If Race Is Won in Pits, Brack Gets Checkered Flag

INDIANAPOLIS — Rick Galles’ crew earned $40,000 for beating Eddie Cheever’s team in the Coors Indy Pit Stop Challenge. With Kenny Brack in the driver’s seat, the Galles crew changed four tires and simulated a fuel-hose connection in 14.284 seconds. Cheever’s group, with Eddie himself in the cockpit, took 15.133 seconds. The runners-up won $10,000.

It was Galles’ second consecutive victory and the Albuquerque, N.M., team’s fifth in the past nine years.

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Italian rookie Vincenzo Sospiri, on having an added edge in Sunday’s race: “There’s one thing no one’s noticed. The last time a rookie won this competition was way back in 1966, and that was the year I was born.”

Graham Hill, the world Formula One champion, was the rookie that year.

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There are questions about the endurance of the Aurora and Infiniti engines, but none about the endurance of Buzz Calkins, the Denver driver who won the Indy Racing League’s first event last year at Disney World.

Calkins has been training to run in the New York City marathon.

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The rookie of the year Sunday will receive $10,000 from Bank One. The original award, started in 1952, was $500 and a year’s supply of meat from Stark & Wetzel.

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Sprint car champion Steve Kinser is the second from his family to make the 500 field. His cousin, the late Sheldon Kinser, made six races, with a best finish of sixth in 1981.

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Claude Bourbonnais, who was honored along with Paul Durant and Alessandro Zampedri at a Last Row party Thursday night, is the ninth Canadian driver to qualify for the 500.

The others are Paul Tracy, Scott Goodyear, 1995 winner Jacques Villeneuve and his uncle of the same name, Cliff Hocul, Eldon Rasmussen, Billy Foster and Pete Henderson.

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The Scott Brayton Driver’s Trophy will be awarded to a past or present Indy 500 driver who “best exemplifies the character and racing spirit of the late two-time 500 pole winner.”

The recipient will receive $25,000 and a crystal trophy from Tiffany’s.

Brayton’s widow, Becky, is working for Team Menard, Scott’s old team, as a public relations representative.

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Sunday’s winning car will be the first powered by a naturally aspirated engine since A.J. Foyt with a Ford V8 in 1967.

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Services for Troy Ruttman, 1952 Indy 500 winner, will be held Tuesday at 11 a.m. at the Billings Funeral Home in Woodward, Okla. Burial will be in Moorland, Okla., Ruttman’s birthplace. Ruttman died last Monday in a Lake Havasu City, Ariz., hospital of lung cancer.