Why, Indy World, Would Anyone Want To Race At K Mart?

This is not Indianapolis. I sense it immediately. I sense it because of the clerk at the rental-car desk in Detroit.

“How do I get to the racetrack?” I ask.

“Racetrack?” asks the clerk.

“You know, where the big 500-mile race is this weekend.”

“Racetrack?” the clerk repeats.

In Indianapolis, everybody knows where the racetrack is.

Here, everybody knows that nobody knows where the racetrack is.

“I’d ask my boss,” says the clerk, “but I’m sure she doesn’t have directions, either.”

Welcome to the U.S. 500, the event being staged by peeved car owners who are feuding with the Indy 500. The dispute is complicated. But it boils down to two sentences: Tony George, who owns the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, wants to set the rules for IndyCar racing. Meanwhile, the men who own the IndyCars want George to get lost.

And so today, both sides will spend 500 miles sticking out their 230-mph tongues at each other. The Indy 500 will go on as usual, and the inaugural U.S. 500 will be staged in Michigan.

“This is a war between the leaders of our sport,” says Al Unser Jr., not mincing words.

“But I think our race here will be the best show for the public,” says Emerson Fittipaldi, two-time Indy winner. “We have the best teams and the best drivers.”

He has a point. In Indianapolis, fans will see a race filled with unfamiliar names and much older cars.

The flip side is, Fittipaldi and his famous friends will be forced to rev up their new cars at a remote location.

And we do mean remote. Michigan International Speedway, site of the U.S. 500, is almost 2 hours west of downtown Detroit, in a hilly, wooded part of the state. The track is just down the pike from a roadside diner named Bunkie’s (home of the Skinnyburger) and just outside the quaint hamlet of Brooklyn (home of Brooklyn Bowl lanes) with its 1,100 residents.

Not exactly your basic glamorous venue of lore and legend.

What a stupid, sorry state of affairs. The Indy 500 this year is going to be a Saks Fifth Avenue store filled with K mart merchandise. And this U.S. 500 race will consist of the displaced Saks merchandise being sold at a rural flea market.

Neither option is what the customers really want. Wait and see. Attendance at the Indy 500 is expected to be down at least slightly from its normal 350,000. The 90,000 seats at Michigan International - where the IndyCars already run an annual race in July - probably will be filled. But many tickets were given away through various promotions.

The drivers? They’re pragmatic. In fact, Michael Andretti was sitting in a hospitality trailer Friday morning, being remarkably candid.

“The U.S. 500 is more like damage control than anything,” he says. “Had this race not been scheduled, a lot of teams would have been pressured into going to Indianapolis.”

That’s what the Indy people were counting on. George’s family, which has owned the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for three generations, traditionally has staged just the big race on Memorial Day weekend. But last year, George announced he was going to start his own series of races around the country. As an enticement, George promised the top 25 cars in his new series guaranteed spots in the 33-car Indy field.

That, of course, left only eight available slots for the 20 or so drivers who campaign on the regular IndyCar circuit. Yet George thought he had the hammer. He figured no IndyCar owner or sponsor would dare stay away from the world’s biggest race.

But guess what? They did. And they invented their own race. Maybe the drivers and the owners gathered for the U.S. 500 aren’t traditional guerrilla rebels - unless you know of guerrilla who dine on buffets outside luxury mobile homes - but they are passionate. Some say they’ll never go back to Indy.

“The way everything has changed, Indy is not even Indy anymore,” says Rick Mears, the retired four-time Indy 500 winner who works for IndyCar major-domo Roger Penske.

“When someone starts dictating automatic entries into a race, it’s just not right. What if the NFL playoffs worked that way? This is like telling the Dallas Cowboys that they can’t play in the Super Bowl because too many other teams have already been granted automatic entry.”

Safety is a more serious concern. Most cars in the U.S. 500 are 1996 models, but half of the Indy 500 cars are 2 or 3 years old. That’s a lifetime in this high-tech sport. There’s even one car from 1991 at Indy. It probably has an eight-track player with a Peter Frampton tape stuck inside.

Andretti is not inclined to joke. He’s concerned that 17 of the 33 qualified drivers at Indy are rookies, vs. seven of the 27 drivers in Michigan.

“There are a lot of good young drivers at Indy, but I’m not sure they are all ready for Indy,” Andretti says. “I’m holding my breath over the start. I’m very worried. I think it could be a scary race. There are a lot of underfinanced race teams. There’s a lot of old equipment that’s ‘mileaged out.’ There are a lot of new crew members. All you need is one guy tightening one bolt the wrong way.”

Andretti sighs.

“I’ve always gotten along with Tony George,” he says. “I just don’t agree with what he’s done. It’s nothing personal. But I believe he could really end up hurting one of the greatest sporting events in the world. I’m not sure if it’ll ever be the same.”

Out here in the woods, it already isn’t.