Butler Has a Strong Presence at This Year's Indy 500
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Butler University will be well represented in the 94th Indianapolis 500, both in the preliminaries (the Butler Bulldogs men’s basketball team will serve as grand marshal of Saturday’s IPL 500 Festival Parade) and in the main event Sunday when Ed Carpenter ’03 starts in the middle of Row 3 and Sarah Fisher, who studied at Butler for two years before leaving in 2002, begins in the middle of Row 10.
For Carpenter, this will be his seventh Indianapolis 500 and 100th IndyCar start. In 2003, shortly after earning his marketing degree, he won the Freedom 100 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. In 2008, he finished fifth in the Indy 500 – his best result to date – and last year he was eighth.
Fisher is driving in her ninth Indy 500. In 2008, she started her own team, Sarah Fisher Racing, becoming the first woman to be a team owner/driver. She also has a new book, 99 Things Women Wish They Knew Before Getting Behind the Wheel of Their Dream Job.
We caught up with both drivers for a few questions.
Ed Carpenter
Q: What did you learn at Butler that has helped you in your career?
Carpenter: I was a marketing major, so a lot of people assume I try to do all my marketing and sponsorship. There’s some of that, but I’m a driver at this point in my career. Going to school, you learn to manage your time, multi-task and collect your thoughts. Racing is so technical. Obviously, there’s a talent to driving the car, but it’s a very technical sport. As you see with the Butler basketball team, they’re all a bunch of educated, smart, hard-working kids. Not just being athletic but having an intellectual side to the game makes the team better. I think you can say the same thing for racing, which is why having an education, knowing how to study, being analytical and being able to solve problems is so important. I’m using that all the time.
Q: What kind of physical and mental preparation goes into driving in the Indianapolis 500?
Carpenter: All of us drivers physically train all the time. I train at St. Vincent Sports Performance, and there are guys from the NFL there, and Gordon Hayward getting ready for the NBA draft. There are athletes of all kinds there and we do a lot of similar training. A big part of it is making sure you’re strong. In the event there is an accident, the more fit you are, the better your body’s going to hold together. Mentally, it goes back to what I was saying earlier: You have to understand yourself and be able to control your mind. It’s a mental game, and especially in a 500-mile race, when it’s 90 degrees out like it is now, that’s when the physical and mental get tied together. Because if you’re not in good shape, you’re going to wear down in heat like this and as soon as your body starts to let go, your mind follows. That’s when mistakes are made.
Q: How confident do you feel going into this year’s race?
Carpenter: I feel really good. It’s the first 500 I’ve done where I haven’t been racing full time in this series, but even with that, I felt at the beginning of this month that this is my best opportunity to win this race. That’s how I felt before I even turned the wheel, and as the month’s gone on and we’ve gone through qualifying and race preparation, it just cemented those feelings. I feel very confident in my car and my team. I know we have the car capable of going out and being in a position to contend for a win. Personally, I feel ready for it as well.
Q: Anything else you’d like to tell your fans/Butler alums?
Carpenter: I’m proud to be a Bulldog. It was awesome being part of the (NCAA) tournament, and I try to take that Butler pride and Butler way of thinking and teamwork into this sport as much as I can and have the same mentality with our race team.
Sarah Fisher
Q. What are a couple of the 99 things you wish you’d known before getting into auto racing?
Fisher: What I really wish I would have known would have only come from maturity — the patience to allow certain paths to fall in place before taking action and then the ability to see the true colors within the people surrounding me at that time.
Q: Are there things you learned at Butler that are still useful to you today?
Fisher: Absolutely! The most important lesson was budgeting time. It is such an element in schooling today and then to throw a full-time job on top, taught me a lot about managing my time.
Q: How confident do you feel going into this year’s race?
Fisher: I am very lucky to have gotten in the race, to be quite honest. This year’s field is extremely tight and competitive, which shows where our series is going, but is tough to compete within. The race is long and will give us plenty of opportunities to tune the car if it doesn’t start right. Indy is about tolerance.
Q: Anything else you’d like to tell your fans/Butler alums?
Fisher: Butler was a great experience that helped shape my future and certainly helped me learn to multi-task! It was a good decision to spend time there, I just wish I could have finished.
Contact Marc Allan
(317) 940-9822
mallan@butler.edu
Related Articles :
No Related Content Found