AutoWeek: Trump card: Indy's pick of The Donald is a joker

[sydude]

As an aside to the below, did anyone catch Comedy Central's Roast of Donald Trump a couple of weeks ago? Hysterical!

Trump card: Indy's pick of The Donald is a joker

Read more: http://www.autoweek.com/article/2011...#ixzz1JL2X5uZL

Indy 500 pace-car driver Donald Trump with Indianapolis Motor Speedway CEO Jeff Belskus at the announcement event.

By STEVEN COLE SMITH on 4/11/2011



Listen, there is no question that the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Izod IndyCar Series could have asked someone worse than Donald Trump to drive the pace car for the 100th anniversary of the Indianapolis 500 on May 29.

Osama Bin Laden would be worse. Or everyone's favorite warlock, Charlie Sheen. Lindsay Lohan. Bernie Madoff. The Unabomber. Maybe O. J. Simpson. Satan, D. B. Cooper, Muammar Gadhafi. The guy in Colorado who claimed his son was floating away in a balloon. Kim Jong Il. Much of the Survivor cast. Gordon Ramsay, the sneering, tantrum-throwing TV chef.

Oh, wait. IndyCar tapped Ramsay to be the grand marshal of the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach this coming weekend.

Since the cheerful Randy Bernard took over the helm of IndyCar, he and his staff have made some comparatively harmless, usually understandable missteps, but the selection of Trump to drive the pace car for the 100th-anniversary race is just unfathomable. If Bernard signed off on it, the last year he has spent building credibility just took a hit, for two reasons.

One, Trump means nothing to Indiana, nothing to Indianapolis, and for goodness sake, nothing to motorsports. For a year or two he attended the Daytona 500, and you could count on seeing his private jet take off from the runway behind the super-stretch long before the checkered flag fell--and that was only when he thought there was money to be made by bringing NASCAR to New York and glad-handing the bigwigs at Daytona seemed like good business. What a dreadful missed opportunity this is to honor someone important to racing in general, the history of Indianapolis in particular, by asking him or her to pace the race.

Reason two: Trump is controversial, especially after his April 7 appearance on the Today show, where he spent most of the time campaigning for the Republican nomination for president--“This country is going to hell,” he said--and suggesting again that President Barack Obama may have been born in Kenya, and if so, “he has pulled one of the great cons in the history of politics and beyond.” I don't care about Trump's politics. But plenty of people do, so why choose someone who is bound to alienate half the crowd? Picking anyone who is actively campaigning for president--Republican, Democrat, Whig, Tea Party, I don't care--is beyond the pale.

Trump and his hair are a punch line, and had his selection as pace-car driver been announced just four days before April 5, it would have been the funniest April Fool's joke of the day. But it's true, and if this is the work of Jeff Belskus, Indianapolis Motor Speedway president and CEO, I say bring back Tony George--now.

In the official announcement of Trump's selection, the Speedway called him a “global icon” who has “set new standards of excellence.” Really? Really? The Speedway said Trump is “the very definition of the American success story,” which apparently involves going to work for your already-rich father's company, getting richer, then declaring business bankruptcy not once, not twice, but three times.

According to Reuters, when Trump Entertainment Resorts emerged from its third Chapter 11 reorganization last July, the company had “eliminated about $1.3 billion in debt” in that one bankruptcy alone. Apparently, the Speedway has confused “eliminating” your debt with “paying off” your debt, which is what you and I are pretty much forced to do, since we don't have a battery of bankruptcy attorneys out there helping us set new standards of excellence.

If I'm missing something here, tell me. But how anyone can weigh the positives and the negatives of having Trump front and center for this historic race and decide it's in the Speedway's best interest seems as absurd as replacing Jim Nabors with Ozzy Osbourne to sing “Back Home Again in Indiana.”

Wait, nobody suggest that to Belskus, OK?

[sydude]

Good ole Youtube.. enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TOO5gDT2iw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcOeZIQX7Y8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvCyNQHXdJo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEGmHIyGXeg

A bunch more if you want to browse through youtube.

[dalyduo]

A really good reason not to have non race driver "celebrity" pace car drivers lead the Indy 500... Does the name Eldon Palmer ring any bells?

The key thing to note is that he crosses the start finish line ahead of the green flag race cars and looks like he's still got his foot in it... What could possibly go wrong?

Pretty sure ABC's Chris Shenkel was in the back seat and you only see a couple of frames but the car knocks one guy down and then plows into the photographers

stand causing several rows to collapse dumping the photographers onto the car and the ground. A miracle no one died.

[cdh]

Didn't even have to watch, I remember watching it happen....from wiki

The 1971 Indianapolis 500 was held at Indianapolis on Saturday, May 29, 1971.

Eldon Palmer, owner of a local automobile and truck dealership Palmer Dodge (now Palmer Auto Group), beaten four Dodge dealers to be chosen to provide a pace car for the race when no automakers took up this duty as they had done in the past.

In preparation for the race, Palmer set up a traffic cone to provide himself with a reference for where to begin slowing the car. Someone moved the cone without his knowledge, leading to perhaps the most spectacular Indy crash of the 1970s.

In the car with Palmer on race day were Speedway owner Tony Hulman, longtime ABC television sportscaster Chris Schenkel and astronaut John Glenn. When Palmer realized that the cone was gone, he attempted to stop quickly, but lost control of the car, which skidded into a temporary grandstand packed mainly with photographers. No one was killed, but 22 were injured, some seriously.

Notwithstanding the distraction, Al Unser wins for a second year in a row. ABC television broadcasts the race for the first time in same-day tape delay."
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The comment "leading to perhaps the most spectacular Indy crash of the 1970s" tells me this page needs some serious editing, what a ridiculous statement.

[rcote]

http://www.indystar.com/article/2011...y-500-pace-car

[dalyduo]

Foyt replaces Trump