actually tried to get one of [then-teammate] Bobby Labonte's PowerBars – get something in me to tide me over until the race was over. I got two bites of it and two bites did not [help through] the next 350 laps. It was a good learning experience. I think we finished ninth and fourth that year in the two races. When we did it 2 years later, we had a nutritionist who was with us the entire month of May, so I was in a lot better shape."

Stewart has one win at Charlotte, the fall race in 2003. n

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