![]() "I saw someone in Michael who promised me a chance to win this race, and I believed him." "I never once saw it that way," Castroneves said standing on the frontstretch Sunday afternoon, bristling at the description of his situation. ![]() Their arrangement was seen from the outside as an old guy playing out the string in an underfunded ride, a quixotic effort against a garage full of big-dollar superteams and super young talent. Then it became, well, when? Then, it went from a definite if to a never-gonna-happen, especially when he arrived for this Indy's Month of May in a limited-season ride with Meyer Shank Racing, a sports car team that made its Ind圜ar debut only four years ago and had earned just one podium finish in 33 tries. That's why his fourth sip of the Indy 500's winner's milk had once seemed like an inevitability. In the middle of it all, he even won "Dancing with the Stars." Over his first 10 Indy 500 starts, he had won three times, earned four poles and finished outside the top nine only once. He won it again in 2009, his sixth top-four finish in nine races. He won the race in his first two tries, 20, becoming the first back-to-back 500 winner since Unser did it in 19. This is the man who used to own the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. But by then, he had won only one open-wheel event in six years and not at Indy for a dozen years. But four years ago, that team had relegated him to part-time Ind圜ar status, pushed into the relative purgatory of sports car racing without much public explanation as to why. Castroneves used to be the odds-on favorite anytime the green flag was waved over Speedway, Indiana but on Sunday, he was considered middle of the pack at best, a 30-1 shot by Las Vegas oddsmakers.Ĭastroneves used to drive for Ind圜ar's juggernaut, Team Penske, an 18-time winner of the Indy 500. The driver he battled for this victory, Alex Palou, was 4 years old when Castroneves earned his first Indy 500 win in 2001. Castroneves used to be the wonder boy of American open-wheel racing, but now he is 46. Our collective forgetfulness was not without good reason. They will not be forgetting me after today." But after the years go by and there are no wins to show for it, they definitely forget about you as a contender, until you give them a reason to remember you again. "You get to that point in your career when people are nice to you, but they are also kind of feeling sorry for you," Castroneves said to ESPN on Sunday afternoon, the winner's wreath still around his neck and his lips blackened with tire residue after kissing the fabled yard of bricks at Indy's start-finish line. Now, the next time those three legends gather around that nine-foot silver trophy, they will do so with Helio Castroneves by their side. Dozens of them joined him when his muscle memory sent him climbing up the catchfence, as he did so long ago when he earned the nickname Spider-Man. ![]() Heck, we had all forgotten about him, until we looked up on Sunday afternoon with six laps remaining and there he was, seizing the lead, and then he did it again for good with only one trip around the 2.5-mile rectangle left to run.Īfter he took the checkered flag, the 135,000 fans in attendance suddenly remembered how much they had loved him back in the day, as they watched Castroneves run the length of the world's longest grandstand, soaking up their cheers. ![]() That shouter had forgotten about Helio Castroneves. Mears, the last to join the group way back in 1991, quietly replied, "Don't forget. As the Speedway's holy triumvirate paused for a photo, someone shouted out, "No one will ever win four again!" and Rick Mears, the only four-time winners over 104 years of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing, stood alongside the Borg-Warner Trophy, the award upon which their faces are sculpted a dozen times. INDIANAPOLIS - On Saturday morning, roughly 24 hours before the start of the 2021 Indianapolis 500, an impromptu meeting of Indy's most exclusive club took place as the drivers meeting of this year's 33 competitors was being adjourned.Ī.J. Helio Castroneves' fourth Indianapolis 500 win is one for the aged You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browser
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