Tag: Indy 500

Thirstda’s Wandering Thoughts

TL/DR: AI is fucking up. And that’s fucking us up.

One of my childhood passions were cars. From that grew an intense interest in auto racing. It wasn’t something that I shed as an adult. Passions aren’t easily surrendered. Yeah, as an adult, auto racing, with its environmental impacts, ridiculously increasing costs, and inherent dangers, lacked substantial commonalities with the human condition and the challenges Earth and humanity face. I excused myself for decades with the subterfuge that we don’t want a vanilla existence. Year after year I followed sports car and Formula 1 racing. For a while, I also hunted NASCAR, IMSA, and IndyCar news. But sports car and Formula 1 was it for me. As I aged, the passion became muted and dulled. Part of that was that the sport just wasn’t as competitive. Aspects of its relevance to real existence also troubled me, though, and that grew.

One of the Internet’s commercial strengths is that it notices what you look at, and then baits you with more of the same. The net noticed I checked out LeMans this year. It came up with reminders about Ford’s victories at LeMans in the 1960s via the Ford GT. That effort was highlighted not long ago in a movie called Ford v Ferrari.

A story about Ford’s 1967 LeMans victory grabbed my eye. Driving a red Ford GT Mark IV, American drivers Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt took LeMans in record form. I built a model of the car within a year. It sat on my dresser among my other models until I moved out of Mom’s house four years later. Eagerly, I read the story. Then I wondered: how many drivers have won both the 24 Hours of LeMans and the Indy 500?

I put it to AI; how many drivers have won both the 24 Hours of LeMans and the Indy 500?

AI responded, slightly paraphrasing, Lewis Hamilton won it in 2011 and Max Verstappen has won it four times recently.

WTF?

I know that Lewis Hamilton has never raced at Indy or LeMans. Nor has Max V. Both are Formula 1 champions.

The entire AI answer was fantastically fucking wrong. Now, if I didn’t know the sport, I may have been fooled by the answer. Which pushes the wonderment in me, how many people consult the Internet for truthful and factual information and are being fed wrong answers? How many lack the resources or awareness to challenge the veracity of what they’re being fed?

For shits and grins, I asked AI again. This time, one source said, “…while only Foyt has won both the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Indianapolis 500.” Another told me, “Only one driver has won both the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans: Graham Hill.”

So, both answers are wrong, because I knew before asking that Foyt and Hill were the only drivers who accomplished this.

Wrong info on the net is not new. We’ve joked for years, “It was on the Internet so it must be true, ha, ha.”

But the shit is getting deep. The way that wrong information is advancing and spreading with AI’s gentle assistance, the joke is now on us.

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The Indy Dream

Dreamed last night about me and the Indy 500. The Indianopolis 500 is an annual auto race pitting 33 drivers in fast, purpose-built speed machines. In my dream, I was a last minute addition, and was attempting to qualify. A woman was sponsoring me, and I think she also owned the car. All I recall of the car is that it was low, shiny, and purple. It wasn’t today’s specs, but more aligned with the specs and designs of the 1970s, i.e., the McLaren and Eagle.

I got in, and then was out, learning that I’d qualified…dead last. The race was due to start. There was a practice session. I went out again and was faster and in better control, I learned, but had been hampered by not wearing my seat belts. I was the only person aware of that. Next, I was going out and would follow another driver — Juan Pablo Montoya — around the track to become more comfortable with the lines. Then I’d be in the race. I felt good about it all, excited and full of anticipation.

That’s where it ended.

The dream ended then because a cat awoke me. He was preparing to upchuck on the bed beside my head. Reacting but half asleep, I pushed him off the bed. I then dreamed of a flying cat. It was like Rocky the Flying Squirrel, except it was my long-haired black and white big boi, Tucker, flying around.

Dreams. Go figure.

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Today’s Theme Song

I was a racing fanatic when I was young. I followed NASCAR, Formula 1, Indy, Can-Am, Trans-Am, SCCA amateur racing, and sports cars racing, such as LeMans.

Nineteen seventy-three was a disaster for the Indy 500. Rain delayed the race. Several fatalities happened in practice and in the race. Among them, Swede Savage was killed. ABC Sports was showing the race. They put a montage of images together about the race and used James Taylor’s song, ‘Fire and Rain’, as the soundtrack. Gordon Johncock, in a Patrick Racing Eagle-Offy, was eventually declared the winner.

At the same time, I’d moved out from Mom’s house, and in with Dad. He’d been in the USAF. We lived in Ohio, at Wright-Pat, but he retired, and he and I moved south, to West Virginia. We lived with someone else for a bit until we got a place. It burned down within a month of moving in. All our possessions were gone. Among the items burned was the check to the insurance company. Nothing was insured. It wasn’t a good start.

I’d had a crush on a girl, Susie, and she liked me, but moving away ended all of that. The song ‘Fire and Rain’ had a line, “Susanne, the plans they made put an end to you.” I took that personally when I heard that song during that tragic race. I knew Susie and I had changed. Never very socially engaged, in a new school with a curriculum that was a few years behind what I knew, I became more withdrawn.

I knew the song from its nineteen seventy release. That’s when Susie and I started hanging out together sometimes. Its connection to the tragic and disastrous nineteen seventy-three Indy 500 and my life changes shifted the way I think about that era, and that song. Yet, the song is a comfort. Although I emerged more withdrawn, I think I emerged more thoughtful, mature and independent. But, now, from the vantage that times’ passing can give, I see, too, that I became more emotionally detached, and I remain like that.

This is not what I thought I’d share today. I guess it just comes from where I’m at in the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOIo4lEpsPY

 

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