Insight: Indy's strange days of 1997

The one word that accurately describes the 1997 month of May is strange.

Everything about practice, qualifying and the race will be remembered for the strange new Indy Racing League cars that replaced the record-setting CART machines, the frequent crashes and driver changes that stemmed from the bevy of accidents, and the three tries that were required to complete the rainy 500-mile event.

The height of strangeness was created by the IRL's late decision to tack a 34th and 35th entry onto the traditional field of 33, and if we're talking numbers, the 1997 race was a mess long before it started, all courtesy of the 25/8 rule.

In the formative days of "The Split," the destructive separation of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the CART IndyCar Series that spawned the IRL, the new series was dead set on keeping its archrivals from spoiling the launch of its stock-block era.

Under the post-CART Indy 500 rules, 25 full-time IRL entries using the series' new Dallara and GForce cars, powered by bellowing Oldsmobile and Infiniti V8 engines, were guaranteed starting positions in the 1997 race. The other eight spots, left open to anyone interested in making the show with the IRL-specific machinery, became the subject of great scrutiny.

Doing the math on 33 available grid positions under the 25/8 rule with 36 entries meant three drivers would fail to make the field. And with only the unfavored eight being eligible for bumping, the field of 33 was eventually set in a rather heinous fashion. A comically low minimum qualifying speed of 203mph was established for the protected 25; it meant that pure speed was no longer the criteria to make the field. As long as the 25 drivers went over 203mph, they were in.

The same standard did not apply to the 11 drivers trying to take the eight non-guaranteed spots; the slowest three would be sent home. Even worse, many of the 11 were faster than the guaranteed 25, which contributed to the poor reception the IRL received within the industry.

Two Hemelgarn Racing drivers, Lyn St. James and Johnny Unser (pictured above), were the unfortunate ones to miss the cut as they were bumped by faster entries. Poor Scott Harrington, who went out in the closing minutes of time trials to try and make the field in a A.J. Foyt GForce-Oldsmobile, crashed as rain began to fall and was unable to complete his run.

In the case of St. James and Unser, both drivers were bumped despite posting faster qualifying speeds than some of the protected 25, but with the 25/8 rule, it didn't matter.

Behind the scenes, IRL executive director Leo Mehl and other senior members of the fledgling series were considering making an exception. A pair of exceptions, actually.

"It was very strange," St. James (pictured) recalled. "I was 16th fastest on the charts. And yet, because I was not part of the IRL season ... I wasn't part of the 25 that were guaranteed, so that meant that was not going to put us in the field or me in the field. It was probably one of the worst experiences..."

Surprisingly, her teammate wasn't as bothered at being knocked out of the field.

"I thought that if I was fast enough in that top 33, and they decided not to let me in, I was OK with it," Unser said. "I had done my job."

With rumors starting to build about whether the field of 33 would stand with some of the faster eight being bumped by slower drivers locked into the guaranteed 25, the Hemelgarn Racing duo found themselves in the center of a media storm.

"All the reporters and everybody were going crazy, aren't you mad? Aren't you upset?" Unser (pictured above) added. "It was like, you know, I've gone out and proved what I needed to prove and I did my job and that is up to them how they want to sort it out."

St. James remembers testing team owner Ron Hemelgarn's patience throughout the experience.

"So, I kept saying, 'What are we going to do? What are we going to do?' We were just all standing around waiting," she said. "Because the qualifying was still going on. But it was pretty clear to me that we weren't going to be in the field. So I drove Ron crazy. And, Ron is just a fine guy and so laid back sometimes it's unbelievable. He would say, 'Lyn, don't worry about it.' He said they've always qualified. Of course, now I do know, it hasn't always been, but he said, 'They always qualify the fastest 33 cars, so just don't worry about it.'

"I would walk away. Then I would say, 'Ron, we have to have a strategy here. At some point, can I get a car; do I need to be out looking trying to find another car?' I was on pins and needles. He was giving me nothing. In fact, he used to say, 'Just have a piece of chicken.' I mean, I don't want any chicken. And give me something, tell me something, give me something that we are going to do."

Unable to find the answer she was looking for with Hemelgarn on whether they would try to bump their way back in, or if the rumors of the bumped cars being tacked onto the field of 33 was true, St. James headed straight to the source to get a direction.

"Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore," she said. "Leo Mehl and I had gone way back to those years when he was at Goodyear. I found his office, went into his office, this is probably about 4:30 or 5, qualifying is over at 6 p.m. The media is hovering as well. And I sat in Leo's office probably for 30 minutes. And he would tell me nothing.

"And he would talk about anything. He would talk about the weather, he started talking about Florida: 'How is it down there? Have you been back down there?' I couldn't get him to talk about the race. And I was not leaving until he was going to tell me what he was going to do. The media are all hanging out there, so he's loving it that I'm in there because it is kind of preventing the media from literally barging in. It was awful. Awful."

Roughly 15 minutes after the gun fired at 6 p.m. to signal the end of qualifying, and ashen-faced Mehl appeared in front of the media to announce St. James and Unser would complete the field of 35.

"Obviously, it was cool to be granted those spots," Unser (pictured below) said.

St. James would finish 13th and Unser would take 18th despite the former suffering a crash late in the race and the latter experiencing engine problems. Other than her Indy 500 debut in 1992 where she placed 11th, the strange 1997 race, which was started on a Sunday and completed on a Tuesday, gave St. James her second-best result at the Speedway.

In light of all that took place 20 years ago, St. James has nothing positive to recall from the event: "I just know that it was absolutely the worst experience I ever had at Indy... or in racing."

Listen to the full interviews with St. James and Unser, and an extended take on the lack of bumping with today's field.