The best seat at the Indianapolis 500? I went out and found it

SPEEDWAY, Ind. — It’s 6:01 a.m. and the cannons are booming at 16th and Georgetown, startling most from their sleep. Some are sprawled out in the back of pickup trucks, others on cots. My head is ringing. Twelve hours after enjoying the westside delicacy that is Mug-N-Bun pizza, breakfast is on its way: sausage links fried up on a George Foreman grill, washed down by whatever Miller Lites survived an overly ambitious Saturday tailgate.

This is how Bryan Grangier and his crew do the Indianapolis 500: Race weekend has started in the same parking lot for the better part of 40 years, a church that sits a few blocks from Indianapolis Motor Speedway. In his younger days, Grangier would spend the night before the race passed out on the sidewalk or on the hood of his car. The cannons, he came to learn, doubled as an alarm clock. There was no need for a snooze button.

For Hoosiers, this is our Christmas, this wonderful and uniquely Indiana tradition that’s been embedded in our DNA, passed from one generation to the next like a rite of passage. As far as we’re concerned, nothing else happens on Memorial Day weekend. Friends are wise not to schedule weddings that conflict; it’s never fun to tell them their nuptials take a back seat to an automobile race the locals can’t even watch live on TV.

Grangier’s missed just two races since his first in 1975, and both absences bother him all these years later: In 1987, his wife had an appendectomy — “How’s that for timing?” he shrugs — and in 1996, he refused to go, so irate at the open-wheel racing split that he sold his tickets, bought a six-pack of beer and went fishing instead, refusing to even flip on the radio.

He was back a year later.

For the die-hards like the 63-year-old Grangier, it’s “the race” and not the 500, “the track” instead of the Speedway. It’s not a day, not a week, but a month of buildup and anticipation, a celebration of American ingenuity and Hoosier hospitality. It’s the biggest family reunion on the planet. Across the city, “WELCOME RACE FANS” banners are unfurled after 11 months in the garage and hung on fences. Checkered flags line the sidewalks of neighborhoods from Greenwood up to Noblesville. Fans identify themselves by the turn they sit in.

For a decade-plus, I took in the Indy 500 from the spacious, air-conditioned media center that lines the home stretch; it’s a pretty enticing vantage point if you don’t mind missing out on the authenticity of a truly authentic spectacle. But it’s eerily quiet in there. Most watch on the flat-screen TVs that hang above the desks while the cars roar past.

All the while, there was this thought in the back of my head, gnawing at me a little more as the years passed: This race wasn’t meant to be watched inside.

Or on a TV.

Or quietly, for that matter.

This is a race that needs to be felt. Both vocally and viscerally.

Like it was when I was growing up, tagging along with Dad to Turn 2, grabbing a copy of The Indianapolis Star in the morning and picking out the driver I wanted to win.

There’s just something about sitting in the stands, cooler packed, nerves climbing, roars coming. There’s just something about hearing “Back Home Again …” with 300,000 friends standing in every direction, as far as the eyes can see. You don’t get that in the media center.

So this year, I decided to forget the press badge. For the first time in 12 years, I decided to watch the race from where it’s meant to be watched.

Here’s what it was like:

7:18 a.m.: It’s race morning, but the effects of Saturday are lingering. Progress is slow. Speedway is quiet, a sleepy town of 13,000 that’s about to — for a wild few hours — transform into the second-biggest city in the state of Indiana. Over a quarter-million people are on their way. Save for the COVID-19-marred year of 2020, when the race was held inside an empty IMS, this is where so many of them have spent every Sunday of Memorial Day weekend their entire adult lives.

Where progress isn’t slow is the Coke Lot, where sleep and proper hydration are optional. Music thumps. Horns blare. The energy is palpable, and the place is buzzing. I wonder how many will make it to see the end of the race.

Heck, some might not even see the start of the race.

8:48 a.m.: Driver picks. From the parking lot of the church, our group debates the favorites, logical and sentimental. Can Alex Palou sweep the month of May, winning the Grand Prix, the 500 pole and the race itself?

Alexander Rossi is a popular one. Takuma Sato. Scott Dixon. Locals Ed Carpenter and Conor Daly. And, of course, Tony Kanaan, who’s making his last of 22 Indianapolis starts. I side with Kanaan for the simple fact I often see him during drop-off at our kids’ school, and there’s just something that makes me chuckle about one of the best open-wheel drivers of his generation speeding off in a minivan.

9:23 a.m.: How many sporting venues open their gates and allow spectators on the field or court before the start? Imagine fans strolling across the infield a few hours before the World Series, hanging out at Centre Court at Wimbledon or taking photos at the 50-yard-line before the Super Bowl.

Even three hours before the green flag is first waved, the electricity is palpable. The yard of bricks is the place to be.

It speaks to this event’s versatility; it is a deeply communal race while also being an intensely personal one. The city and state have made it Indiana’s own. But each fan has their own story, their own seats, their own traditions.

So do those who are a part of it. Leigh Diffey, who calls the race on NBC, always finds a break in his race-day schedule to sneak in a few quiet moments on the yard of bricks. He’ll chat with a few “yellow shirts” — that’s what volunteers are called around here — and soak it all in, the opportunity at hand. It was 28 years ago he quit his job as a PE teacher in Queensland, Australia, to pursue a career in sportscasting.

For him and his team, this is the ultimate stage.

“You never forget the first time you stood in a corner and watch an IndyCar take one of the four turns at speed,” Diffey said this week. “You don’t know whether to giggle or be afraid.

“It doesn’t matter what anybody says,” he continued, “there is nothing like this event on the planet.”

10:44 a.m.: Walk toward the Snake Pit.

10:46 a.m.: Walk away from the Snake Pit.

11:01 a.m.: The sights. The 500 is a smorgasbord of style. Common sense ceases to matter. So does decorum. Mullets are not only acceptable but encouraged. Jorts are standard fare and have been for decades. One man is selling T-shirts that read, “B—, it’s race day.” Clever.

You don’t see those in the media center.

For a few hours, this place might be the single-greatest people-watching venue on the planet. The entertainment is endless.

11:49 a.m.: The smells. Those who’ve trekked to Indy know the scent, an amalgam of God knows what — asphalt and gasoline and light beer and nicotine and sunscreen and every type of fried food imaginable, all of it mixed with endless, endless, endless streams of people, plenty of whom have seemed to forget the whole personal hygiene route this weekend.

For better or worse, there’s nothing like it.

12:23 p.m.: It’s hitting me more and more as the pre-race festivities roll on how much better it is to experience these from the stands. There’s nothing like the buildup before the 500. It starts with “God Bless America” and continues with another stirring rendition of “Back Home Again in Indiana” from Jim Cornelison. The drivers are on the grid, and as the pageantry fades, the nerves rise.

The fans can feel it.

It’s almost time.

Diffey’s NBC broadcast teammate, Dale Earnhardt Jr., grew up the son of NASCAR royalty, believing the Daytona 500 was the ultimate when it came to motor racing in this country.

In his mind, one trip to Indianapolis changed that.

“Going through the traditional process of the pre-race leading right up to the moment the drivers kind of shoo everybody away from the cars and the drivers get in, I had seen nothing like that,” Earnhardt Jr. said this week. “I had never been around anything like that in motorsports.”

Then when he witnessed 33 cars topping out at 220 miles an hour?

“It looked like jet fighters floating right across the top of the racetrack.”

12:42 p.m.: The sounds. For my money, there’s no better sound in sports than an IndyCar zipping around the track at top speed. It’s a feeling that creeps up your spine and reverberates throughout your entire body. It stays with you. For Hoosiers, it reminds them of home.

I ask Grangier’s wife, Rhonda, how loud it gets when the green flag drops and the cars are 20 feet in front of us.

“Well,” she said with a smile, “we don’t do much talking.”

12:45 p.m.: Green flag!

From Stand E, Box 16, Seat 1, this is the thought that jumps to the front of my mind: I do not miss watching this race from the media center one bit.

This is how this race should be experienced.

12:46 p.m.: Uh-oh. Graham Rahal, starting at the back of the pack, is having some trouble. Apparently, he has a dead battery.

Make a mental note: A proper working battery is useful before covering 500 miles in a little over 2 1/2 hours.

1:01 p.m.: Lunch happens to be double-fried chicken. Heavenly.

1:29 p.m.: Nearly 60 laps in and no signs of a caution flag. Will this be the shortest race in history?

A good line from public address announcer Dave Calabro as he scans the masses: “Does anyone in the Snake Pit know the race has even started?”

I once asked Calabro what it was like, serving as the voice — and eyes — for a quarter-million fans for almost four straight hours.

“You can’t screw it up,” he said with a laugh.

1:52 p.m.: After 90 laps of green to start, the race’s first crash. Rookie Sting Ray Robb — yes, that’s his real name — is out just before halfway.

2:06 p.m.: A four-wide restart. Incredible. It feels like this should be illegal.

2:16 p.m.: One of the most daring passes of the entire race: Kanaan slides past Scott McLaughlin on the backstretch by skidding all four tires through the grass. Not sure I’ve ever seen that before here.

2:20 p.m.: A storyline to watch is emerging: Conor Daly, the stepson of IMS president Doug Boles, is climbing the field, and climbing fast. He’s running sixth, and a victory would make him the first Hoosier native to win this race since Wilbur Shaw did so for a third time in 1940.

3:10 p.m.: A surreal scene: With less than 20 laps to go, Felix Rosenqvist, who started third and had been running near the front all afternoon, spins out right in front of us, between turns 1 and 2, colliding with Kyle Kirkwood’s pink No. 27 car.

The impact loosened Kirkwood’s back left tire, ricocheting it over the catch fence and … into the stands?

No. Luckily. Thankfully. The tire missed the bleachers, careening between the Turn 2 grandstands and a row of suites. A white Chevy Cruze took the brunt of the impact, a far cry from a similar instance 36 years earlier when a tire wobbled loose from one car and smacked into another, soaring skyward and into the top row of the K grandstands. That’s where it collided with a Wisconsin man named Lyle Kurtenbach, killing him in an instant. His death remains the last spectator death at the Indianapolis 500.

“It looked like a flying saucer,” one witness said that day. “There was no time to think.”

There wasn’t Sunday, either, when Kirkwood’s Firestone Firehawk skied over the catch fence.

I spoke with Kurtenbach’s widow, Karen, for a story five years ago, and she came to mind after Sunday’s scare.

To this day she’s never watched or listened to another automobile race.

3:35 p.m.: A chaotic restart with nine laps to go features three-wide, with Pato O’Ward, defending champ Marcus Ericsson and Josef Newgarden warring at the front. Another former champ, Rossi, lurks in fourth, waiting for an opening.

This is getting good.

3:39 p.m.: O’Ward won’t wait. He goes for it. He crashes.

It’s the second red flag in a matter of minutes.

The drivers will restart with five to go.

3:45 p.m.: Another restart, another crash!

This time, it was Carpenter’s day that came to an end.

The result: another red flag, the third of the race — all coming across the final 16 laps.

The crowd in Stand E roars in approval. No one wants this ending under yellow-flagged caution. They’ll restart with a single lap remaining, a 2.5-mile shootout to decide the 107th running of the Indianapolis 500.

One lap, with immortality on the line.

Either Ericsson wins his second straight, or Newgarden earns his spot on the Borg-Warner Trophy.

Fair or not — Ericsson will vent afterward he didn’t feel it was the right thing to do — the drama is undeniable. Not a fan around us is in a seat. Hearts are racing.

3:49 p.m.: What a gamble.

What a race.

What a finish.

Newgarden stalks his prey like a lion in the wilderness, waiting … waiting … then pouncing, slipping past Ericsson on the high side of the backstretch, then weaving all over the track to protect his lead — right, left, right, left, right, left. Back and forth, all the way down the front stretch, toward the yard of bricks and the checkered flag.

On the TV broadcast, Diffey seizes his moment.

“JOSEF NEWGARDEN!” he screams, almost losing his voice. “IS THIS THE MOMENT WHEN THE PAIN ENDS?”

It was.

He’d done it.

Newgarden pumps his fists. His team jumps up and down in pit road. His wife keels over and fights back tears.

For a driver, nothing changes your life like winning the Indianapolis 500.

One victory lap was enough. Newgarden wanted out. He wanted to celebrate with the people. He slid down the home stretch, leaped from his No. 2 Shell Chevrolet, snuck through a hole in the netting and hopped a wall.

He pumped his fists. He high-fived fans. He climbed the bleachers, hugging strangers, roaring in excitement, letting the greatest triumph of his career wash over him.

And in that moment, it was clear: how much this place means to the drivers, and how much it means to so, so many more.

(Top photo of the view from Stand E, Box 16, Seat 1: Zak Keefer / The Athletic)