If you missed it, please read Part One here…
Today’s Post by John Larsen
Given that more than 300,000 people were expected to be at the Indy 500 we made a decision to leave early and park near the Speedway to relax and stay cool. As the race drew closer the pedestrian and vehicular traffic was massive. The temperature and humidity increased quickly. Our seats were on the outside of turn four allowing a great view of some spectacular racing! Not surprisingly I did not take many photos from the seats due to the crowds and safety fencing. The unexpected finish and the winner, Alexander Rossi, had the entire crowd standing as he coasted by us out of fuel.
We awoke Monday morning to be at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum when it opened at 9 AM. Before we entered the museum we went for a walk to the front straightaway and were lucky enough to observe the photo shoot of the winner. We were not able to get onto the track surface but managed to go back to the same seats that we sat in on Friday and had a great view of the winner sitting atop his car on the start/finish line made of bricks and the Borg-Warner trophy beside them!
Our return to the museum found that it was filling up very quickly. We made a relatively quick tour of the facility and enjoyed seeing many cars that we have actually watched compete previously at one track or another. In fact, the Porsche 917 on display participated in that very first race that my Dad had brought us to at Mosport Park, Ontario so many years ago!
I was somewhat disappointed with the lack of vintage machinery but a special Team Penske display celebrating 50 years of motorsports required a significant amount of space. I utilized the partial color filters in my Fuji S1 on various cars and have found that yellow is the most appealing to me, although this may be a result of my colorblindness more than anything.
By 11 AM the museum was becoming crowded making it the ideal time for us to make the long journey back home.
Senior International Travel Correspondent, John Larsen is located in the Greater Toronto Area, whose PhotoGraffics website contains samples of motorsports and hot air balloon photography from numerous Canadian balloon festivals.