The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 16

ki iU iuki 1 0 71 110 "I saw the yellow in Turn 1 and In Turn 2." Goodyear said. "I was on the gas. "I didn't know what the hell to do. What if I get a run on him? Should I pass him? It was yellow." Goodyear charged after Luyendyk, but had no chance of overtaking him in the final 2'A miles. His finish, despite bringing a hefty 1 payday, leit mm emotionally detached.

Goodyear said the most pleasing thing to him about the race was the way his crew made the car" A. 7 ucuer on eacn pu stop. The guys were awesome," said Blanch, who commuted to the track each day from his home in Yorktown. "I don't know whether we could have beaten (Luyendyk) or not, but I know on the last lap you can find a little more inside the car and we just really didn't get the opportunity to try." Goodyear suffered a hairiine; fracture of his back in a wicked" crash during practice at Rio de Janiero In early 1996, and he drove only in four races. He began tnll-l.

1 1 i. I. I 4 By Dick Mittman STAFF WRITER Scott Goodyear on Tuesday came within a half -second of a perfect May. On May 15, a daughter. Hay ley Alexandra, was born in Indianapolis.

Tuesday he nearly for the third time became a winner of the Indianapolis 500. Instead, he lost it again by the blink of an eye. Teammate Arie Luyendyk beat Goodyear to the checkered flag on a last lap shootout by just .570 of a second. "It's been a great month but I can't be happy with second," Goodyear said. In 1992.

the Toronto native chased down Al Unser only to cross the finish line half a car length behind. The difference between first and second in that race .043 of a second is the closet in 81 Indys. Then In 1995, Goodyear was leading on Lap 190 during a caution period. Coming out of the caution, he anticipated a green as he rounded Turns 3 and 4 and accelerated. Instead, the yellow light stayed on while the pace car drove toward the pits, and he passed it.

Three laps later, the U.S. Auto Club stopped scoring him because he failed to pit for a stop-and-go penalty. Though he crossed the finish line first, the victory was given to Jacques ViUeneuve. Goodyear was placed 14th. On Tuesday, he was caught unprepared for a restart on Lap 200, When first-year flag man Bryan Howard waved the white and green flags simultaneously on orders from chief steward Keith JVard.

But the yellow remained illuminated on the lighting system because, Ward said, the man handling the button, Claude Fisher, didn't hear the signal. Ward said the green flag takes precedence over the lighting system. "I'm not feeling good at all," Goodyear said. Goodyear said he wasn't aware the track was going green until his chief mechanic, Kevin Blanch, yelled to him over the radio. Luyendyk also was taken by surprise, but he jumped on the mining wiui iitauwajr iaai -uui) and signed with the team In De-; cember.

I uooayear ana Luyendyk were' teammates in 1990 when Luyen-J dyk won for the first time. They-became good friends and their respective wives, Leslie and Mieke, got along. That, observers said, played an important part in Goodyear being placed in the second; Treadway car. He drove his first race for the 1 Indianapolis car owner at Orlando, in January and placed sixth. He' qualified third at Phoenix, but" ArmneA 1 I.

uiujjcu uui ui me rauc wuii en gine problems. He qualified fifth fastest for Indy at 215.811 mph In his NortelSprint PCSguebecor ForceAuroraFirestone. "I'm pleased (with the one-two" finish)," he said. "But my whole-goal was to come here and turn left five times on the last lap." The extra left turn would have been onto the victory lift that has eluded him twice by a total of .613 of a second and a third time because he jumped on the gas too quickly. The really good year still awaits Goodyear.

Photo Bob Goshert KUDOS FROM ON HIGH: Speedway President Tony George (facing camera) congratulates Scott Goodyear, who couldn't catch Arie Luyendyk after a controversial restart on the last lap. "I didn't know what the hell to do," Goodyear said of the restart. Team owner Menard lilies looking on the bright side jf I 'rj y-- 1 mm mmmm He's still searching for a race victory, but he's happy with his drivers' performances. FUEL FOR THOUGHT: Robbie Buhl (right) talks race strategy with a crew member after his eighth-place finish. Buhl's ill-timed pit stop on Lap 132 cost him a lead he never could regain.

Photo GaiyMook 'iv A ft Vv l. Photo Mark Robertson FINISHED ON CONTACT: Steve Kinser survived one collision only to end his race with another. Kinser makes a lot of contact in his first start at Speedway By Terry Hutchens STAFF WRrTER John Menard preferred Tuesday to look at things on the bright side. He didn't want to talk about Robbie Buhl's misfortunes of pitting under green while leading the Indianapolis 500 Just as the track was about to go yellow. He didn't want to talk about Tony Stewart's failure to run as well in traffic as would have been necessary to win the race.

He didn't want to talk about anything that would put the 81st running of the 500 in a bad light. Instead, Menard preferred to view the race through rose-colored glasses. "For our team, any race that you can come away with all the wheels on the cars, no engine problems and no trips to Methodist Hospital is really a victory for me," Menard said. "Sure, I would have preferred to have finished one-two, but I'm very proud of our team today." Menard's two entries Stewart and Buhl combined to lead 80 of the 200 laps. Stewart led the first 50 laps and 64 In all to earn $28,800 in lap money.

Buhl led 16 laps, the last of which was No. 131. and took home $7,200 in lap money. In the final order of finish, Stewart was fifth and Buhl eighth. "It was a good, clean, fast race.

I think the IRL has vindicated itself and I think a lot of the teams have vindicated themselves," Menard said. "There was some good professional racing going on. I wish we would have finished on top, but we didn't. But we're doing OK. "We're coming along as a series, we're coming along as a team, and I think the fans that were here today saw a really, really good race." Stewart looked strong throughout the day and was still in third with nine laps to go.

A brush with the wall in Turn 4 on Lap 199 ended his thoughts of overtaking Arie Luyendyk. "My car just wasn't as good in traffic as it needed to be," Stewart said. "The race track changed the whole day and we kept up with the race track; we just didn't make it good enough where I could run in traffic. "They gave me a good race car. I think all of us had good race cars.

It was just that some were closer to perfect than others." Overall, Stewart said he was very pleased with his performance. "It was a great race today," he said. "If people say they didn't enjoy this Indy 500, they're not real race fans and they know nothing about racing. This Is the most excitement I've had in a race in a long time. "I can't imagine the racing being too much better than it was today.

People were slicing and dicing out there and it was a lot of fun." Stewart's teammate didn't have as much fun. Buhl was the victim of bad luck on pit stop timing. He pitted on Lap 132 with the track green while leading Luyendyk by nine-lOths of a second. A few laps later, Jack Miller went into the wall In the north short chute and the track went yellow for five laps. "Unfortunately, we got out of sequence in the pits with pitting under the green," Buhl said.

"Things must fall your way and they did not." By Bill Benner STAFF WRITER He started his day with a crash, and ended it with one. Not the sort of Daily Double that Bloomington sprint car legend Steve Kinser was hoping to post Tuesday in his first Indianapolis 500. When assessing his Speedway run, which resulted in a 14th-place finish, Kinser deadpanned, "Other than hitting a car on the restart and then hitting another car with 15 laps to go, it wasn't too bad. "You just can't make two mistakes and get away with it." Kinser's first came on the restart of the rain-delayed race. As he accelerated and shifted gears in his No.

44 One Call DallaraAurora, the traffic in front of him slowed. Kinser blasted into the rear of Elisio Salazar's machine. "Everybody sort of took off and I actually laid back a little bit so I could get a little bit of a run, too." Kinser said. "I was Just getting ready to shift gears when everybody was brake-checkin'. It was bad timing." "Somebody told me he thought it was a World of Outlaws race, where they re-start on the back- "The first (accident) could have happened to anybody.

The second one was total stupidity on my part" Steve Kinser 14th-place finisher stretch," Salazar joked later, referring to Kinser's sprint car league. Both drivers were able to continue after repairs to their cars. Kinser's needed to have the nose cone and front wing replaced, resulting in poor handling. Still, Kinser ran as high as ninth before clipping Buzz Calkins' car 15 laps from the end. Calkins was slowing to enter the pit lane.

Kinser, who spun into the wall, said he simply misjudged the distance' between the two. "The first (accident) could have happened to anybody," said Kinser. "The second one was total stupidity on my part." But it whet his appetite for another try. "I'd love to run some more," he said. "I haven't planned on it, but I'd hate to quit with a 14th-place finish.

I'd like to be able to run closer to the front. We had a pretty good car and I sort of let everybody down." INDY MEMORIES Wilbur Shaw held off Ralph Hepburn to win by 2.16 seconds in a race marked by extreme heat. shaw who won in his shaw-gllmore with a time of 4 hours, 24 minutes and one of his mechanics were burned by leaking oil during the race. hepburn was overcome by heat and was relieved by bob swanson for 59 laps. overton Phillips crashed-in the pits, taking the lives of firefighter George Warford and Champion Spark Plug Co.

executive Otto C. Rohde..