Indy 500 Feud Splits Sport.

Indy 500 Feud Splits Sport. The following report is from a June 1996 article in the Encarta Yearbook. . Auto Racing: Feud Mars Famed Indianapolis 500, Splits Sport Like horse racing's Kentucky Derby, the Indianapolis 500 is the premier event of its sport, a hallowed and historic auto race that has been held in the same location since the early days of the automobile. The "Indy" 500 held on May 26, 1996, marked the 80th running of the celebrated competition, but the race will be better remembered as the day when the sport of Indy Car racing split into two bickering sides and held competing races in Indiana and Michigan. In a field heavy with inexperienced drivers and largely devoid of big names, 28-year-old Buddy Lazier took the lead with seven laps remaining and held on to win his first Indy 500 at the speedway in Indianapolis. The same afternoon in Brooklyn, Michigan, Jimmy Vasser won the inaugural U.S. 500, a race boasting most of the sport's top drivers and designed to compete directly with the Indy 500. The split was instigated by 36-year-old Tony George, the president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, site of the Indianapolis 500. Unhappy with the growing power held by the team owners on the established Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) circuit, George in 1994 announced the formation of a new Indy Car circuit, the Indy Racing League (IRL). George stated that the IRL would be committed to oval-track racing (the kind done at the Indianapolis 500) as opposed to road racing (common on the CART circuit), and would also scale down equipment standards to make the sport less expensive and less dominated by corporate sponsors. The IRL put together a schedule of five races for 1996, beginning in January at Walt Disney World Speedway in Orlando, Florida, and including another race in March and the Indy 500 in May. As an incentive for drivers to enter the IRL races leading up to Indy, George announced that 25 out of the 33 starting spots for the Indianapolis race would be reserved for the league's top point scorers. CART officials balked at the rule and scheduled the competing race in Michigan. As a result, a record 17 rookie drivers qualified for the Indy 500 field in 1996, more than half the entire field. The youthful group was the cause of much prerace concern in a dangerous sport where cars routinely reach top speeds of more than 354 km/h (220 mph). Two crashes during qualifying runs seemed to justify the dire predictions, including one that injured rookie driver Dan Drinan. The other crash killed veteran driver Scott Brayton during a practice drive a week before the race. Brayton had won the pole-position spot as Indy's fastest qualifying driver for the second consecutive year just a few days before the accident. As it turned out, both races were marred by crashes, but not excessively. In the Michigan race Vasser, the pole-position driver, bumped another car during the final preliminary lap. The resulting chain reaction produced a 12-car pileup. Because the race had not officially started, drivers who could not fix the damage to their cars were allowed to use their backup vehicles. Vasser went to his, which performed flawlessly and carried him to an 11-second victory, his third win of the year. Lazier's victory at Indy was an even more remarkable comeback story. Not only had the driver never won an Indy Car circuit race, he entered the 1996 Indy 500 still recovering from a broken back suffered in a crash in March. In his first race since the accident, Lazier led at Indy five times for 43 laps and took his final lead at lap 193 over Davy Jones. When Scott Sharp hit the wall at lap 197, Lazier was in the clear, holding off Jones by less than a second in the third-closest finish in Indy history. A three-car crash at the finish line involving the fourth- through sixth-place drivers was the only major incident. Source: Encarta Yearbook, June 1996 Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.