The Indy Open Test is like two days of therapy (if you’re me)

In IndyCar culture, “May” is shorthand for all the ritual surrounding the Indy 500, but one of the culture’s inside jokes is that May actually starts in April. The two-day open test at Indy is when rookie orientation and veteran re-orientation happens, and teams and drivers brush the cobwebs out and make sure they’re ready to go flat out when real 500 testing starts in actual-May. But it’s still two entire days of Indy cars driving around the speedway. It counts. And the best part is, they stream the whole thing on YouTube for free.

The open test is one of my favorite motorsports broadcasts of the year because it is truly built to purpose for one of things I love most about watching racing: meditating on the driving itself without thinking about anything else. For the second year in a row, I’m pretty sure I heard every minute of the broadcast because I had it on in the background while I went about my days.

There was not really any news to report, which is good because the only kind of news that can really come from such a test is bad news, and there was none. Katherine Legge’s HMD-run Foyt car had a bit of trouble getting out on track — some kind of clutch issue — and she had to make up her refresher on day 2, but she did so in time to run the whole of the long session that day with everybody out on track.

There’s not a whole lot one can say about performances because some teams don’t even bring speedway cars to this test, but the one I do want to shout out is that of Caio Collet. I was so obsessed with Dennis Hauger last year that I did not expect Caio to be the one who sent it the most at this test. I will begin expecting that.