Underdog Indy team gets roadside assistance
INDIANAPOLIS -- They will not have the best seat in the house for today's 90th running of the Indianapolis 500. That belongs to pole-sitter Sam Hornish Jr., driver for well-heeled car owner Roger Penske, winner of 13 poles and an unmatched 13 Indy 500s.
But those associated with Paul Diatlovich's ragtag PDM Racing team -- winner of no poles or Indy 500s -- will be nonetheless happy to take part in the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. Bolstered by a dedicated crew and an eclectic support staff that includes a trio of Boston-area men dubbed the ``The Mass Minutemen," Diatlovich's underfunded underdogs captured the fancy of Brickyard fans by making the 33-car field despite a devastating crash 10 days ago by Brazilian rookie driver Thiago Medeiros that left him unhurt but PDM's No. 18 Honda-powered Panoz a total wreck.
The only salvageable pieces were the right-side suspension and right sidepod. Everything else -- the tub, the engine, the gearbox -- was junk.
The crash set into motion an inspiring 72-hour saga in which Diatlovich and his crew scrambled to cobble together a vehicle with parts ``we begged, borrowed, and appropriated," Diatlovich said, from about 15 other cars at the track.
When Bump Day dawned last Sunday, PDM's bleary-eyed crew threw open the doors of their garage and rolled out a car Diatlovich christened ``Pots and Pans 2" in honor of the ``Pots and Pans Special" his mentor, A.J. Watson, brought to Indy from Glendale, Calif., in the late 1940s.
``The man absolutely dominated the Speedway in the late '50s and early '60s," Diatlovich marveled.
Pots and pans, indeed. Gasoline Alley rallied around PDM Racing as help came pouring in from every corner of the garage area.
Fernandez Racing offered up a chassis that was gathering dust in its race shop. Sam Schmidt Motorsports came up with a bare gearbox when Panther Racing fell through on its promise to loan PDM a complete $50,000 unit. Even trays of hot food and chests of cold drinks were donated to the cause.
``Tom Johansen, a guy who used to build gearboxes for me full-time at PDM, and is now a weekend helper, was now all of a sudden burdened with building a gearbox," Diatlovich said. ``That's a process that normally takes a week in the shop and he did it in a day.
``The guys at Fernandez Racing said it usually takes a crew of 10 guys about two weeks to build a car, and we had a crew of about seven or eight of us working in the wee hours to build a car in 48 hours."
Some 72 hours after he did a quarter-spin and made contact with the SAFER barrier in Turn 1 with the left rear, Medeiros took the track in a completely rebuilt car and became the 33d and final qualifier by touring Indy's 2 1/2-mile monster oval in a four-lap average of 215.729 miles per hour.
``When I first came here in 1977, that was status quo," said Diatlovich, 53, of Oceanside, N.Y., who was a journeyman mechanic for several Indy teams in the late '70s and established his own shop and race team when the Indy Racing League was founded in 1996.
``You had to improvise, adapt, and overcome," Diatlovich recalled. ``That was just American ingenuity. This deal here that happened to us was probably the most devastating thing that could've happened to PDM Racing. I mean, we don't have a spare car, we don't have the budget for a spare car, and we don't have a budget to fix the crash damage, as it is.
``But what I was really impressed with was how many of our teams and fellow competitors stepped up and said, `Hey, we'll help out in any way, shape, or form that we can.' "
For eight years, they have piled into a van and driven from Boston to Indianapolis to spend their vacation time working as part of PDM Racing's crew, rubbing shoulders and jousting with marquee teams such as Penske, Andretti Green, and Rahal Letterman.
``I tell everyone I know, it's like being the bat boy at the World Series," said Gordon, owner of Weymouth Honda, who celebrated his 56th birthday at the Speedway last Wednesday.
``Paul's my hero," Gordon said. ``You have to love and respect his passion for this sport, it's the reason we keep coming back to help."
This year, with Honda as the IndyCar Series sole engine supplier, Gordon put his money where his mouth is, becoming an associate sponsor of Diatlovich's car. In return, Diatlovich promised to put a ``Weymouth Honda" decal on the car.
``I told my people back home at the dealership that our advertising budget for the month was already spent," Gordon joked.
When the tub from Fernandez Racing arrived at 6:05 p.m. on the Friday before Bump Day, PDM rolled up its sleeves and got down to work. But Gordon and Corda were working against a much tighter deadline. They had college graduations to attend the next day in Boston, where Gordon's son, Andrew, was graduating from Tufts and Corda's daughter, Laura, from Suffolk.
``We came here early Saturday morning and worked until like 9:30 and then shot out to the airport to catch our plane, so we stayed here as long as we could," Corda said. ``Believe me, I really didn't want to go, but I didn't want to miss [graduation]."
Maccagnano, though, stayed behind and continued to pitch in any way he could.
``We were just so tired and it was just day after day," said Maccagnano, 54. ``It was like, `This had to be done, this had to be done, this had to be done,' and it was all getting done. The car got out there, qualified, and we put it in the race. It all worked, everything worked."
``We didn't know if we were going to have to come back here, pick up the van, and go back home, or if we were going to be in the show," Gordon said.
With just 50 laps of practice in the morning, Medeiros put it in the show.
``PDM did a wonderful job and we put a lot of effort in this program," said Medeiros, whose goal is to vie for Rookie of the Year honors. ``It would've been frustrating if we didn't do it. But I had a lot of faith in those guys to go out there and have the confidence level to qualify.
``It was a lot more windy than it was on pole day, and on the back straight we lost a lot of speed as well. But we did what we could and it was good enough to make the field."
On Friday, the aptly named Make-A-Wish Foundation came on board as an associate sponsor. Chief mechanic Brad Brewer, meanwhile, received the Clint Brawner Mechanical Excellence Award for guiding PDM through its turbulent time.
While making the field is a victory in its own right, Diatlovich said PDM Racing ``had no pretenses about winning the race.
``We know we're competing against the Penskes, we know we're competing against the Rahals and the Andretti Greens," he said. ``Believe me, we know if we're to have any shot of winning at all, everyone else is going to have to fall out of the race. So there are no pretenses on this team."
So why go through all the trouble?
``This place just means so much," Diatlovich said. ``This isn't Pocono, this isn't Michigan, this is Indianapolis. This is the Indianapolis 500.
``It's the largest sporting event in the world, bar none, and just to be able to participate and be privileged to walk through the gates here is fantastic.
``A lot of people would've quit, and a lot of people would've gone home, and we did neither. We built a car and put it in the show."
