Rookie Santino Ferrucci at Indianapolis. [John Wiedemann Photo]
by Paul Gohde
“I mowed the lawn up there in Turn 3, but we made it through ok.”
Rookie IndyCar driver Santino Ferrucci did more than just avoid that late race accident that almost ended his day today. The 20-year-old Dale Coyne Honda driver finished seventh in his first ever Indianapolis 500, winning the Top Rookie award along the way. Quite a fete for a driver who had never been in an Indy car just a year ago.
Top finishing Rookie in the Indianapolis 500, Santino Ferrucci. [John Wiedemann Photo]
“Oh, boy,” he exclaimed, when told there were almost 300,000 people watching him today. “There’s a lot of people here. I’d never seen what that looked like before. But my day almost ended when I saw everyone wreck in front of me (late in the race) and the spotter comes on the radio and tells me not to go high. Then I saw the grass, which to me was the only hole, and that looked like the most intelligent place to go. So, we mowed the lawn and came out just fine,” which was a pretty veteran move for a rookie, given his early racing experience in junior open wheel cars in Europe.
So, was this first race here at Indy everything the Woodbury, Connecticut resident thought it would be? “I’d say that would be an understatement. Coming here and racing in front of these fans. Having such a solid team behind you, mowing the lawn, finishing in the top 10. This was an experience of a lifetime you just can’t beat; especially at 20 years old.”
And what he described as “fun” came just before that incident when he found himself holding on to a surprising 11th place; mixing it up with several IndyCar veterans. “This is crazy. I was picking off people before the last round of pit stops and before the race was stopped,” explained the youngster with just seven IndyCar starts under his belt before today, who now found himself defending seventh place when the race resumed, with veterans Tony Kanaan and Ryan Hunter-Reay on his tail. “You find that you enjoy racing around the other competitors. I can’t thank (RH-R), who’s a champion here, enough, because the experience you get racing someone like that…it was just a blast.”
And did anything surprise him in the race? “It’s surprisingly longer than it looks, and the racing—racing with the other drivers–was actually a lot more fun than I ever hoped it to be. But I almost stuffed it trying to pass (Ed) Carpenter for sixth…To move forward like that, it just helps you out as a young driver so much. I think it was a really cool experience.”
So now that he has, perhaps, the toughest race on the calendar behind him, what will next week’s Detroit Duels bring, given that he started his brief IndyCar career there a year ago? “I think in the Indy Grand Prix (earlier in May), we finished tenth, and it’s nice to have a rolling consistency being in the top 10 and going into Detroit will be the first time I’m back in a track that I will actually know on the calendar. I’m very much looking forward to those Duels. But I kind of wish there was another 500 tomorrow, to be perfectly honest with you.”
And so do his new fans who have many more races ahead to watch Ferrucci, yet another IndyCar Series youngster, create even more excitement. Detroit, watch out.
Paul Gohde heard the sound of race cars early in his life.
Growing up in suburban Milwaukee, just north of Wisconsin State Fair Park in the 1950’s, Paul had no idea what “that noise” was all about that he heard several times a year. Finally, through prodding by friends of his parents, he was taken to several Thursday night modified stock car races on the old quarter-mile dirt track that was in the infield of the one-mile oval -and he was hooked.
The first Milwaukee Mile event that he attended was the 1959 Rex Mays Classic won by Johnny Thomson in the pink Racing Associates lay-down Offy built by the legendary Lujie Lesovsky. After the 100-miler Gohde got the winner’s autograph in the pits, something he couldn’t do when he saw Hank Aaron hit a home run at County Stadium, and, again, he was hooked.
Paul began attending the Indianapolis 500 in 1961, and saw A. J. Foyt’s first Indy win. He began covering races in 1965 for Racing Wheels newspaper in Vancouver, WA as a reporter/photographer and his first credentialed race was Jim Clark’s historic Indy win.Paul has also done reporting, columns and photography for Midwest Racing News since the mid-sixties, with the 1967 Hoosier 100 being his first big race to report for them.
He is a retired middle-grade teacher, an avid collector of vintage racing memorabilia, and a tour guide at Miller Park. Paul loves to explore abandoned race tracks both here and in Europe, with the Brooklands track in Weybridge England being his favorite. Married to Paula, they have three adult children and two cats.
Paul loves the diversity of all types of racing, “a factor that got me hooked in the first place.”