INDIANAPOLIS — Drivers, start your calendars.
When the 33-car field jumps into the collective throttle to start Sunday's 107th running of the Indianapolis 500, every move they make will be measured by both the smallest and largest increments of time. Laps tracked down to the tiniest fractions of the stopwatch, those results produced by racers whose careers and lives are measured in years and decades.
«Out on the racetrack, we are separated by seconds — actually not even seconds, barely seconds,» explained Ryan Hunter-Reay, the 2014 Indy 500 winner who will roll off from Row 6 on Sunday, squarely in the middle of the 11-row field. «But when we are all together, you realize that we are also separated by years. Myself, and the guys I came up with, we used to be the young guys. Now we definitely are not that. I don't feel old… until I start talking to some of these other guys!»
From pole-sitter Alex Palou back to Jack Harvey, the slowest car in this year's field, the entire 33-car grid was a scant 2.121 seconds apart after their four-lap qualifying efforts were recorded.
But the age difference between the oldest driver in the field, 2013 Indy 500 winner and soon-to-be-IndyCar-retiree Tony Kanaan, and this year's youngest competitor, David Malukas, is nearly 27 years. Kanaan and lifelong friend — and four-time Indy 500 champion — Helio Castroneves are both 48, older than Al Unser Sr. in 1987 when he became the oldest winner of this race and its second-ever four-time victor.
On the other end of that timeline, three drivers — Malukas, Sting Ray Robb (yes, that's his real name) and Christian Lundgaard, all 21 years old — will have a chance to break one of Indy's longest-standing records. On May 30, 1952, Troy Ruttman became the
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