Column: The magic is back

INDIANAPOLIS — It was Indianapolis, and it was IndyCar. It just wasn’t the Indianapolis 500.

It was the IndyCar Grand Prix of Indianapolis, and it was far from perfect. The drivers embarrassed themselves with yet another failed standing start.

There were too many cautions and not enough passes. The race was largely decided by strategy, not speed.

But it was exactly what IndyCar needed.

Change — and this is a word the traditionalists fear — seldom comes in IndyCar.

When it does, it arrives slowly and is usually met with hate and disgust from the fans who still think the Indianapolis 500 is what it was in the late 1970s when Tom Sneva broke 200 mph for the first time.

As much as it pains me to admit it, the “Magic of May” hasn’t really been around for years.

The Indianapolis 500 is still magical, but fans aren’t coming to qualifying and practice days as they used to when Rick Mears and A.J. Foyt were in their primes.

You can’t really blame them, considering the current state of IndyCar trying to find itself again.

But with the inaugural Grand Prix of Indianapolis and the new qualifying procedures, the “Magic of May” seems to be coming back.

When I pulled into the track seven hours before the race started, the fans were already there and you could practically hear the buzz.

You can argue attendance numbers until your face turns blue, but the speedway reported 40,000 spectators, and I was shocked it wasn’t more with the number of fans I saw.

And I only expect this to continue during the new changes this month.

Qualifying now spans two days, and points are awarded the first day. The series championship has been decided by less than a race in seven of the past eight years, so it doesn’t take a math major to realize how important these points could be.

The Sunday qualifying has been manufactured to restore added drama and fit into a network television time slot.

It climaxes with a pole shootout and a final chance to fill out the final row with a decision on the final three spots.

It isn’t exactly what Indianapolis was built on, but no longer does the track see 50 cars trying to qualify. The new format is undoubtedly exciting and is going to attract eyes.
Toss Jacques Villeneuve and NASCAR outlaw Kurt Busch into the mix, and IndyCar has enough storylines to keep paragraph factories like myself busy all month.

With the addition of these storylines, a qualifying format asking for drama and the road course race fans were treated to Saturday, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is finally creating buzz again.

The month of May is changing. And traditionalist fans and IndyCar faithful are going to be bitter about it.

Although the month of May lost its magic long ago, it can still be saved. A road course race and new formats won’t fix everything, but it’s a start.

And it all culminates with 33 cars running 500 miles around the world’s greatest racecourse.

That magic will never die.

Welcome back, May.

sbeishui@indiana.edu