In Driver’s Eye with James Hinchcliffe, the six-time INDYCAR winner will bring you inside the mind of a racer while breaking down the nuts and bolts of the sport for fans.
Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Speedway, Ind.) â The long wait is finally over. And that wait started minutes after the checkered flag fell on Alex Palous victory in the 2025 Indianapolis 500.Â
Thirty-two drivers eagerly waiting for another chance to add their name to the list of those immortalized by winning The Great Spectacle in Racing. One driver looking to defend his title as the 500 champ.
The Indy 500 is held in the largest sports area on Earth, Sunday is the 110th race since 1911, and its the most important race to any driver who has the privilege of even attempting to compete in it. When you stack all those things on top of each other, it isnt surprising that the Indy 500 intensifies every emotion that a driver feels.
As a driver, you know winning this race changes everything. Your life will never be the same, and you feel that in every lap you do here at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. You also know that the team has put countless hours into preparing and running the car.
Leading any INDYCAR race always feels good, but there’s nothing comparable to the thrill of leading the Indy 500.Â
When you take the lead at Indy for the first time, you cant help but smile in your helmet. You can almost hear the cheers of the crowd through the noise of the engine. Your heart rate spikes, and the adrenaline pumps harder.
I remember leading the 2016 race into Turn 1 at the start, and you could see the grandstands come alive.Â
After two weeks of staring at them while driving down the frontstraight, largely empty and gray, they are suddenly this vibrant, colorful living thing. The view takes your breath away⦠for one second! Then you have to focus back on the corner coming at you at 220 miles an hour.
Qualifying on pole, leading laps and, of course, winning the race, just mean so much more here at IMS. This place truly makes drivers experience the highest of highs.
But⦠that comes with the obvious caveat.
For every heightened positive emotion, the negative ones hit and leave you breathless in an entirely different, soul-crushing way. A bad Indy 500 sits with you so much longer and weighs much more heavily on your mind. Its one of the hardest things to get over.
My rookie year, I crashed in the Indy 500 right at the halfway marker. As I lost control and hit the wall, my heart sank lower than it ever had in my career.Â
I was desperate, in that moment, to invent a way to turn back time with my mind. Just a few seconds, nothing crazy. There was almost a refusal to accept what had just happened. But when it finally set in, the feeling of devastation is unparalleled for a driver.
Whether you crash out mid-race like me, or with a handful of laps to go like Pato OWard in 2023, or before the green flag even fell like Scott McLaughlin last year, the feeling is the worst thing you can emotionally experience as an INDYCAR driver.
The highest of highs can only happen at the same place that deals you the lowest of lows.
Second place at any other track is a decent day. Second place at Indy is a fiery dagger to the heart.Â
You only need to look at footage of the drivers who have finished second in recent years to understand. A picture is worth a thousand words, and those clips are novels of pain and disappointment.
All that said, as painful as the results can be, as low as those lows are, every driver will glad
