James Hinchcliffe

I had been told I might see celebrities, and I was not disappointed.

“I still feel like I’m living a dream,” Indy 500 winner Ryan Hunter-Reay said on the podium, his car and pit crew to his left. “I can’t believe my face is going to be on [the Borg-Warner] trophy.”

In attendance were Ryan Hunter-Reay’s fellow IndyCar stars also starting in this year’s Indy 500, including 2013 winner Tony Kanaan, a dapper bow-tied J.R. Hildebrand, and James Hinchcliffe, plus members of rock band Live.

Busch is attempting to join an exclusive club of drivers to complete “The Double,” the feat of racing, on the same day, in the Indianapolis 500 and NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600.

“I’ve sprained a wrist; I’ve separated cartilage between a rib,” says Hinchcliffe. “Even when I flipped a car, I walked away. This has been by far the most dramatic accident, I guess.”

[View the story “Tweets of the Week: August 4-10” on Storify]

The stars aligned for the 500 Festival parade, which promised a fairly high celebrity quotient and did not disappoint. Floats and cars, bands and marchers—they all moved swimmingly along the route that started on Pennsylvania Street downtown, wounded around Washington Street and Monument Circle, and then proceeded up Meridian Street.