INDIANAPOLIS — The 1996 Indianapolis 500 is remembered more for who wasn’t in the race than who was.
It was the year the split that nearly destroyed American open-wheel racing began, and Buddy Lazier won the Indy 500, racing against a field lacking traditional names such as Andretti, Foyt and Rahal.
That day, Lazier beat Arie Luyendyk, who became a two-time Indy winner the next season, 1998 winner Eddie Cheever Jr. and Tony Stewart, who won an IndyCar championship before leaving for NASCAR. But the rest of the 33-car field was loaded with unknowns such as Racin Gardner, Scott Harrington and Marco Greco.
Lazier, one of four former champions in Sunday’s 92nd edition of the 500, is as proud of that victory as anybody who has ever taken the checkered flag at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“Because of the sensitivity of not everybody’s there and all of those things, some people don’t give me full credit,” Lazier said Thursday. “But I know where we were.
“I felt really on top of my game at that point. I feel like I’ve been on top of it since, but I really believe that in 1996 it would have been hard for any team, anywhere to beat us, period.”
In the Indy Racing League’s inaugural season, “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” was a shadow of itself because the CART series chose to boycott. Instead, most of the top teams and big-name drivers ran the one and only U.S. 500 at Michigan International Speedway on the same day.
Lazier’s win likely wouldn’t have been as devalued had he also won in 1995.
Jacques Villeneuve won that year, but Lazier said it would have been him if not for a frustrating engine problem.
“Early in that race I was passing Villeneuve like he was standing still,” Lazier said. “I’m not saying Villeneuve wasn’t really hooked up at the end of that race. I’m just saying I had the race car to win that day.”
The next spring, Lazier, driving for Ron Hemelgarn, had the fastest car at Phoenix International Raceway. But he crashed hard on the one-mile oval, breaking his back. It appeared his season, if not his career, was over.
But Lazier showed up at Indy that May, ready to race.
His back injury was described as “a shattered eggshell,” and another crash could have put him in a wheelchair for life. But Lazier didn’t hesitate to get back in the car.
“It was probably a little risky,” he said. “In 1996 in motor racing, you could still do that. Today, I think, if you were at that stage of recovery, I wouldn’t be surprised if they said ‘No go.’ But I had to pass certain tests, and I did pass those tests. Nobody was stupid about it.”
His purple Hemelgarn entry was the class of the field at Indy as he led five times for 43 of the 200 laps, beating runner-up Davey Jones by about 10 car lengths.
“There was a lot of confusion and a lot of anger that day,” said Cheever, now a racing analyst for ESPN and ABC. “That race was won by a guy that had a broken back. If he had hit the wall, he would have been paralyzed. I get angry when I hear people trying to lower that race. Everybody that participated in it gave it their best.”
Now, 12 years later, Lazier’s again trying to get back in Victory Lane.
Lazier, who didn’t even get his latest Hemelgarn entry onto the track until last Friday, was bumped out of the lineup and then requalified at 219.015 mph in the middle of the last of 11 rows of three during Sunday’s last day of time trials.
“I was looking at the grid sheet the other day, and I noticed that we’re the only second-week team that made the race,” said Lazier, who finished second in 1998 and 2000. “That’s something to be proud of.”
As is his 1996 victory.
“I take great satisfaction in ‘96,” he said. “If the playing field was equal, we would have won, no matter what. I feel like we had what it took to win and, in a way, history will write it correctly, which is that I won it.”
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