Carb Day at IMS

May 29, 2010



Carb Day Concert

Henk & Mark

Carb Day at IMS

After a few days back in the saddle at work, I was back on a plane headed back to Indianapolis to attend the Indy 500 and all the assorted festivities that go along with “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing”. One of those spectacles is what is known as Carb day, which is held the Friday prior to the race and features a number of activities that include the final practice for the cars that have qualified for the 500, the pit stop competition, the Miller Lite Carb Day concert (which this year featured ZZ Top), and the Freedom 100 race for the Indy Lights, which is the minor league of the Indy Cars.





As has been my tradition for the past few years, I met up with a number of friends to spend the day at the Speedway. This year two of the Davis brothers drove in to take part, Henk (from Cincinnati) and Pat (from Evansville), they joined an Indy based contingent in the huge throng that showed up at the Speedway.

Henk



The weather was great, hot and sunny and the practice went off without a hitch as we took seats in the Tower Terrace to watch the action. All thirty-three of the starting cars participated and the track was busy with cars during the hour practice. The teams worked on race day set-ups, practiced pit stops and basically made their final adjustments before the race. Dario Franchitti was the fastest in the session.

NFL Legend Dan Fouts

Henk & Pat

We remained in the stands to watch the Indy Lights race (won by Wade Cunningham) and the pit stop competition, which was eventually won by Team Penske and Helio Castroneves. The event lasted way too long, and I didn’t actually make it through the whole thing, opting to tour the garage area, before heading over to see the hubbub at the ZZ Top concert. The carb day crowd has been growing the past few years and this year the estimate of 60,000 watching ZZ Top seemed about right.

ZZ Top

Henk, Pat, Michael, Stuart, Mark, J.R. & Zack

I took in a little, but the drunken crowd and heat was a bit much, so I left the track and headed over to the famous Indianapolis drive-in restaurant, The Mug N Bun for a late lunch before driving over to the Indiana State Fairgrounds to attend the Indy 500 memorabilia show.







Then it was up to Broad Ripple to do a little shopping at Indy CD & Vinyl, have a beer at the Alley Cat and meet the Davis family for dinner at the wonderful Bazbeaux Pizza. It was a great gathering with three of the Davis siblings (Henk, Evelyn & Pat), their children and their mother Wil. It has been a long time since we’d gotten together and we had a great dinner catching up and reminiscing about the old neighborhood. Hopefully, this can become another race weekend tradition.



The Davis Clan

Pat, Evelyn & Henk

After dinner, It was a quick stop at the buzzing Brugge Brasserie for a drink before heading over to the annual K of C Calcutta. The Calcutta is basically a gambling party where drivers in the 500 are auctioned off and the pot of money divided among those having a top seven (or last place) finisher. I always join a coalition of friends known as the Fisher Farts and we pool our money and try to bid on the best driver possible. This year we got Ryan Hunter-Reay. The total pot went over $57,000 this year and the party even featured a walk through performance by the famous Gordon Pipers band.