Forecast Calls For Scorching Indy 500

Photo Courtesy: barrystickets.com

INDIANAPOLIS - Sunday's forecast calls for mostly slippery tires, with severe wall-wrecks possible by early afternoon and a chance of a surprise Indy 500 champion who simply set the car up perfectly for a hot day.

With temperatures forecast in the high 80's, drivers may be dealing with one of the hottest race days on record, raising blisters on the tires and peril on the track.

The Brickyard?

Come Sunday, this place could be called the Slickyard.

"It's a tough thing to guess," driver Brian Herta said Thursday, "but if I was a betting man, I'd say it's going to be very, very slick on Sunday."

To make matters worse, the month of May has been cool and wet; not only did drivers lose hours of practice time to the rain, but the laps they squeezed in were nothing like the conditions they'll face Sunday.

"It's really tough to plan for," Herta said. "It's been the craziest month of May for weather, and it can definitely affect the tires, the track grip, and we just haven't been practicing in those conditions."

Indianapolis is usually fairly cool in May, with an average high in the mid-70s and lows in the mid to low 50s. The record high for Indy came on May 30, 1953, when the mercury reached a sizzling 96 degrees and Carl Scarborough had to give way to relief driver Bob Scott.

Scarborough died later that day of heat prostration.

Today's fitness-obsessed drivers and modern equipment go a long way to relieve the risk of that happening again, but there's no denying that a firesuit, a helmet and a rear-mounted engine howling for three hours already make for a toasty ride.

"Of course it's going to affect your equipment, but fatigue might also become an issue," said two-time winner Helio Castroneves. "But the teams are professional enough that they should be able to deal with it."

Professional enough, too, to start pondering how to turn the torrid temperature into an advantage.

Michael Andretti, in the cockpit for the first time since he retired as a driver in 2003, let on that he may be staking his day on the Hoosier heat wave.

"I'm thinking about taking some gambles on my setup that may pay off and may not," Andretti said. "If they don't, I'll be a lap down early. If they do, I'll look like a hero. So I'm debating on whether I'm going to do something."

Defending champion Dan Wheldon said the heat can also limit the amount of track width upon which the cars can comfortably run, making the track "narrower" — and that will affect drivers' strategy as the day wears on.

"So you just have to bear it in mind," he said, "and that's just part of my job."

Put in perspective, though, Wheldon noted that it's not as if any one team will be magically immune to the swelter.

"It's going to be the same," he said, "for everybody."

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