Friday, May 9, 2003
The transcript from an Indy Racing League teleconference with ABC broadcasters Bob Jenkins, Paul Page and Scott Goodyear, part of the network's IRL IndyCarTM broadcast team. Jenkins is the host, Page handles play-by-play, and Goodyear is the analyst.
K. Johnson: Welcome, everyone to the Indy Racing Teleconference for this week, Tuesday, May 6th. Today we will take a look toward the 87th running of the Indianapolis 500 with veteran ABC Sports motorsports broadcasters Bob Jenkins, Paul Page and Scott Goodyear. Bob Jenkins is now in his second year as host of IRL IndyCar Series telecasts and has served as either host or anchor for a wide variety of auto racing circuits and events, including, the Indianapolis 500, IndyCar Series and IROC, NASCAR Winston Cup and Busch Series telecasts on ABC, ESPN as well as other events. Paul Page is certainly one of the most recognizable voices in motorsports and has covered a wide variety of racing series and events during his 26-year career, including, the Indianapolis 500, IndyCar Series, IROC and the NASCAR Winston Cup Series. And Scott Goodyear, a two-time Indianapolis 500 runner-up is now in his second season as color analyst of IndyCar Series telecasts. Goodyear recorded three victories during his IndyCar Series career and placed second to Al Unser Jr. in 1992 at Indianapolis in what was at that time and still is the closest finish in Indianapolis 500 history. Gentlemen, welcome and thanks for joining us today.
Jenkins: Good to be here.
Page: Thank you.
Goodyear: Thank you.
K. Johnson: To start, there are so many compelling story lines leading up to this year's event. Let's start with Bob. One of the foremost stories, obviously, is that of Helio Castroneves, who is making a bid to become the first driver to win three '500's in a row. If you can give us your perspective on what he has accomplished over the past two years here at the Speedway as well as his chances for a third straight '500' win this year.
B. Jenkins: Well, you know when the checkered flag dropped last year on the race and we had our repeat winner I thought to myself 'Wow, when next year rolls around this is going to be the story of the month.' I mean, we cannot top a story about a potential three-in-a-row winner. But by golly, I think we have other stories that have emerged, and I am sure that we will talk about them as the time goes along; Michael's last race and several others. But I still think this does indeed have to be one of the top stories. We have never had a driver win three races in a row, and I think it is extremely possible that we will see that this year. Helio Castroneves, I can remember for many years back as an also-ran in the pack, but since joining Team Penske he has just had an incredible record. And I did not think that he was going to win the race last year at some portions of the event, but when the white flag dropped and the checkered flag dropped, there he was, and I see no reason why he shouldn't be labeled as really the overall favorite for winning the race again. When you have a driver who is as talented as he is and when you have a team that is as strong as Marlboro Team Penske, you have a winning combination. I wonder right now, as I think about the last few laps of this race, what emotion there is going to be if indeed Helio is leading a race and people are anticipating the first three-time winner of the '500' and anticipating him climbing the fence, but then there is the other faction that says 'What happens if Michael Andretti is leading the race and we have the possibility of him, after so many years of being disappointed and unlucky at the Speedway, winning in his final event?' So I am anticipating so many good stories, but certainly the Andretti and Castroneves stories, as far as I am concerned, are the top ones as we are at this point of the month.
K. Johnson: Well, Paul, moving on to you, Bob mentioned the name Andretti. The Indianapolis 500 has literally made the careers of many race drivers. This year, for the first time since 1993, the names Andretti, Foyt and Unser are all entered in the race. Give us your thoughts on this, especially with it being Michael's final year at the Speedway as a driver and Anthony Foyt's initial year in the '500'.
P. Page: Well, I think one of the things that originally attracted me to the Indianapolis 500 when I was a boy was the whole historical and traditional aspect of it. It is all about lineage. One of the beauties of this event is that, unlike Super Bowl or World Series, the Olympics or any of those, the possible exception of the (Kentucky) Derby, this is one of the few events that is actually held in the same location every year and the guy that goes down the straightaway to win it this year, or gal, is going to be going down the same straightaway that Ray Harroun did in 1911. So, lineage is so critically important and having names like Andretti and Unser and Foyt and watching those names go into second and third generations is unbelievable. Now that Michael, Bob already touched on it, the incredible story there and what if Michael does score an Andretti win in his last race and like Sam Hanks in 1957, pulls into winner circle and says: 'That is it. I am done.' What if Foyt IV comes up, and it has been done by rookies, Montoya did it, Graham Hill did it. What if he comes up with a win? I mean like you say, this event is so rift with great stories, I am so pumped about it.
K. Johnson: Scott Goodyear, back in 1995 you came oh-so-close to giving Honda a victory at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Now they are back, but they have some solid competition coming from Toyota and Chevrolet. Can you tell us something about the drive and determination that the manufacturers have in pursuing a victory in the '500'?
S. Goodyear: Well, I think that is going to be a large story this month, also. And I can tell you from my experience in '95 when I got involved with them that we did a fair amount of testing just at the Speedway getting ready for the '500'. And I thought that I really understood everything that they were doing, the dedication they seem to have and how they were single-minded toward the '500'. But as I started to do some testing after the event, I can recall a time at Mid-Ohio, probably in August, getting ready for the event there in September. We had been there for a couple of days testing, and we were trying to improve the car, improve the motor, and I went into the Honda trailer like I had done so many times before and sat in the front lounge with the engineers. We went over some things and were really trying to pinpoint one thing that was happening on the racetrack and they said: 'You know, for this we must go back and look at some data. And can you come with us?' So I come down and I walk down the lower part of the trailer and there are still some more people there with the computers, but then we went behind a little pocket door into the very back of the trailer, which I had never been to even as I started with them back in April, and there had been four engineers there watching the telemetry and watching the computers live as I am out there running, and I had never met these guys before. They must get there at six in the morning. When you leave at night, they are still there. And I walked in there, and I thought, 'This is just another level of commitment that is here with these guys.' And I am sure it has grown since then. The drive and the commitment from the Japanese manufacturers was overwhelming for me at that point in time, and Chevrolet and Ford were involved in the series at that moment, and I could see why they were getting success. And I guess I am not surprised to sort of see both Toyota and Honda come in this year and make a mark so quickly. And they really want to out-do each other. We talked about that on the Japanese telecast, and I think that they will stop at nothing. And I am sure that both of them are trying to win this event for the first time as we thought we had done for them in '95. There is no doubt they are going to pull out all the stops, and they have probably been preparing for this one race. It is probably more important than the whole season to them. It is more important than the first IRL win. It is the Indy 500.
K. Johnson: I want to reflect back and get some comments from something that Paul alluded to when he said, 'when the checkered flag falls for the guy or the gal who wins this race.' One of the big stories in sports this month is actually taking place in the world of golf, where Annika Sorenstam is attempting to compete against the men at Colonial. And many journalists are treating it like this is unchartered waters, but in our sport, Lyn St. James and right now Sarah Fisher have been doing this for years and doing it on a fairly even keel with everybody else. Let's start with Scott because you have competed against her. Give us your perspective on what Sarah has done.
S. Goodyear: I think it is tremendous because I know from sitting in the seat that it is a very tough environment to be in. Obviously, I do not understand the pressures that she may have on herself being the only female in the series at this point in time, but you think of how long she has been racing. It is the same as all of us that came up through go-karts, and she went through midgets and those types of things before she got an opportunity to try Indy-style cars. And she is still very young but very experienced, and I can think back to probably Kentucky, I think it was, in 2000. We are standing up on the podium, and she is on the podium, and she cannot sip the champagne because she is underage. So you think about that and realize how young she really is in a sport that has a lot of people with a lot of experience and a lot of veterans, and she is doing a wonderful job. I think that once she knows, from a confidence point of view, that she has the whole season in front of her, if a package ever comes together then your mindset changes as a race driver. Then you start thinking about going off and just doing testing and practicing and getting ready for the events and focusing on training and working with your team. Right now, she is probably wearing the race hat come Friday, Saturday, Sunday and then wearing the sponsor's hat come Monday through Thursday and probably a little bit of that on the weekend. But you are not clear-minded in your commitment throughout the week as much as you think you are. And I have lived both sides of the fence. So I look forward to the day where she has a package together where maybe it is not only one year but maybe it is two years that she knows that she has a set ride, and then you are just working on the little things to improve for the next weekend because that is what everybody else is doing out there right now. All the top teams with their drivers, with their engineers, have that relationship where it is small little steps to make a big difference on race weekend for next weekend and the weekend following. And right now you know they are basically assembling everything every time they get to the racetrack. So for her and the team, for Dennis Reinbold and the group, I hope that that all comes together for her soon.
K. Johnson: Now, Paul, the same topic, but if you could give us your perspective. Having been a mainstream journalist, come from that side of the fence as to what Sarah is doing here?
P. Page: Yes, I was kind of disappointed in that you only read the first of the 12 pages of my introduction. Having broadcast the America's Cup this year, I am going from the slowest competitors to the fastest. I think you have to remember that Sorenstam is a promotion. She has picked the one course that she can compete on. It is a good technical course, and the women play well there. She is not going to play the PGA where she has to drive the long ball and all that. On the other hand, motorsports, and the Indy Racing League in particular, offers a level playing field for men and for women. Now, women have not traditionally taken advantage of that, but as more like Sarah enter in the lower ranks, down in the go-kart racing is certainly somewhere that you have to start to get to Indy when you are 5 or 6 and work your way up. But it does offer the level playing field for her. And I think that is something that maybe racing has not touted nearly enough. Yes, we used to run the 'powder puff' derbies, but there is nothing in the sport prevents a female like Sarah or like Lyn or like Desire Wilson or Janet Guthrie from climbing in the car and doing exactly what the men are doing and have nothing working against them when they do it. I am surprised there have not been more women up 'til now. But I am kind of, you know, I am not as impressed with the fact that Annika is going to go play on a course that she actually knows and has picked because she has the ability to do well there, because she certainly is not looking at the tour. Whereas Sarah has been and continues to look at the league and look for a championship, and it is within her reach.
Q: This is addressed to any one who cares to respond to it or all three of you. As you might presume many of us make it our business to view television motorsports broadcasts when we are not somewhere covering them in person. I do not so much quarrel with the substance of these broadcasts as much as I do with the style, specifically with other broadcasting teams that sometimes murder its assaults on the English language. There are broadcast that sometimes come to the point where I have to remove the audio portion and just look at the visual part of it because the broadcasters are wallowing and they are hopefully there in terms of their 'awesomes', their windows of opportunities, their worse-case scenarios and so forth. My question is this, can you comment on broadcasting vernacular and on language qualities?
K. Johnson: Paul, why don't you start with that and then maybe Bob can follow-up.
P. Page: Well, I can only really speak to that relative to our own group, and I hope I understand your question correctly. I think the approach that our team uses is something like the Indy 500 and all major racing events are covered more like you would a large news event. Bob hosts the thing, and his job is to pull together all of these different reports coming from different people, and each of us working with Bob have a very defined role. I am often accused of hyperbole. I guess that probably is true, but I think what you are really seeing when you hear that from me is how much I really love this and I get excited about it and I get pumped about it. And I am normally fairly loud and outgoing person anyway. So I think the important thing is that I am not sitting there, nor is any of our team trying to come up with some fancy line. I'm not waiting to try to get this comment in the broadcast, or I am trying to say something that will help this or that group. I am trying to give an accurate picture of how the race gets from the start to finish. And each of our people have to accomplish the same thing. My job, if it is done correctly, is with the start of the program to give you some idea of what to look for, and then establish maybe four good story lines and then, hopefully if we picked them right, one of the story lines will play to a finish. There is a lot that you can do in a 500-mile race that you cannot accomplish in a 200-mile race. You may not recognize it sitting at home, but to an announcer it is entirely different animal. And in a 500-mile race you have a great deal of time to do a lot of things that you ordinarily cannot do or that we ordinarily cannot do. You have an opportunity to give a little time and attention to other individuals who would not normally get to the front of the field. A 200-mile race is just in time and in distance so short and happens so fast in the Indy Racing League that there is not a lot that can be done from my point of view other than saying, 'Here is what is happening, here is what could happen, and here is how they got there.' And then, of course, the pit guys are going to give us their input, and Scott is going to hopefully put the experts' view on that, and then Bob is going to tie the whole thing together. I do not think any of us try to force anything in. I think we try to address those roles. One thing I am proud of is, with the exception of Scott, we all speak proper American. Scott, being a Canadian, will occasionally get an 'eh' in there.
S. Goodyear: Eh?
P. Page: Or, he will call it the hood a 'bonnet' and stuff like that. But other than those few failings, I think at least most of us have a high school education and show it. Did that answer your question? Was that where you were going?
Q: Yes. Anybody else have something to say anything about language?
B. Jenkins: I have said this many times, and a lot of you probably are tired of hearing it, but I am a race fan first and a television announcer second. And I sat at home so many years and watched television, and still do as a matter of fact, and watch it closely and in some cases listen closely, and from that I draw my ideas as to what I think is good and what I think is bad. And I will be very honest with you, when I am watching other series on television there are times when I hit the mute button because I just do not think that what is about to happen is necessary, and in fact, sometimes I think it is rather silly to do that. But I am not being critical. I am just telling you my personal opinion. I think Edward R. Murrow once said, and I am not one to quote people, but I think I learned this back in college and that is the job of an announcer is to try to appeal to as many people as possible. So you speak with good English and in terms that a college professor can understand without insulting the intelligence of a truck driver, and that is not again to insult truck drivers and their lack of intelligence. But that is what I try to do. I just try to be a race fan, and I try to express to my audience exactly what I am feeling and I try to convey to them the emotion that I am feeling. I think if we all did that and when we all do that, and all of us do I think on our telecast, we keep our head above perhaps others that are in our same business.
P. Page: I do think, if I can add one thing, that you have to remember that all of us, but especially play-by-play analysts and hosts, we constantly have a conversation going on in our right ear while we are trying to talk. And every now and then that just so distracts you that you say something that is out of syntax or bad grammar, or just stupid. And there is not an event that we do not go home and all of us, you know, we get in the car after the race and we look at each other and say, 'Did you hear what I said'?
B. Jenkins: Boy, you can say that again.
P. Page: It just happens. And that is part of your process and so much all at once.
Q: Well, that is the difference between the speakers and writers. I am no good on my feet, but when I write I have the option 10 minutes or 10 hours from now to say, 'Oh, did I say that stupid thing'? And I alter it.
B. Jenkins: That is a very good point. And there have been days, believe me, and I know Paul is in the same boat, when we get off the air and I go into a deep state of depression because I think I know that I have done a very poor job. I remember one year after doing a race at Cleveland, I blew the opening in a show, and it was my fault. The producer was telling me what to do, and I just simply blew it. I went home, and my in-laws were there from Florida, and they were going to be there only a short time, and I could not sit down and have a conversation with them. I had to go to my room, and I had to sulk the rest of the night. So we really do have feelings, and we know when we screw up, and we do like to hear criticism and comments on how we can improve.
Q: Mind you, I was not intending to be an accusatory here…
B. Jenkins: No, I understand, but I am just telling you that we really try to do our best.
Q: I suspect there are times when you think you have done something improper that the listener does not hear that, you hear it.
B. Jenkins: Right. You know you made a mistake but perhaps other people have …
S. Goodyear: If I may add something to that because I am the new guy on the team, actually, and last year was a huge learning curve for me. It was almost like going from a Formula Ford up to an Indy car in a sense and for that, you know, as a driver everybody knows that the driver out there is very busy. He is trying to get ready to negotiate a turn at 220 miles an hour, trying to make sure he hits his mark by 6 inches and watching the cars in front of him, probably watching the cars behind him. Checking out the mirrors, looking at the computer and all these things are going on. You are just multi-tasking along with listening on the radio when things are happening, either from the spotter or from the pit box or what have you. Well, I was overwhelmed last year when I started to do this job and that is from the standpoint that I really always parallel two things together in that, when you take a green flag in a race as a driver you are going flat out as hard as you can until you get a yellow and then it is time to strategize. And the same thing happens in the booth. We have the same build up to the green flag as the driver does because we are waiting for 'We are live on three, two, one.' And maybe it is a little different for Bob and Paul because these guys are truly the professionals in it, and I have learned so much from them in a short space of just over a year. And for me it is amazing when they say, 'Live' and you are going, it is a green flag, and you go, go, go. But when it is yellow, we are not sitting around sipping coffee. We are strategizing with the producer, listening to what is going on inside the truck down there and trying to figure out what is coming up next, where you are going to go to and to what segments, what you are about ready to show. And it is just like racing there again, that you can make a plan but you go back to a green flag, and it can all change in one turn's notice or in a moment's notice, and it always does. So to pick up on something that these guys are talking about where there is always something going on in your ear, it is the same thing as driving the race car. It is always forever changing. And when we are talking, there is the producer usually in your ear talking about where they are going next or we have to get down to Jack Arute or Gary Gerould in 10 seconds. OK. Be off in five (seconds). All that stuff happening in your ear, and for me I used to always laugh because I used to always take a couple of Advil's before I got in the race car because I was going to have a headache at the end of the day. I knew that just from the pressure of driving the car and listening to the motor and everything like that. After the first couple of races last year, I started taking Advil before the show because you got a headache by the time you are finished because you are 110 percent as when you are driving a race car, mentally, and I am going to say you are about 125 percent when you are sitting in a booth, because if I make a small mistake on a racetrack I can turn the wheel and get it back as I am going through the turn. If you make a small mistake on the air, everybody in the world is listening, and you are just sitting there feeling like the biggest idiot that there is. So there is a lot of pressure in both, and I find it difficult to understand how it all works but, boy, I am learning a lot. I have learned a lot in the last year. And I have seen it with both these guys, and Bob is the host and Paul is play-by-play, and there are some times that we are going to go back and go live to air and something happens, or a machine is not ready to show whatever clip it was we are going to do, and these guys will be prepped ready to go and just about ready to go on live, and the producer will say to either one of those two guys: 'No, we cannot do that. Change it to this. Go with that'. And all of sudden they do it, and they just fill it in, and it just happens along very easily, or a machine breaks and we are about ready to go to something and these guys filled in for 10 or 15 seconds until something else comes up. I do not want to say it is ad-libbed, but I mean, they are true professionals. And I have been enjoying it, and I do not think the people at home really understand what goes on behind the scenes, because they see racing on TV, they know the driver has 40 guys behind him as a team and here, we have 40 or 50 guys, and girls, that are dedicated every weekend when we go to an event and probably over 100 or 125 when you come to the Indy 500 that are part of our team. The team philosophy is still there. So it is a neat environment. It is a learning environment for me, but I just wanted to add that in there.
Q: I do not see how you could go very far wrong, rhetorically, if you speak simple but correct English.
S. Goodyear: Well, we certainly do.
Q: And I don't say you don't.
S. Goodyear: And I appreciate that, and I think that we are all sort of, when we first heard that the Japanese race might come home we thought, 'Boy, we have a learning curve ahead of us.' So we are worried about making sure that we get to fill in the information correctly. Well, I appreciate what you are saying. But there again, it is relaying that to the people at home, and the people that watch TV, that sometimes do not have the same opinion as you.
K. Johnson: I would like to toss something out that might further help answer that question and this will be directed to Paul and Bob. Scott, as a driver analyst, obviously came from the car, but in television you are conveying what people are seeing. But both Bob Jenkins and Paul Page brought years of experience with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network and in that medium you have to literally paint the picture. Bob, can you just discuss how that background has helped you in the television booth? Or Paul? It looks like we dropped Bob. He will get back in.
S. Goodyear: I do that to Bob all the time. I talk so long that he had nodded off, scared him off.
K. Johnson: Paul, same scenario for you though. I mean, your years in the radio booth and then you transfer that knowledge and experience into the TV realm.
P. Page: One of the most interesting conversations that Bob and I have had, and you have to remember, Bob and I go back to hard news days in the early '70s. And the conversation is that he does not miss radio at all and loves television, and I miss radio. I miss that ability to put two events that actually occurred simultaneously, put them together and give them both their due. And I miss the large crews. Having said that, I absolutely love the television, but sometimes the fact that in radio, where you are the anchor you are controlling the whole thing. I have a boss in my producer Bob Goodrich, who is more critical in determining where the show is going to go than I am as play-by-play, or Bob is as the host. So sometimes what they know down in the truck and what we know up in the booth are two entirely different pieces of knowledge because they have more data and stats and just general logistical support, and they can actually talk to people where we cannot ask the spotter on Turn 3 what he is seeing to tell us that this is going to happen, whereas the truck does. So sometimes we get in differences as to where the flow of the story is going. That is the nature of television. It is also the nature of the television that you are really only supposed to comment relative to what is on the screen. Now we have been able to change that somewhat and the audience, as it gets more sophisticated, can deal with that. But it used to be that if you mentioned that this was happening and somebody did not see it, the audience would just go crazy. 'You are talking about it, I need to see.' And the most extreme example of that was when Kevin Cogan crashed on the first lap at Indy, and I saw it. And it turns out to be like a second-and-a-half before the shot came up, but that was a '30-minute' second-and-a-half for me. And I was waiting and waiting and waiting and trying to decide whether or not I could jump in there and say, 'This is going on'. And the shot fortunately came up.
Q: Would any of you like to comment about the necessity of thinking on your feet? That is another thing I cannot do. It takes me 20 minutes to assemble my thoughts, if then.
P. Page: Well, for me the trick is preparation. I go into the booth with some notes, a good many notes, and I work on them carefully. The real fact is you almost never get a chance to look at those notes because it is guaranteed the second you look away from the screen or the track something is going to happen. But the fact that you do that preparation, and you do it constantly and you think about it, you do not have specific things memorized but you know that there are tangents that should something A happen, that you then subsequently want to do B and C.
Q: There must constantly be moments when something has happened but you do not know quite what it is.
P. Page: Oh, more often than not. Well, last year is a great example. We knew that a pass was in the process of occurring for the lead, that Paul Tracy was going around. I clearly understood that there was no way that Helio Castroneves was going to finish the lap on fuel, as did his team, and then suddenly we cut to a crash. So now I do not have any idea, and neither did Scott, neither did Bob, of exactly when the yellow occurred. We knew it was critical. I played it safe and, I think, verbalized that we will probably end up with scoring at the end of the last lap. I knew that there was a timing line there and we might go to that. But Scott and I, all of us, also clearly understand the rules and not being sure of exactly when that yellow hit, we did not know what we could say. And we kind of went off the air still discussing that. So yes, you are constantly doing that sort of thing. You are also constantly trying to balance. You may have a guy in the lead who is in the lead for the first time and he has a personal best going, but the fact is that he is there more because of a pit strategy that put him there at that particular time and the reality is that in another five laps that whole complexion will change and he is not a real factor. So how much attention do you pay to him? How much attention do you pay to the eventual leader of the race? It is probably an ongoing basis for a decision process of where you are taking the story. And the only way you do that is being prepared to do the story.
B. Jenkins: And just as Scott was talking about how things can go wrong during a telecast I was disconnected.
Q: Paul, could you speak to the significance of the possibility of there being less than 33 cars in this year's field?
P. Page: Yes, I can start by saying I do not believe it. I do not why. Well, yes, I do know why there is a focus on that. It is because the league and the car driver combination at this moment do not forecast 33 cars on Saturday. And again, one of the things I always think is so cool at Indy is walking down the pits in the garage area and looking at all the guys with helmet bags and all the possibilities that are going to kick up there. And Bryan Herta just got announced yesterday, though it is really a replacement. Jimmy Kite bounces in on the 18 car. But just think of the list of names of people who are there, and once you get the first car in the field, if I am an owner, I am sitting there, I have my car qualified or my two cars qualified and I know that the Indy 500 pays so much, now I am going to look and the driver is going to look. So you have Jeff Ward, Memo Gidley, all of those guys are available, Alex Barron. I mean, all of them are sitting there, and it is a fairly large group who are capable of qualifying cars and there are going to be cars there. No owner worth his salt is going to announce that prior to getting his cars in on Saturday, but I will tell you what, I am heading for the garage area as soon as qualifying is done on Saturday because the negotiations back there are going to be stupendous. And there are going to be 33 cars.
B. Jenkins: I think the question is 'Where in the world did the media come up with the idea that there may not be (33 cars)?' Now, I may be all wrong about this, and if I am, believe me at the end of qualifying a week from Sunday I am going to apologize. But just because when we entered this month of May we had only 28 car-and-driver combinations does not mean that we are going to have less than 33 cars. There are 67 cars entered in this year's '500.' Yes, there will not be that many cars show up. There will certainly not be that many that pass technical inspection. But there will be enough cars to fill a 33-car field. Yes, right now there are 28 drivers that are listed as having a ride, but there are at least that many, if not more, that are there seeking a ride, and those rides will come together as they always have in the past, especially as Paul said, when a primary car is qualified. And even if the owner does not want to put in a second car, he is going to offer that car up for lease to somebody, and somebody else is going to come along and say, 'OK, we will lease it for this particular driver.' Again, I will apologize profusely if I am wrong about this, but I just do not think that it is not going to be the way it is. We will see 33 cars, and we will probably see two or three bumped, I think.
P. Page: And let me add that if it goes the way you are suggesting, and there are not 33 going into Bump Day and there are not a lot of folks in line, there will be an 'ABC Sports Special' owned by Jenkins and Page and driven by Goodyear.
B. Jenkins: That is right.
Q: Bob, I drew that assumption simply because, tell me if I am wrong, that there were engines enough for 34 cars. Was I wrong? You say that you wonder where the media got the impression there would be a shortage of cars. And if I heard what I thought I heard said, that there are enough engines for 34 cars. Now I understand you might have three engines assigned to one car, but if you can only service 34 cars? Am I wrong?
B. Jenkins: Well, I do not know that you are necessarily wrong. I am just saying that the number that you have heard may be accurate or it may not be. And I just cannot see any way that there will not be another engine here or there found, or a way to service an engine if we do come up with 31 or 32 and need one more. I just do not see it being that way.
S. Goodyear: If I can add to that for a second. What generally happens when you are a team and you go into the event is you have so many engines allocated for the month, and you basically want to make sure that your one driver or two drivers, or how many you have, get qualified on the first weekend. And then, once you have done that, you might have used one, maybe two engines throughout this week. You will have one in for a qualifying weekend. All those engines, once they are mileaged-out, then they get sent back to the engine manufacturer. So come Sunday, this weekend, once we have qualifying in and for the people that have made the field, they will then set one or maybe two engines aside for the week for getting ready for full-tank runs, and then they will have an engine sitting aside for basically the race itself. Now that all is said and done, each team, or car for each team, generally has six to eight engines, and the bigger teams I am going to say probably have more than that in rotation. So what essentially happens after first qualifying weekend is that they are sitting there looking at the equipment they have, and realizing that they do not need all the engines they have, and then there is some spare chassis sitting around and I know the big premises has been put on the engines. But let me only assure you that I believe what is going to end up happening is that, for every team that has six to 10 engines, once they are qualified this weekend they are really only going to need three. And the other engines go back to rebuild, and as they start to trickle back into the garages through the month of May, because the turnaround time is generally anywhere from two to four days depending on how far they have to travel, then you end up with some engines sitting there, and the teams have a different look on life and a different perspective, and they go, 'OK, great, now maybe we can actually put another car in,' because everybody wants to have a car in the event or an additional car or they will lease an engine out or maybe then Honda and Toyota, because those were the ones that are talking about, I guess, really along with Chevrolet, saying that all of sudden 'Yes, we will have an engine now.' Well, we have just found an engine, or we have some coming available to us, so everybody in the garage area knows how the game is played, and it will be a whole completely different game come Monday of next week.
P. Page: Never underestimate an IndyCar Series teams' ability to motivate itself and figure stuff out.
S. Goodyear: Absolutely. Because for every engine that goes out for the team that is already set, if it is getting loaned to a different team there is generally a deal that goes along with it that it is 'x amount' to start, and if it finishes it might get a percentage of the prize money. So it is all about business, and doors will be open come Monday after qualifying. There is no doubt about that.
Q: I do not know who wants to handle this, but I guess anyone is capable. I am wondering, how important do you feel this race is for Sam Hornish? He has been the IRL star the last two years but has really had a lackluster season. Chevrolet power, I guess, has a lot to do with that. But what do you think his mindset is, going in? I mean, is he writing off the season already and just looking at Indy to salvage it?
S. Goodyear: I guess I will start on that since my team is quiet on the other side of it. I think the most important thing that we have to be reminded of is that there have been new teams and drivers come in, and has Sam Hornish lost any of his ability to drive a car? Absolutely not. Has he lost any of his desire? Absolutely not. Although we may not be able to follow him on the screen as much as we did last year because he was leading or putting on some fabulous moves, I think that now if you had a chance to watch him in practice as we do standing up in the television booth or any time he gets around traffic or through the race, I mean, Sam is still doing what Sam does best, and that is drive a race car. And there is no doubt in my mind that the motivation has not gone from that team because I drove with those guys for three years, so I can tell you that the cast of characters that are over there right now, I mean they are not very happy about it, but there is no doubt that they are working very diligently just to improve it from qualifying maybe 12th to eighth and finishing higher the next race. I mean, that is how they are driven over there, as most teams are. And I do not think Sam, although it might not be what he has from everything that I have read and some conversations with him, I mean he knows the reality of it. He knows the reality, that if you had a Toyota or a Honda, that he would be doing the same thing that he did last year, and there would be people chasing him on the racetrack. And if you had to look at it, back to what I first said at the very outset, is that has he lost any of his desire or ability? Absolutely not. I still think that he is one of the top two or three guys, as far as talent and natural ability, in the series right now. It will be a very trying year for him. You look at it now, and you say there might be just absolutely no way that he can win a race this year. But once we get off these real high-speed tracks, and maybe when you get to a place like Richmond, maybe the Sam Hornish that we know shines through. I mean, what he did there last year was truly remarkable. And Chevrolet is working along, everybody said they were down 40 or 50 horsepower at the beginning of the year, now everybody thinks they are down 20 or 25, and we will see what happens here. They have some new bits and pieces that are going on the cars, and I guess we will see what happens. And do not forget, Indy is about speed, but there has been times when you have had horsepower, and you cannot get around the turns. And just because the straights are five-eighths-of-a-mile long does not mean it is all about horsepower. It is all about strategy, timing and right pit stops, and all the stuff that goes along with it. And maybe Sam has not made the best of the situation for the past two years, and everybody is writing him off this year. This just might be the year that he comes across the finish line first. I will leave it up to my teammates now.
P. Page: No, you did a perfect job. You are the driver guy …
Q: Bob, you know, you and I we grew up with the Indy 500, the standard thing. Now there has been so much construction done, even back to when they moved the museum to the infield. Do you believe the changes in the facility overall has detracted the tradition or impacted it for the better?
B. Jenkins: Well, you have to remember that the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was built in 1909, and it survived 87 years, and you cannot go through 87 years without making changes. There was that time six or eight or 10 years ago when so many racetracks were being built, and as they were being built they were built to be state-of-the-art. Beautiful facilities like Las Vegas and Texas and right on down the line. And you see this 87-year-old relic sitting here at Indianapolis. You had do something to make it attractive for the fans and to keep up with the day, if you will. And I think that they have done a tremendous job at the Speedway, maintaining as much as heritage and maintaining as much tradition as they possibly can while continuing to update the facility itself. They have built a new area back of the Pagoda now that gets rid of those big temporary buildings that they used to have. They have opened that up to give the fans more of an area to come to eat in, to listen to bands play, to enjoy themselves if they want to turn their attention away from the Speedway. The 2½-mile oval has not been changed. It never will be changed. That is the Speedway. Everything else is just being updated because, hopefully, we can keep up with making the fan as comfortable as he is at any other racetrack in the United States.
Q: One quick follow-up. Scott, I hear you are going to take the IRL two-seater out and give Paul Page your best lap.
P. Page: Oh, I would go for that.
S. Goodyear: You know Paul would go for that. But I hope that Paul is a better passenger than he is a navigator. Bob and I do have a little bit of laughing right now in that we always share a rental car when we go to racetracks, and this is part of why I think the team works so well. And Paul has been designated to be the co-pilot in the front seat and give his directions and we do leave areas early just to make sure that we arrive on time.
P. Page: One little mistake guys, one little mistake.
S. Goodyear: No, I have actually have not been in an Indy-style car since the crash at Indy in May of 2001 and I do not miss it. As you guys are all probably well aware, I was retiring after 2000 with the exception of just going and doing Indy, and Indy of 2001 was a disappointment after the all umpteen miles testing with the Infiniti engine and had worked well with Eddie Cheever and the team and was prepared, and I think we had a great race car that day. We just did not get very far. So it is was a shameful way to finish the last race, but at that point in time it was one race only, and I am not missing it, so I am not sure that I am really destined to go sit in the two-seater. It must fire up some juices or something like that, then I will have to come home and explain it to my wife, so that will not work.
P. Page: And it is bad enough in a rental car.
B. Jenkins: Just might add that Paul is a tremendous Civil War buff. He studies it. He knows it. He is very good. So we went to Richmond last year, and we were all looking very much forward to seeing some historic sites. We are planning to tour around the city, but due to Paul's poor navigational skills, first of all, we only saw one or two things that we had set out to see, and the thing that I wanted to see was the cemetery that is in Richmond that is equivalent to Arlington National Cemetery.
P. Page: You saw it.
B. Jenkins: We got there as it was closing and had to turn around and exit as soon as we got there.
P. Page: But were you in it? Did you not go in it?
B. Jenkins: For 15, 20 seconds, yes.
P. Page: Then you saw it. That is all I have to say.
S. Goodyear: The only reason we were in it is the man allowed us to go through the gate, do a U-turn to get back outside the gate before we locked it.
B. Jenkins: That is exactly right.
K. Johnson: Scott, another storyline at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway this year is Robby Gordon's attempt to pull the Indianapolis/Charlotte double. As a driver, I know you have not done a double involving Indianapolis, but you have driven some endurance races. What are some of the challenges that Robby has ahead of him as he tries this?
S. Goodyear: Well, obviously the big thing is the fitness level, the focus, the fatigue that comes through not just from being on the track, but obviously with the commute that goes between those two places. But Robby was a teammate of mine back in the Indy-style days, and, I mean, he eats, breathes and sleeps motor racing. I think he is doing a great job as an open-wheel guy transferring himself into Winston Cup right now, and there is no doubt I think that he will be a contender if everything stays together for him and there are no mishaps along the way at the end of the '500.' And obviously he has come close, like I have a few times, and it just fuels the juices for him, and I think that why he is coming back to do that right now is that he knows it is an opportunity. He has a good team with the Andretti Green team, and he looks at this as an opportunity. And when you look at as that, and not as burden, I think that just helps your energy in getting yourself commuted from one point to another and do all the things that not only need to be done on Race Day but also the time leading up to it and the commute just to go testing and racing both with the Indy-style and with his stock car. So I give him credit for doing it. I thing that it is a great story line, and if there is anybody out there that can do it, I think that he is the guy to do it, and he just brushes it off. He does not take it as a burden when people ask him about all that. He just goes, 'You know something, it is what I am going to do, and I will it get done.' And I think that is the attitude you have to have.
P. Page: And he has to adjust to going that slow later in the day.
S. Goodyear: It is going to be different. It is narrow track over here, 230 miles an hour they will be doing top speed, and it is a flat track. It is a completely different car. You get over there, and they are definitely going slower, but you have many more hours and running underneath the lights over there, too. So you have basically, for lack of a better term, night-and-day difference on the situation that he is coming up to.
K. Johnson: Well there do not appear to be any more questions for Bob, Paul or Scott. So gentlemen, I certainly thank you for joining us today, and we all look forward to your coverage at the 87th running of the Indianapolis 500 for ABC Sports.
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