Running on Empty: The Brickyard 400's Problems
“They may have a good race over there,” says Lucas Oil Raceway GM Wes Collier. “But I guarantee it won’t be better than it would have been at our racetrack.”
Though he has been whispering it to confidants for decades, the news emerged in mass media just today: The artist formerly known as Gomer Pyle is gay. A stalwart of Indianapolis 500 festivities, Jim Nabors has sung “Back Home Again in Indiana” 33 times at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s running of “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” since 1972. In 2012, the Andy Griffith Show alum was unable to attend the Indy 500 race due to heart-valve replacement surgery in Hawaii, where he resides. It turns out that Hawaii is also where he met his longtime partner Stan Cadwallader. The two men met in 1975; Cadwallader was a Honolulu firefighter, and they took up immediately, but just recently wed in Washington state on Jan. 15. (Same-sex marriage became legal there in December 2012.)
On the night of Jan. 16, racing legend Parnelli Jones joined a new era of racing history. While attending the Automotive News World Congress Dinner to present Dario Franchitti with his “Baby Borg” replica of the Borg-Warner Trophy that drivers have received since 1988, Jones was honored with his very own “Baby Borg.”
Listen up, ladies: Arie Luyendyk Jr., the dreamy former Bachelorette contestant and racecar driver, is hosting a viewing party for the season premiere of The Bachelor tonight at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, starting at 6:30 p.m. Fans will get to ask Luyendyk their long-burning questions during a 7:30 p.m. Q&A session and then watch the first episode of the new season with him at 8 p.m.
IndyCar star and Bachelorette heartthrob Arie Luyendyk, Jr. was in town recently for a celebrity cook-off benefiting the Children’s Bureau. He stopped by Indianapolis Monthly beforehand to reveal some his favorite local date spots for our Best Of Indy issue, coming up in December. You’ll have to pick up the magazine to find out what they are—but we got him to stick around long enough to offer a few other nuggets.
Three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves is dancing his way back to reality TV. ABC announced today that Castroneves will join the cast of Dancing with the Stars: All-Stars for the show’s 15th season. Castroneves, the season-five champion, will compete against other past celebrity favorites of various ilk and levels of fame for the chance to hoist the Mirror Ball trophy. Among his competitors: Bristol Palin, Drew Lachey, Joey Fatone, Kirstie Alley, Apolo Anton Ohno, and Pamela Anderson.
When you’re a reporter, you’re supposed to keep fandom to yourself. Cheering (and, sadly, beer) is frowned upon in sporting-arena press boxes. There’s never a sign telling you not to; you’re just supposed to know, much the same as no sign tells you to wear pants in public. It’s okay to be breathless in your description of high sports drama, so long as the excitement is not tied to one side in the contest. And you’re not supposed to fawn over the competitors (a dictum many of ESPN’s reporters and commentators seem to have lain aside, but I digress).
On Sunday night, close to 12 miles away from the Greatest Spectacle in Racing, another spectacle played out at a more-modest racetrack across town: the First Annual United States Figure 8 Championship 90-minute World Figure 8 Enduro race at Indianapolis Speedrome (802 S. Kitley Ave.), on the edge of the eastside Irvington neighborhood.
Top Indy 500 drivers—and their fans and arm candy—descended on downtown’s Sensu late Sunday night for the “Big Finish” party. First-time 500 driver Wade Cunningham hosted the affair, where dance songs zoomed by as uproariously as an Indy car, and where the day’s big winner himself elected to celebrate race night.
It was a race to remember, with Indianapolis 500 darling Dario Franchitti winning his third Borg-Warner Trophy and embracing both his wife, actress Ashley Judd, and his friend Dan Wheldon’s widow, Susie, with warmth to match the day’s second-hottest temperatures on record, 91 degrees.
The sun-drenched and sweaty masses came out for international DJ and electronic artist Benny Benassi in this morning’s Snake Pit, that patch of grass in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s Turn 3 infield where revelers take in thumping beats and cans of beer.
