Getting a full-ride scholarship to a prestigious school like MIT is the dream of many high school students. If they somehow found themselves in that position, 99 percent of those students would jump at the opportunity. J.R. Hildebrand was the other 1 percent. Since he was a kid, all Hildebrand wanted to do was race. […]
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.
Fresh-faced IndyCar star JR Hildebrand—a rookie no more, and not yet a veteran—takes the wheel in Indy Monthly’s May issue. The 24-year-old suffered a series of maladies, both physical and personal, in 2011. “These things happen in auto racing,” says a member of Hildebrand’s team. “But everything happened to JR, and I mean everything, in one year.”
JR Hildebrand spotted the starter’s white flag. “Bring it home, baby, bring it home,” chirped the rookie’s support staff over the radio from their perch in the pits. Four left turns away from winning the 2011 Indianapolis 500, Hildebrand buried the rush of excitement. No one, he told himself, cares who leads lap No. 199 at Indy. In the ether, though, the announcer’s voice on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network was already rising. Here he goes, the final lap! Across the line, JR Hildebrand will see the white flag.