After winning one of the weirdest Indy 500s ever, Takuma Sato is ready to try for No. 3
To the naked eye, the two versions of Takuma Sato’s grin that grace the Borg-Warner Trophy look identical. But as the two-time Indianapolis 500 winner cradled his brand-new Baby Borg inside the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing hospitality suite in St. Petersburg in April, he glanced down and looked at his ‘2020’ cast in sterling silver once more.
When he looked up, the difference between his two likenesses was written on his face now eight months to the day since he captured his 2020 title.
“This one’s even happier,” he quipped.
Back on Aug. 23, Sato joined a premier class of drivers who have circled the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in its 110-year history. Of the more than 700 drivers who have been lucky enough to race the Indianapolis 500, only 20 have won it twice. And in front of a barren expanse of asphalt, metal and blue skies, one of the greatest racecar drivers Japan has ever produced joined that club last August.
Almost nothing about that day was normal. IMS, normally home to 300,000-plus fans on race day, instead held a couple thousand people — team members, drivers, owners, safety personnel, media, race and series officials and scant sponsors allowed inside. The world’s largest single-day sporting event had been shrunk by a global pandemic into just this: a sporting event.
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In the lead-up to the race, drivers spoke about the eeriness strolling the grounds without an autograph-seeker or selfie-request in sight. Scooters to ride through gasoline alley were now more luxury than necessity. And when Jim Cornelison belted those final notes of “(Back Home Again in) Indiana,” the way they echoed off empty grandstands just didn’t hit him the same.
Neither did the feeling three hours later when a crazed Sato rolled across the Yard of Bricks and took the checkered flag with the final few laps of the race under caution.
His team celebrated while wearing masks, he doused himself with milk and his emotions and memories harkened back to 2017, when he first won the race while driving for Andretti Autosport.
But his gaze from atop his No. 30 Honda was met by no one.
“It was certainly very different,” Sato said earlier this month, reflecting on some of those first moments after he stepped out of the car. “I was really kind of pleased I did it in 2017 already, because winning the Indy 500 shouldn’t be any different. Last year was a special moment, but those moments of crossing the Yard of Bricks and the checkered flag … in 2017, there’s nothing like it. All the buzz, the atmosphere, the energy of the people – 300,000 of them.
“That makes a huge difference.”
The oddity of it all only continued. No traditional Victory Banquet. No open-to-the-public ticket unveiling earlier this year. And the latest version of the Borg-Warner Trophy with the second iteration of his face has not yet been able to make the trip across the Pacific to Sato’s homeland of Japan.
Though he was able to go back to Japan after the October season-finale, Sato says 60-70% of the celebratory events he would have participated in were canceled. Most of those he did were some form of video call.
“Was it as exciting as after 2017? Of course not,” Sato said. “But even though it was the shortest (title defense) time in history, it’s okay. It was just an exciting moment to have.”
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Team co-owner Bobby Rahal knows the feeling of an out-of-the-ordinary Indy 500 victory, and he agrees with his 44-year-old driver: You take 500s however you can get them.
Rahal’s only Indy 500 victory, in 1986, finally came six days after the race was originally scheduled. Hard showers drenched the track onthe scheduled race day May 25, and a reschedule for the following day was an even more thorough washout.
The green flag finally fell Saturday, May 31, and by the time it came for Rahal to celebrate with fellow podium finishers Kevin Cogan and Rick Mears the following day, essentially the entire paddock was packed up and headed to Milwaukee for the next weekend’s race. The traditional Victory Banquet quickly morphed into a casual soiree.
What’s more, Rahal’s team-owner in ’86, Jim Trueman, was dying of colon cancer that May. He sat in the back of the pace car and took the victory lap with fans that Saturday and stood atop the podium. Less than a week later, Trueman was too sick to attend his own hometown celebratory parade in Columbus, Ohio. He died June 11.
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"Maybe we’re just not meant to celebrate like the others,” Rahal reasoned. “But hey, as long as we win…
“I’ve told people that there was no one in the stands last year, but it was still a great race.”
In place of the traditional pomp and circumstance, IMS officials are planning a celebratory moment for Sato on race day, beyond making sure he has a large presence on the track’s video boards for the next couple of weeks.
Around the time of the driver intros, IMS president Doug Boles told IndyStar, the track has set aside time in the minute-by-minute pre-race plan to try to make up for some of what Sato lost out on nearly nine months ago.
When asked for details, Boles said the track had considered a large-scale to-do that could have included a replacement Victory lap, but opted for something more low-key that wouldn’t take away from Sato’s focus of trying to become the first repeat 500 champion since Helio Castroneves (2001-02).
“We just want to give him an opportunity to hear from the fans and get the applause he missed out on last year,” Boles said. “We sure don’t want to distract from him trying to win another.”
Indy 500 repeat winners
Repeat wins have been accomplished only five times in the race’s history. The others: Wilbur Shaw (1939-40), Mauri Rose (1947-48), Bill Vukovich (1953-54), Al Unser Sr. (1970-71) and Castroneves. On the line, along with an even larger heap of fame, is BorgWarner’s ever-growing jackpot, set aside for the next defending champion who’s able to bring it home.
Ever since Castroneves completed the feat 19 years ago, the company has begun refilling its pool of money for such an event – an additional $20,000 each year – as a bonus to the eventual next repeat champ. This year, that stands at $380,000, or 41,300,000 yen. It started in 1995.
Amid the pressure to repeat and soak up the missed moments of 2020, Sato said by the time cars took the track Tuesday for the opening day of Indy 500 practice, he’d be lasered in on 2021. Not what came before, or what a win on May 30 could do.
And it’s because he knows how special it is to win just one 500 -- something he wondered if he’d ever achieve after crashing on the final lap of 2012 -- that his celebratory smile on the Borg-Warner is a wee bit wider than it was three years ago.
To survive 200 laps and stand above the rest is the sport’s greatest feat. Absent throngs of fans cheering his name, Aug. 23, 2020, will still go down as one of the most precious days of his life. And to relive that day, even for a fleeting moment, in less than two weeks won’t be so much a replacement as a deserved addition to an all-too-short reign as the defending Indy 500 winner.
“I just want to share a great, happy moment with the fans physically there,” he said. “That’s the most important thing, to get the atmosphere back at IMS.
“I think, even at 40%, the people’s energy will cover like if the place was full.”
Email IndyStar motor sports reporter Nathan Brown at nlbrown@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter: @By_NathanBrown.