Hey Driver, to the Top of the World

42,000 people stand in the blazing sun and rampant humidity, tingling with anticipation, holding their collective breath for one brief moment as 20 powerful machines file into sight, two by two. A green flag is waved, and the rumble that has been building crescendos into a defiant scream as the cars turn into brightly colored blurs as they zoom past. Within moments they are all past, curving off and around to return 17 seconds later, leaving the sunbaked crowd grinning and cheering. After a year, the Indycars are back in Iowa, anticipation turned to exhilaration.

I can’t precisely trace things back to the time I became an Indycar fan, per se. I do, though, remember in vivid detail the first time I found myself interested in auto racing. I couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old at the time, and I was at home on a Sunday while my Dad watched a NASCAR race (still not sure why he was watching, since he’s not really a big fan). Not having anything better to do, I came over and watched for a while but didn’t really pay attention. Then, after that race had ended, the network chose to air an IROC race.

IROC, or International Race of Champions, was a racing series based on the premise of bringing in successful drivers from various forms of motorsports, handing them the keys (figuratively) to identically prepared cars, and setting them loose on a track for 25 laps or so to find out who was the best of the best. A neat concept, but since the cars and tracks most closely resembled the familiar haunts of NASCAR, it usually turned out that a NASCAR driver won the thing.

I didn’t understand that at the time. I just saw that that there was another car race with brightly colored cars. Unlike the cars in NASCAR, IROC vehicles didn’t have sponsors, so the organizers used color to differentiate the drivers. The fateful year that I tuned in, fluorescent colors were in vogue, leading to a lot of fun-looking cars, up to and including hot pink. I immediately chose the neon yellow-green car as my favorite, having no idea who the driver was, and decided to root for that car.

Maybe if the race had been longer, I would have been bored. Maybe without the bright colors I wouldn’t have been interested in the first place. My Dad could have chosen to not watch racing that weekend, or the network could have ended the broadcast after NASCAR. None of those things happened though, and I watched the green car race its way through the field and win the first race I’d ever watched. It was awesome.

I progressed into watching NASCAR as much as I could, even listening on the radio when we were away from home. After many years, I grew tired of NASCAR’s long races and blocky cars, and shifted to the incredible speed and swoopy lines of Indycar. These cars were capable of running side-by-side at 200+ miles per hour, inches apart, darting and weaving amongst each other, and usually finishing within fractions of a second of one another.

Watching Indycar on TV was a frequent weekend pastime of mine by time I moved to college and beyond into my life in Iowa. And then something happened to change things once more. For some reason that I’ve never fully comprehended, NASCAR driver Rusty Wallace decided to build a race track in the cornfields 40 miles outside of Des Moines. Field of Dreams references are all too easy to make in this situation, but maybe it’s not so farfetched to imagine ghostly whispers coaxing Rusty to “build it.” He did, and the Indycar series came.

The first year Indycars put wheels down in Iowa was a fiasco for many, but for my wife and me, it was incredible. Late to buy tickets, we were left with the option to purchase seats in the temporary grandstands or to sit at home and watch on TV. We chose the temporary bleachers, but knew that as first-come-first-serve, we would need to arrive early. Getting to the track around eight in the morning for a twelve-thirty race start, we found the tiny temporary stands and staked out a good spot. In turn four of the racetrack, and in the highest of the six rows, we could see the whole track and were free to stand without blocking anyone’s view behind us.

We eagerly sat waiting through the prerace ceremonies and driver introductions, while those who arrived later sat frustrated in traffic waiting for parking spots. Then came the epic “most famous words in motorsports.”

“Drivers, start your engines!”

The roar that erupted from the pit lane was shocking, in part due to watching for years on television. I had become accustomed to the sound that came through the speakers on the broadcast, and expected to hear it again. But the volume was incredibly higher, the tone was much deeper, and the entire speedway seemed to thunder with the rage of the pent-up power in those engine bays. And then they started moving – and things got louder and angrier. When the green flag flew, things had whipped up into a frenzy, with the deep abrasive scream of the engines and the high-pitched whine of the tires on pavement singing in concert.

By the end of that race, our ears were ringing (we didn’t know to bring earplugs), our faces were sprinkled with a few tiny flakes of spent rubber, our camera memory card was full, and we were thrilled. The race had been incredible, and we had spent the past two-and-a-half hours pointing in awe as incredible passes or wild confrontations occurred, only able to shout comments to one another during the caution periods with the engines slowed. We decided we would have to come back.

We’ve been to the race at Iowa Speedway the succeeding two years, and each race was great. I’ve now been able to see some of my favorite drivers race at a track that’s pretty much in my own backyard. Of course, as I’ve been following the series more closely, I’ve been able to pick my favorite drivers based on personality or driving record rather than simply car color. But as this year’s race drew to a close with Dario Franchitti winning, I had to smile a bit as his lime green car pulled into victory lane.