Sleepless Night Helps Byrd Team Put Davison in Show, Continue Family Legacy
May 20, 2018 | By Phillip B. Wilson, Indianapolis Motor Speedway
David Byrd has experienced enough history in more than three decades of racing at Indianapolis Motor Speedway to realize his Saturday qualifying situation was somewhat iffy for the 102nd Indianapolis 500 presented by PennGrade Motor Oil.
“We need a little more,” the team co-owner said as he walked onto pit road behind his No. 33 Jonathan Byrd’s 502 East Chevrolet. “I think we’ve got a little more in the car, but I don’t know how much more.”
He had watched his Foyt with Byrd/Hollinger/Belardi Racing crew work all night to restore the car after James Davison crashed in Friday practice. Byrd didn’t sleep a wink, either. Just one protein water, a quick shower and change of clothes.
The team was proud to be first in line for technical inspection at 4:55 a.m. During a lengthy qualifying rain delay of more than two hours, members of that exhausted crew laid on the cement of their Gasoline Alley garage to rest.
Byrd’s premonition proved prophetic. Whether or not he would celebrate this joint venture — his family’s Greenwood-based team using AJ Foyt Racing equipment with assistance from Williams Formula One businessman Brad Hollinger and successful Mazda Road to Indy owner Brian Belardi — would come down to the final minutes of qualifying.
Byrd crunched numbers from the pit box and was convinced James Hinchcliffe of Schmidt Peterson Motorsports would bump his car.
Then that didn’t happen.
Hinchcliffe, the 2016 Indy 500 pole sitter and five-time Verizon IndyCar Series race winner, was unable to take the green flag on a qualifying attempt with 12 minutes remaining due to a tire vibration. Then he didn’t get back on track.
The driver on track as the final gun sounded was Pippa Mann of Dale Coyne Racing. After her first lap was too slow, Byrd modestly shook his fist. After her second lap was also too slow, he knew his team could celebrate the 20th time in 33 years that a Byrd car had made this race.
The team was most recently entered in 2015 and 2016 with Bryan Clauson, but then took last year off after Clauson suffered fatal injuries in a midget crash. Along with their mother Ginny, Byrd and his brother Jonathan II are continuing the legacy of their late father, Jonathan, who first entered a car in the Indy 500 with Rich Vogler in 1985.
Byrd's extensive history of drivers includes Arie Luyendyk, who still holds the IMS qualifying and lap records set in 1996, as well as Gordon Johncock, John Andretti, Rich Vogler, Stan Fox, Buddy and Jaques Lazier, Scott Brayton, Davy Jones and Mike Groff.
The best Indy 500 finish was fifth with Buddy Lazier in 2005. Jonathan Byrd died in 2009.
“The greatest part about Indy is the whole experience,” Byrd said. “It’s pretty incredible. The one thing I know, it will happen again next year. We can go right back to work hopefully putting a program together for next year based on what we did this year, bring some of the same partners, hopefully put it together a little sooner, and do all the things that have to come together to make the program as successful as it can be. It’s always big picture for me. It’s a passion.”
Before the day’s drama unfolded, Byrd reminded how his team had been on the disappointing side of qualifying too many times.
“We were on the outside looking in three times here in 1990, 1999 and 2000,” he said. “We ended up not making the show. Other times, we’ve just barely bumped our way in by the skin of our teeth, a couple of times after the gun had sounded in ’85 and ’89.”
Byrd prefaced the prospects of Davison qualifying by saying “if” before correcting himself to confidently say “when” in the context that he would sleep like a baby if, when that happened.
As the car was wheeled back into the garage after such a long day, an appreciative Ginny Byrd hugged groggy crew members.
“You guys deserve this,” she said proudly. “You guys deserve this.”
David Byrd eventually returned to the garage to thank them.
“These guys are exhausted,” he said. “I think they’re going to shut the garage and call it a night. We don’t have to run until noon (on Sunday). They’ve earned it, for sure.”