INDY 500 Weather could play key role

Six times, Mother Nature has ended the race early, including last year.
KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
INDIANAPOLIS -- Sometimes the Indianapolis 500 winner simply has the fastest car throughout the race.
Other times it's about a bold move or a great pit stop, and often a mechanical failure or accident opens the door for a surprise champion.
And once in a while, even the timing of a rainstorm comes into play.
"It's better to be lucky than good," joked Bruno Junqueira, who nearly stole a victory last year as the dark clouds closed in.
Overcame stall to win
Buddy Rice overcame a stall in the pits last May and roared back to the front to win the Indianapolis 500 when it ended 50 miles short of its scheduled distance.
His victory marked the sixth time Mother Nature forced an early end to the 500, and although Rice had a dominant, pole-winning car, the race could just as easily have fallen to a handful of other drivers, depending on how long it went.
Twenty-nine years earlier, Bobby Unser played that role, taking advantage of the breaks that fell his way and scoring the second of his three 500 victories while completing just 435 miles.
Wally Dallenbach was the man to beat on that hot, humid day.
He started 21st after missing first-day qualifying, but he had the third-quickest car in the field and had climbed to fifth in the first 10 laps. He battled pole-sitter A.J. Foyt, defending champion Johnny Rutherford and Unser early on and then led three times for 96 laps in his orange Wildcat.
Dallenbach sat some 22 seconds ahead on Lap 127 when fifth-place Tom Sneva crashed just ahead of him.
Picked up nail in tire
Although Dallenbach avoided the wreck with a move to the infield grass, he picked up a nail in his left rear tire. The slow leak caused Dallenbach to lose the handling on his car, and slowing down to make the corners hurt his engine, ultimately forcing him out on the 162nd lap.
Unser and Rutherford got through the accident scene cleanly, so they moved to the front. Unser pitted on Lap 170 and Rutherford came in the next lap after Gary Bettenhausen lost a wheel on the front stretch.
By then the clouds were building. Unser held a 12-second lead over Rutherford, and four laps later the rain came down in sheets. Bill Puterbaugh and Bentley Warren slid into each other, and Steve Krisiloff did a half-spin while driving at walking speed 10 yards short of the finish line.
Starter Pat Vidan waved the checkered and red flags together and pointed Unser to victory lane.
Luck is everything in racing
"Luck is everything in racing," Unser said afterward. "If you don't have it on the racetrack, you can't win."
Unser insisted that he would have had the field covered had the race gone full distance, but Rutherford wasn't so sure.
"We figured we'd get him in our gun sights, then do it," Rutherford said. "But it never came to that."
As things turned out, Rutherford got his chance the next year in the shortest Indy ever. He took the lead from Foyt on the 80th lap and stayed out front until the race ended in the rain on the 102nd lap.
Long dry spell
The race ran its entire 500-mile distance from 1977-2003 despite numerous delays, postponements and interruptions, but the race last year had no chance.
Storms threatened throughout the day, and although the competition, itself, lasted just 2 hours 42 minutes, ABC Television carried coverage for more than 8 hours.
Rice got in trouble just before the midpoint, stalling in the pits, falling to 16th and needing 55 laps to get back out front.
In the interim, six other drivers took the lead and sat in position to win the race depending upon the timing of the decisive storm. Tony Kanaan and Dan Wheldon, teammates for Andretti Green Racing, made the most compelling cases as potential winners, leading a combined six times for 54 laps, but neither was a match for Rice at the end.
Kanaan placed second, Wheldon third and Bryan Herta, another Andretti Green driver, fourth.
Gamble didn't pay off
Junquiera ended up fifth after making an interesting gamble on strategy. When the rest of the leaders pitted on the 133rd lap, Junqueira stayed out, hoping the dark clouds would soon unleash their contents.
A regular in the Champ Car World Series, Junqueira was an outsider in the race, and some of his fans contend the race went on even as tornadoes popped up as officials waited him out. Finally, Junqueira relinquished the lead after 15 laps, and the sequence of stops never played back into his favor again.
"I did not have the car to win the race," said Junqueira, who insisted that he is not troubled by the way the 2004 race played out. "I had the car to finish fifth. Or maybe I had a car to finish 15th and because we did a good strategy and I drove very well, I was able to finish fifth."
That's just the way the Indianapolis 500 works sometimes.