Even though the Indianapolis 500 and my time as a 500 Festival Princess are long gone, I still have so many events that I have yet to blog about! So….the saga continues.
The weekend before the big race is the Breakfast at the Brickyard, which is when the 500 Festival Queen is crowned. It is also a special morning/day because all the mayors in Indiana come, and it is the first day of qualifications for the race, aka Pole Day. So obviously, it was a pretty big day, and one that I was personally looking forward to, because my parents were going to be able to come and I was going to spend the whole day with them instead of just seeing them periodically. To make it even more exciting, one of the banks in my hometown actually bought a table at the Breakfast, so there was great representation from my town, which meant so much to me, and it just made the day that much more fun.
- Everyone who came from my hometown…
Just hanging out by a pace car....
After the breakfast was over, we got to change, and it was time for me to show my Mom and Dad around the Speedway. I took them to the garages, and we sat and watched the qualifications, which was great because it was really the first IndyCar/Indy 500 experience for all three of us. Sadly, it took most of the day for me to really understand what was going on, but by the end of the day….I knew what was coming….what had happened that day…and why it was all so important. Basically…it was a big day of learning for me.
Watching the first day of actual qualifications....Pole Day!
The day after Pole Day was Bump Day, where they fill the spots for the entire field of 33 that weren’t filled the day before. This was the day that I basically fell in love with IndyCar….because I stuck around until the very end of the day, when a couple of drivers were literally “bumped” out of the field. Between waiting to see how the weather turned out (it rained for awhile, which held up any activity on the track, which was a serious problem for some drivers who were running out of time to actually qualify), and waiting to see if all of our favorite drivers would make it in, it was an exciting and somewhat stressful day….because we were all pulling for someone different. But, I loved it…and from this point on I officially am an IndyCar fan.
