105th Indianapolis 500 race day thread.

Hi Chas, yes that could be the name. My interaction with Hogan was a bit infrequent covering tests at Sebring
and Homestead when no one else would. I do remember the guy who'd hired me was out in San Diego as
that's where the film went.

Whomever he was, he wasn't nearly as high-profile as the great Rick Shaffer who was the communications
guy for Alumax/Bettenhausen at the time and helped open so many doors for me. Rick would come down
from Indy for the test sessions in Florida in person.

The Hogan team was one of the minnows in CART. They were unsponsored for the most part and were
always the last in line to get the new car for the upcoming season so it seemed they were always in a scramble
where most teams would be on their third or fourth tests with the new car, Hogan's cars were still in the
box so they'd be chasing down leaks and set-ups while Franchitti sat shirtless getting some sun. J.J. Lehto
also drove for them for a while as I recall.

Every now and then, I run into Rick Shaffer at events as he's still active writing books and working with
NBC and he always mentions a portrait image I made of Helio at his first test for Bettenhausen at Sebring
which must have been December of '97 or January of '98 that he has framed on his office wall.

Good times!

BHW

 

What happened to Herta?

 

That's a good question. He had the same number of pit stops as the leaders, so my guess is he used too much fuel early, and had not enough to race at the end. ?? Anybody?

 

Here is the kind of guy Helio is...

By 1998, I had worked with a lot of drivers in sports car racing and CART. The deals were mainly set
up through PR and communications directors for the various sponsors. They'd call me in when they
needed home run images to use in their PR or distributed to specialist magazines.

For 1998, Patrick Carpentier had moved from Bettenhausen over to Forsythe Racing to partner
with Greg Moore in the all-Canadian Player's sponsored team. Alumax/Bettenhausen then brought
in Helio Castro Neves (how his name was pronounced at the time) to take Carpentier's place.

My Alumax contact called me to cover Helio's first public test with the team which was at Sebring.
I had heard of Helio only because at the time he was hooked up with Emerson Fittipaldi whom was
acting as his manager/mentor and he had made some noise in the Indy Lights Series. But, soon after
a private test at Homestead a few days prior, the relationship with Fittipaldi was severed, never knew
what had happened only that Helio would be on his own at Sebring and Fittipaldi would not be there.

So, I covered Helio's first official Bettenhausen test, all sort of images, the above mentioned portrait,
action shots of Helio in the car, a full day shooting.

And, here's the difference. The next day as I was pouring through my slides, scanning and uploading
my phone rang. It was Helio calling to thank me for coming out and how he hoped I got some good
pictures on the day and how he looked forward to work with me again, all this.

I was rather floored and more than a little impressed that he'd take the time to call me to thank me like
this. But, it's something you don't forget.

So, a couple of years ago Helio, along with Scott Dixon, did appearances at our event, the Bal Harbour
Shops Collector's Weekend, and as I was introducing Helio to one of my friends, I reminded him how we
had originally met back in 1998 of this phone call. He was genuinely touched that I had remembered it,
we had a good smile and laugh about it.

With Helio, what you see is what you get. He is 100% the genuine article and it's great to see a real
nice guy succeed in this business. Like a lot of people yesterday, I was in tears as he crossed the
finish line.

BHW

 

Great story.

I was Gil de Ferran's teammate in Formula Ford in the UK in 1988 -beat him a few times but mostly it was the other way round!- and one day when he was at Penske he showed me around the garage at Homestead during race weekend between tv interviews and engineer talks.
I did not speak with Helio who was there a few meters away but he nodded and gave me his trademark smile.

 

No but I was at Silverstone in his pit in the early 90's when he won the British F3 championship and there were very few people in that garage, including sir Jackie and Paul Stewart, though I did not speak with them. JYS had to rush to Aberdeen on his jet.

Gil and Helio live a few hundred meters apart in Fort Lauderdale.

One day I was jogging on Las Olas and Gil pulls out of his street in a car with Justin Bell -who briefly lived near there- next to him. So we chatted and then he noticed I had a Montoya Tshirt on: one of his rivals! So he said Hey don't stand so close to traffic, it's ok to be run over but not in a Montoya T Shirt!

 

fun story

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

 

payday

Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Awful big difference between first and second-place winnings! It's remarkable that 30 of the starters were still running at the end, and 28 were within a lap of the winner. Also remarkable that there were no on-track incidents; all the mayhem was in the pits, or in Rahal's case, a result of something that happened in the pits. And I think that the Dallara is undervalued as a great race car, working well both in traffic and by itself.

Also, good luck in that Rahal's out-of-control car didn't hit any others, and that his wayward tire hit Daly's car where it did; one foot either side and Daly's race would have ended right there.