Walter Zoomie’s World: 2006 Indy 500 Pictorial - May 19

By Walter Zoomie

Everything was right with the world today at IMS.

Perfect weather, and Ms. Jamie Little. She is a vision. She is a broadcast legend who works for the partner as a pit reporter. She is able to wear a nomex suit in a way I have never seen before.

The look on her enchanting face says one of two things in this picture:

1– “Zoomie! Take me! Take me NOW!“

2–”Get the Eff away from me and quit stalking me, you annoying dork!

I prefer the former.

Please allow me to dream.

I bet Eddie Cheever would trade his Indy 500 win if it meant he could date Jamie Little.

Arie Lippback Jr. pranged the wall yesterday. Today, his team worked their butts off to fix the shattered racing machine.

Arie’s team was able to get the car back together. They are awesome, as evidenced by this illustration. Way to go, Team Arie Lippback!!

This picture disturbs me.

This is four-time Indy 500 Champion The Rocket Rick Mears. He is riding on a Segue, which is a two wheeled, portable, electric mode of transport. Another name for it is DORK-MOBILE!

No Indy winner, no matter how many times he’s won it, should EVER be seen riding one of these.

I mean, if Marty Roth wants to ride a Segue… OK, but not Rick Mears.

I understand that Rick Mears might have sore legs from Indy car crashes from a long time ago, and that walking a lot might hurt him now.

That’s fine, but, I think that if a 4-time Indy winner needs a little help getting around these days, he should have a throne of hot chicks that look like Jamie Little to carry him around or something.

And Tony George or Roger Penske should pay for it too! Why not? They pay for everything else!

This is the racer of Max Papis. He is the new team mate of Eddie Cheever.

I bet Max and Eddie are gonna cruise for young chicks together, that’s what I think.

Max used to drive in the CART series, which is now known as Champ Car. Some people think Champ Car drivers are better than IRL drivers. I couldn’t really say for sure if that’s true or not, but when I watched the Champ Car race at Houston last week, I thought I saw a driver or two there that had the same driving prowess as a Marty Roth or a Jeff Simmons.

I heard Max was killed in the movie Driven. He looks like he’s recovered nicely. The movie Driven Effen sucked. It was bad cinema. Life is too short for bad cinema.

Here’s a shot of Max after practice ended today.

If you look closely, you can see that Max shares the paddock’s deeply felt affection for me.

I can just feel the love emanating from Max’s facial expressions and hand gestures!

I bet Max and the rest of the paddock will probably have a real nice present for me at the end of the month once the race is over…sorta like how they did for Chuckie.

I’ll just play it off and pretend I don’t know about it, though, and when they give me the present I’ll act all surprised and stuff and maybe I might cry or something a little. That always plays good in the media…

I hope they give me something cool, though, like maybe a Dallara or something. I don’t want a Panoz, though. They suck.

This is the tub of the Thadeus Medieros racer. The tub means what’s left over and identifiable after a heinous crash.

He had a shunt, or off course excursion yesterday. Those two terms are used by real racers, usually of European road-racing origin. I just used them to sound cool. When those terms are used in an Indy reference, it means you garbaged your rig by stuffing it into the concrete walls!

Note how the crew members look embarrassed and sad and downtrodden and won’t even look the camera in the eye.

They are forlorn that all their hard work up until then was for naught.

Don’t despair, Team Thadeus! All is not lost!

Just throw that mangled tub into the back of your brother-in-law’s pickup truck and take it to the body shop and fix ‘er right up!

That’s what we do here on the south side!

This is Roger Yasukawa pulling out of his Team Playa Del pit.

Roger replaces John Herb. Mr. Herb musta had better things to do than to drive fast at Indy.

This is the racer of PJ Jones.

PJ Jones is the son of Parnelli Jones, the 1963 Indy Champion. Parnelli is a bad ass. He kicked Eddie Sachs’ butt once for mouthing off.

PJ Jones got some free, on-track time all by himself today after the track closed. I bet Parnelli threatened to kick Tony George’s butt if he didn’t let PJ get some practice in.

I have an old burnt up Offy piston. I was told it came outta one of Parnelli’s racing rigs from back in the day. Last year at the Flag Room I got drunk, and I had Parnelli autograph my piston. I thought he was gonna kick my butt, but he didn’t, so now I have a cool piece of Indy racing memorabilia.

NO… it’s not for sale either!

Here’s a shot of Tony Kanaan’s car. I really don’t have anything smart to say about it either.

Wait… yeah, I do!

The drivers of Andretti Green are playful. I saw Dario Judd rub Tony’s bald head this morning. I saw former AGR driver and Indy Champ Dan Wheldon getting frisky with the sad clown Bryan Herta, as well as Kanaan. I saw the lot of them high fiving and stuff.

Those guys are close, and really know how to have fun!

This is Mark Donohue’s sled from his 1971 Indy 500 effort.

This is Bobby Unser’s rig from 1981 where he won, then lost, then won again because USAC and Mario had some problems or something.

Why do Andrettis seem to always cause problems?

I was there that day but I don’t remember much about it because I had just graduated from high school and I was probably drunk from having illegal beers because I was only 17 or something.

I was a miscreant, juvenile delinquent.

Kinda.

A couple of shots taken from the catwalk above Gasoline Alley.

An old Miller, circa 1935. The owners used those stick-on type mailbox letters on it. I’m not so sure the owners of this classic racing machine know what Indy means. I think if I needed to do some lettering on my old race car, I wouldn’t go to Home Depot to get it done. I think I would hire somebody cool, like Chip Foose, or something, to hand paint my graphics.

Probably.

A classic, driven by Elmer George…

This is wrong on so many levels…

Another classic, done up right…

A slumbering TCG racing unit…

I heard a very loud thump today. It sounded like two railroad box cars slamming together, but it wasn’t. That sound I heard was Jeff Simmons in his Bobby Rahal racing unit. He made a wrong mistake in Turn One.

This is what a mistake at Indy looks like.

Luckily, Jeff was not hurt.

This is the Jeff Simmons secret Hurt Locker. This is where Team Rahal puts all the bits and pieces of the cars Jeff Simmons destroys.

Remember when I said I thought that the Ethanol car was snake bit and unlucky and that RLR should shred it or repaint it? Well, maybe I was wrong.

I think that if I was Bobby Rahal, I would fire Jeff Simmons and just run two cars from here on out. That’s what I’d do.

About Walter Zoomie's World: Walter Zoomie has kindly allowed a number of his entertaining tales of adventure to be published by IndianaRacing.net. You can read more at his official blog: Walter Zoomie's World. Also, be sure to check out the hundreds of fantastic vintage racing photos taken by his father Rick, a former Indianapolis newspaper reporter and photographer.