THE BULLETIN • SUNDAY, MAY 30, 2021 B3
MOTOR SPORTS
IndyCar courts Black fans, drivers in push to diversify
BY DAN GELSTON
Associated Press
INDIANAPOLIS — Rod Reid ran a
program full of young, Black kart rac-
ers locked out of a venue because of the
pandemic and needed a track to race.
Indianapolis Motor Speedway had
spent millions on upgrades on the his-
toric property at the same time last
year when the coronavirus had a steely
grip on the nation. There was no guar-
antee — even if gates were open — that
there would be room for NXG Youth
Motorsports ’ usual spot teaching kids
STEM classes in a makeshift classroom
in the paddock or for their drivers to
race around the cone-lined course in a
parking lot.
The suggestion was made to Reid:
Why not dial up the new boss at IMS?
His plea for help last June to Roger
Penske — Reid noted the 2,300 kids
from 11 to 15 years old who have
passed through the school over 15 years
looking for a path into motorsports —
turned instead into a startling revela-
tion for the Captain.
Yes, the NXG kids needed a place to
learn and hone their craft. But the blos-
soming drivers also represented a rare
chance for a minority group severely
underrepresented in racing to feel at
home inside the sprawling, 111-year-
old speedway.
“We told him what we were about
and he was really surprised,” Reid said.
“The reason we started, especially the
idea of exposing the Black community
to Indianapolis Motor Speedway, sur-
prised him because he said he couldn’t
believe people don’t feel welcome here. I
told him, you’re talking years and years
and years back to when a person of
color couldn’t even go to the speedway.”
The 84-year-old Penske offered NXG
space at IMS to resume the program
and, essentially, a new start. He helped
NXG start a working relationship with
Chevrolet, and the program secured
loans to purchase a truck for its trailer.
The talks with Penske happened to
come not long after the death of George
Floyd, a catalyst that in part led to In-
dyCar’s “Race for Equality and Change”
initiative supporting diversity and in-
clusivity across the industry.
IndyCar moved to create a more di-
verse workforce throughout all levels
of a series that has had just two Black
Indy 500
Continued from B1
Through vaccinations,
more than 90,000 done at
the speedway, Penske got the
clearance to at last permit 40%
attendance.
“The good news is, it’s
started to roll here and I think
with opening America we
can be the premiere event,” he
said. “It’s an honor for us to
even be in a position to exe-
cute something like that. We’re
going to continue to fine tune
it. I would do the same trans-
action again. I just see the ben-
efits on a longer term basis. I
really want to run as big as my
anticipation and not my ex-
ception.”
And so it is with expecta-
tion and not anticipation that
six-time IndyCar champion
Scott Dixon starts from the
pole Sunday for the fourth
time at the Indy 500. Dixon is
considered the best driver of
his generation and trails Mario
Andretti by only one victory
for second on IndyCar’s all-
time wins list. He has just one
Indy 500 victory, in 2008, and
three runner-up finishes.
“It’s the biggest race in the
world and the most diffi-
Blazers
Continued from B1
C.J. McCollum added 21
points for the sixth-seeded
Trail Blazers. The series shifts
to Game 5 on Tuesday night
in Denver.
Nikola Jokic finished with
16 points and nine rebounds
for third-seeded Denver be-
fore sitting out the final quar-
ter. He was the Nuggets’ top
scorer.
Lillard was 1 for 10 from
the field but finished with 10
points, 10 assists and eight
rebounds. He also sat for the
final quarter after the Blazers
led by as many as 33 points in
the third.
“If you would have told me
going in that game that Lil-
lard’s going to be 1 for 10 from
the field and we’re going to get
blown out, I would’ve proba-
bly had a hard time believing
that,” Nuggets coach Michael
Malone said. “So, I have to be
Darron Cummings/AP file
Mario Andretti, left, talks to retired racecar driver Willy T. Ribbs before the Formula One
U.S. Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, in 2012. Ribbs and George
Mack are the only two drivers to ever start an Indianapolis 500.
drivers race in the Indy 500, its show-
case annual event that dates to 1911.
Willy T. Ribbs became the first Black
driver to start the race in 1991 (and
again in 1993) and George Mack in
2002 are it.
The 66-year-old Ribbs said he never
cared much for his role as Indy 500
trailblazer.
“I didn’t care about it,” he said. “Still
don’t. It meant nothing. I was focused
on going fast and trying to win. If you
focused on anything other than that
when you were there, you were going to
get hurt or get killed.”
Programs launched over the last
several months are designed to reach
far beyond the cockpit, but an anchor
of IndyCar’s plan was the creation of
Force Indy, an all-Black race team led
by Reid that competes in the IndyCar
ladder USF2000 Series. Force Indy
hired and developed Black mechanics,
engineers and drivers throughout its
entire team. Myles Rowe, who turns
21 in June, drives for the team and has
been pegged as a potential Indy 500
driver.
Jimmie McMillian, chief diversity of-
ficer for Penske Entertainment, is the
architect intent on designing a new era
in the open wheel series.
“We want to make sure our paddock
represents the fan base that we hope to
have,” McMillian said. “My No. 1 goal,
I feel every day, is to get rid of the con-
cult race in the world. I feel
very lucky and privileged to
have won it once but that also
drives you into a deeper will
to want to win it again,” Dixon
said. “Would I trade some
championships for 500 wins?
Maybe. I don’t know. I feel like
there’s a lot of emphasis on
IndyCar championships but
the Indy 500 is the Indy 500.”
Dixon and the four Chip
Ganassi Racing entries are
the most consistent at India-
napolis leading into the 500.
The group includes Tony Ka-
naan, who at 46 is the oldest
driver in the field, and Alex
Palou, who wrecked in Satur-
day qualifying but rebounded
Sunday to qualify sixth along-
side Kanaan.
This season has seen a
changing of the guard with
five different winners through
the first five races of the sea-
son, four of them 24 years or
younger. Three are first time
winners and Dixon is the only
veteran so far to represent in
the win column.
He starts on the front row
alongside Colton Herta, a
21-year-old four-race winner
who earlier this month earned
a two-year contract extension
from Andretti Autosport, and
cept that this is a white sport and that
people are not welcome here.”
Years before Penske assumed stew-
ardship of the series, IndyCar had a
diversity committee that worked on
recruitment and retainment for both
the series and IMS. While McMillian
viewed the number of women involved
on the corporate side as a positive for
the series — roughly 35% to 40% of
the workforce are women — the mi-
nority makeup “was where we proba-
bly struggled.”
IndyCar’s solution was an attempt to
become more aggressive and creative in
its outreach efforts — how does it find
the best and brightest in urban com-
munities and persuade them to seek a
career inside the paddock.
With few exceptions for drivers born
into legacy families, pursuing a career
in racing is as much about sponsorship,
cash and connections as talent, and the
hustle is part of the job. IndyCar took
a deeper look at identifying businesses
willing to support developmental teams
or help in securing equipment for up-
and-coming programs.
That also means developing a ca-
reer path in racing for women and mi-
norities in a variety of jobs outside the
cockpit ranging from race engineers to
public relations and sponsorship selling
and beyond.
“Someone has to take that first step,”
Penske said. “I think in the position
“It’s the biggest race in
the world and the most
difficult race in the
world. I feel very lucky
and privileged to have
won it once but that also
drives you into a deeper
will to want to win it
again. There’s a lot of
emphasis on IndyCar
championships but the
Indy 500 is the Indy 500.”
— Scott Dixon, IndyCar driver
Rinus Veekay, at 20 the young-
est front-row starter in race
history.
“We grew up in the com-
puter era, the digital era,”
VeeKay said. “That helps the
simulators are very normal to
us, help us feel comfortable
in the simulator. That maybe
translates to better results.”
The impressive youth group
includes Pato O’Ward, the
22-year-old Mexican who has
shot to popularity with Arrow
McLaren SP and is teammates
“We told (auto racing team owner
Roger Penske) what we were about
and he was really surprised.
The reason we started, especially
the idea of exposing the
Black community to Indianapolis
Motor Speedway, surprised him
because he said he couldn’t believe
people don’t feel welcome here.
I told him, you’re talking years and
years and years back to when a
person of color couldn’t even
go to the speedway.”
— Rod Reid, owner of Force Indy, an all-
Black race team
we’re in, we can be leaders in that area.
We’re going to continue to do it. We’re
looking at the people we do business
with. The people that we hire. We have
a much deeper focus. We have that
within our company. But I think from a
racing perspective, I think we have that
responsibility.”
IndyCar created incentives for teams
and track promoters that pushed di-
versity efforts. NXG students will race
karts in Detroit as part of a pilot pro-
gram that could lead to a full-season
schedule in 2022 and expansion of the
program is planned across the country.
NXG, funded in part through Lucas
Oil sponsorship, has yet to send a stu-
dent to IndyCar, though there may be
no better time for kids to feel like they
can succeed in some capacity at IMS.
Look around IMS and tangible
culture change is happening now.
USF2000, the first rung on the road to
IndyCar, raced at IMS during the In-
dyCar Grand Prix weekend ,and more
Black fans seemed to visit the track and
watch the race than McMillian could
remember.
“They said, ‘I didn’t know so many
Black people came to races,’” he said.
“The narrative now is: there are a lot
of Black people here. We have to make
sure all the folks in our community,
for one reason or another can say, ‘I’ve
been to the track.’”
in the 500 with two-time
race winner Juan Pablo Mon-
toya. McLaren brought Mon-
toya back to the race for the
first time since 2017 and isn’t
overly concerned with this
crop of young kids.
“At the end of the day you
look at how many young guys
have won the 500 the last few
years?” Montoya said. “Do
they have a shot? For sure,
no question. I think Pato
and Herta and all those kids,
they’ve got a lot of talent and
everything. You’ve got to make
it to 200 laps, you know? So
we’ll see.”
Marco Andretti, last year’s
pole-sitter, is back for the only
race on his IndyCar calendar
and hated his car the entire
week. A change made right
after qualifying last Sunday
settled him down and now he
thinks he might have a shot to
win from 25th.
Andretti is one of six An-
dretti Autosport entries but
Herta has become the star. Al-
exander Rossi, winner of the
100th running back in 2016 as
a 24-year-old rookie, is clos-
ing in on a two years without
an IndyCar Series win. He
was second in the 500 in 2019,
fourth in 2018 and still try-
Next up
ver’s JaMychal Green said. “I
mean it was embarrassing. So
when we go home we gotta be
the aggressors.”
Portland at Denver
When: 6 p.m.
Tuesday
TV: NBCSNW
a lot better and the urgency
has to be there. Maybe this
could be a wake up call for
our starting group, just to play
harder. Good things happen
when you play hard, and we
didn’t play anywhere close to
hard enough tonight.”
The Nuggets downed the
Blazers 120-115 at the Moda
Center on Thursday night.
In that game, Denver had 20
3-pointers and got a boost
from four straight 3s from
Austin Rivers during a key
stretch in the fourth quarter.
On Saturday, Rivers had eight
points.
It was imperative for Port-
land that big man Jusuf Nur-
kic — probably Portland’s best
defense against Jokic — stay
ing to recapture the joy of that
surprise victory.
The race includes nine for-
mer winners, including two-
time and reigning race winner
Takuma Sato of Rahal Letter-
man Lanigan. But so many
young new drivers plan to
contend Sunday and Dixon
cautions against getting too
confident at one of the most
daunting tracks in the world.
There’s a difference, Dixon
noted, between champions
and race winners and Josef
Newgarden said it took him
several seasons to figure that
out. Newgarden is now a two-
time IndyCar champion but
still seeking his first Indy 500
victory.
“There are guys who are
fast and have elements of the
whole package, but they don’t
have everything,” Newgarden
said. “There’s a difference be-
tween someone who is really
good and flashy and entertain-
ing and wins races and never
wins a championship.
“When you look at the
500 and what it requires, ver-
sus what the championship
requires, they are different.
There’s an argument of which
would you prefer. And that’s a
very different question.”
Inspiration?
Nurkic said took issue with
what he claimed analyst Kend-
rick Perkins said about his de-
fense after Game 3.
“I guess in this league today,
he’d be a mascot,” Nurkic said.
“I don’t know why he claimed
the things like that, and I like
him as a person, too.”
Steve Dykes/AP
Portland Trail Blazers’ Norman Powell, left, drives to the basket on
Denver Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic, right, during Game 4 of a first-round
playoff series in Portland on Saturday . Powell had a game-high 29
points .
out of trouble after fouling out
in the previous two games.
Portland’s bench, with the ex-
ception of Carmelo Anthony,
had also been struggling, out-
scored in Game 3 24-19 by
Denver.
Nurkic finished with 17
points, and Anthony had 12 —
on his 37th birthday — to lead
the bench.
“We got our butts whooped
tonight so that should be all
the motivation we need,” Den-
Tip-ins
Nuggets: Will Barton re-
mained out for the Nuggets
with a hamstring injury .
Trail Blazers: With his start
Saturday, Lillard matched
Kevin Duckworth atop Port-
land’s career list with 59 play-
off starts. … Zach Collins,
who has been out with a frac-
tured left foot, put up shots
before the game. There was no
word on his return.
Novak Djokovic wins
in Serbia in tuneup
for French Open
Novak Djokovic warmed
up for the French Open by
beating Alex Molcan 6-4, 6-3
to take his 83rd career title
Saturday on home soil at the
Belgrade Open.
Top-ranked Djokovic
struggled on serve in the first
set as he was broken three
times by his Slovakian oppo-
nent. Djokovic was also bro-
ken once in the second set
by Molcan, the 255th-ranked
qualifier playing his first tour-
level final, but was reliably
able to dominate Molcan’s
serve for a total of six breaks
in the match.
It’s the third career title
for Djokovic in his home
nation after he won the Ser-
bia Open, a different tour-
nament in the same city, in
2009 and 2011.
— Associated Press
French Open
Continued from B1
When his favorite tourna-
ment starts Sunday — in May,
not September, as it did last
year because of the pandemic,
and with crowds numbering
more than 5,000 on-site daily
at the start and 10,000 or more
by the end, not merely 1,000,
like last year — Nadal will be
pursuing a 14th championship
in at Roland Garros.
That would break his own
record that he keeps breaking
and, of even more historic heft,
go alongside four triumphs at
the U.S. Opens, two at Wim-
bledon and one at the Austra-
lian Open to give the indefat-
igable lefty from Spain a total
of 21 Grand Slam titles in all,
which would break the men’s
mark he shares with Roger
Federer.
There are, certainly, other
stories to follow over the 15
days of play in Paris.
Federer’s return after 15
months away from the Grand
Slam stage because of two op-
erations on his right knee. No.
1-ranked Novak Djokovic’s at-
tempt to close within one ma-
jor title of his rivals by getting
his 19th, while also becoming
the first man in the profes-
sional era to win each Slam
tournament twice. Members
of the younger set, such as Ste-
fanos Tsitsipas and Alexander
Zverev, are still trying to get a
first, meanwhile.
Serena Williams, owner of
23 Slam singles trophies, is
participating in the last French
Open of her 30s. Naomi
Osaka, who’s won four majors
on hard courts, is trying to get
past the third round at Roland
Garros for the first time — af-
ter declaring she won’t speak
to the media during the tour-
nament.
Two women can say they
are defending French Open
titles: 2020 champion Iga Swi-
atek, of course, but also 2019
champion Ash Barty, who did
not enter the event last year be-
cause of the pandemic.
Osaka, who opens the pro-
ceedings at Court Philippe
Chatrier against Patricia Ma-
ria Tig of Romania, is among
a half-dozen major champions
on the Day One schedule.
Nadal’s reign is so remark-
able, so unprecedented, a 10-
foot statue was unveiled in his
honor at the place this week
— a rare tribute to an active
athlete.
“It’s true that I did some-
thing very special here in this
event,” said Nadal, who turns
35 on Thursday.
He is 100-2 for his career at
the French Open, 459-42 over-
all (.916 winning percentage)
on clay, with 62 of his 88 titles
on the surface, including 12 at
Barcelona, 11 at Monte Carlo
and 10 at Rome.
Over the years, Nadal’s in-
frequent losses on clay have
become far more newsworthy
than his victories.
What hasn’t changed from
May 2005 to May 2021: As the
French Open gets underway,
the man from Mallorca is the
man to beat.
“I play with passion, with
clear goals and with love for
the game, no? So that’s the
main issues that I have been
working on in my tennis ca-
reer, no?” Nadal said. “Just
keep playing with the right in-
tensity and at the same time
have enough passion to go on
court every day and try to be
better player. That’s the whole
thing.”