ROUNDUP | News and notes

Safer racing: Team owner Sam Schmidt watched this week's accidents at Indianapolis with some curiosity. Schmidt has always been interested in safety issues and knows these Indy cars can protect drivers much better than the ones he was driving just five years ago. The results were evident all week. When defending Indy 500 champion Buddy Rice and Paul Dana hit the wall hard and Sam Hornish Jr. flipped his car, all three managed to walk away. "What you see now is, clearly, a finished product," Schmidt said Saturday. "What you've seen over the last three or four years is people hit really, really hard and at some awkward angles and they still walk away." Schmidt credits the SAFER barrier technology and radical changes in seat and head rest design along with the almost universal use of HANS devices for keeping drivers safer. Those products weren't nearly as refined when Schmidt crashed in Orlando in January 2000. He has been a quadriplegic ever since.
Ready to run: Hornish and Team Penske were ready to qualify Saturday -- if they had gotten a chance. With Hornish crashing the car he expected to qualify, the Penske team's stable was reduced from four cars to three. No problem for Penske. The team rebuilt a road-course car, then flew Hornish's engine back to its shop overnight. On Saturday morning, that engine had been repaired and was back in Indianapolis, ready for a qualifying run. "We've been on a 24-hour program," Cindric said. "That car would have been ready this afternoon and we figured we would be ready to run by noon." But morning rain washed out the first of four qualifying sessions, giving Penske's team another night to fix the battered car.
She said it: When Janet Guthrie started racing Indy cars in the 1970s, she said it was difficult to get sponsors because they were fearful of a serious crash involving a woman. Danica Patrick has no such fears. The rookie, who has become the media darling in her first week on the 2 1/2-mile oval, acknowledged Saturday that racing can be dangerous -- and that's how she likes it. "There are a heck of a lot more injuries in cheerleading than in other sports and I was a cheerleader," she said. "I guess I'm just attracted to dangerous sports." Patrick hopes to become the fourth woman to qualify for the race, joining Guthrie, Lyn St. James and Sarah Fisher. And with the second-fastest speed of the week at 227.633 mph, Patrick also believes she has a chance to become the first woman to win the pole at Indy.
What rain: Track officials called off Saturday's qualifying session early in the afternoon. But by mid-afternoon, the weather was almost perfect. With sunshine and temperatures in the mid-60s, some wondered why the decision was made so early. Cindric offered an explanation. "It takes about 2 1/2 to three hours to run, and if you look right now, we still have some weepers out there," he said. "If you run a practice session, that's at least a half hour and then you have another half-hour practice session. It takes another half hour to get through tech inspection. So if you throw in another two to 2 1/2 hours to dry the track and add another 1 1/2 hours, even if were ready to go at 2 o'clock, you couldn't have made one pass through the line."
Associated Press