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Byline: DUTCH MANDEL
Sunday I led the field for the 90th running of the Indianapolis 500.
Out front of Sam and Helio, Chip's team, an army of Andrettis and the lady with the gentlemen.
I crossed the yard of bricks before them all.
Chevrolet, the all-American company supplying the All-American Greatest Spectacle in Racing with pace cars, called and asked if I'd like to drive a pace car. "Out there ahead of Lance and the racers,'' they said.
Armstrong would be in my peloton.
Indy is in my blood as much as sarcasm and red wine. I grew up with the race's unholy clutches on my father; he'd go off to the Speedway for a month pilgrimage. Back when the only available video was closed-circuit TV and I sat in San Francisco's Cow Palace suffering from poison oak, watching Eddie Sachs and Dave MacDonald get killed in a melee, which made me understand real suffering. I perched in stands behind the Mears pit and saw the famous Johncock-Mears dual unfold in '82. Thanks to a late night Kmart off the I-264 ring road, we learned my wife was pregnant with our eldest 18 Indy 500s ago.
Source: HighBeam Research, LEADER OF THE PACK.(Motorsports)