What I worry about most is the hair: what will happen to Donald Trump's blond bouffant hairdo as he drives a 650-horsepower V8-engined Pace Car around the 2.5 mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway to pace the field for the historic running of the 2016 Indy 500 on Sunday, May 29, 2016?
You heard it here first. The IMS head office has not yet announced who the driver of the Pace Car will be but precedent suggests that the Donald is a likely "candidate" for that coveted positon. It is long forgotten that in 2011, which was technically the 100-year Centenary of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (which held its first race in 1911), Donald Trump was announced on April 5, 2011, to be the Pace Car driver of the 2011 Camaro Pace Car.
The "Official Pace Car" Chevrolet Camaro was even brought to Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York City which has these days become the geographical center of Trump's Presidential Campaign, where Trump was pictured amidst the orange marble walls of the Trump Tower lobby with the snow-white Camaro.
But by May 5, 2011, just three weeks before the race on May 29, 2011, amidst a grass roots "dump Trump" movement organized by those who were critical of Trump for fueling the Obama "birther" controversy of the day, Trump announced that he was backing out of driving the Indy 500 Pace Car, saying that "he may be announcing shortly his intention" to run for President in 2012!
History Repeats Itself?
The rest is history and here in 2016 in another Election Year, Donald Trump has finally made that Presidential run he predicted back in 2011, flying all over the country in his own airplane to towns big and small to reach out to his base of support amongst that broad swathe of Americans that are dissatisfied with the status quo.
If you were a Presidential Candidate in search of votes, where better to showcase your wares in the middle of an Election Year than the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a race which is run on Memorial Day Weekend before 230,000 people in the Grandstands and six million more fans watching on television. What could be more patriotic?
Thus, my prediction: that Trump could conceivably be asked once again by IMS to drive the Pace Car for the 2016 Indy 500, and if he is asked he will accept this time.
But should he do it if asked? Trump has thus far skillfully navigated himself through the political thicket of American Politics, but one wrong move in the Pace Car going 150 mph and he could go the way of so many legends that have fallen victim to heartbreak at the Speedway.
The other Republican candidates have not had much success in bringing down the Donald, but the Speedway has the potential to do just that.
The Ghost of Eldon Palmer
What I have in mind is the spectre of Eldon Palmer, a local Indiana Dodge dealer, who drove the red Dodge Challenger Pace Car leading the 33-car field around the 1971 Indy 500 before the start of the race.
The most important move an Indy 500 pace car driver has to make after circulating for a few parade laps to give the crowed a chance to see the cars in slow motion and give the drivers a chance to settle into their cockpits, is when the pace car pulls off Turn 4 and heads for the pits after turning the field loose to take the Green Flag. In 1971, car dealer Eldon Palmer, who had no background as a race car driver, had set up a cone as a marker to help him recognize the braking zone as he entered the pit lane but someone tidying up the pit lane had removed the marker cone without Palmer knowing it and as a result Palmer came off Turn 4 carrying way too much speed, entered the pit lane after Turn 4 still going too fast and ended up barreling into a Grandstand at the end of pit lane where a group of photojournalists were stationed, readying themselves to get some good shots of the start.
My uncle, Bill Krider of Lawrenceburg, Indiana, a UPI Photographer assigned to the Indy 500 for as long as I can remember, was one of the photographers knocked down that day when Eldon Palmer crashed into the Grandstand, which finally stopped the Dodge Challenger in its tracks.
No one was killed when the Grandstand collapsed but 22 people were injured. Tony Hulman, owner of the Speedway, the Astronaut John Glenn and ABC sportscaster Chris Schenkel were also in Palmer's Dodge Challenger Pace Car, but they were all fine. It happened to be the first year ABC was covering the Indy 500 on a same-day coverage basis, so an inauspicious beginning to what would turn out to be a fabulous 45-year relationship between ABC and the Speedway.
Does the Donald Drive?
With Eldon Palmer's Dodge Challenger precedent in mind, ask yourself this question as to The Donald. To be sure, The Donald has a black jet-helicopter with "Trump" modestly emblazoned on the side in huge red letters and he also has his own 727 airliner, now decked out in red, white and blue for the Presidential Campaign. But having been a real estate magnate for most of his adult life and rumored now to have a net worth over $10 billion, he has naturally been squired around by plane, helicopter and limousine most of his adult life, leading us to ask this pertinent question: when do you think the last time was that Donald Trump actually drove his own car?
It is said that when President Obama, fresh from dealing with his birth certificate controversy inspired by Trump, heard that Trump had been tapped to drive the Indy 500 Pace Car, he was concerned for the safety of the voters in the Grandstands and demanded that The Donald produce a valid driver's license!
Does The Donald drive? We know that Trump's real estate interests include at least eight golf courses around the country and a new golf course being built in Scotland, so we can presume he has at least driven a golf cart in recent times, of the kind you see the Indy 500 drivers using to get from Gasoline Alley to the pit lane, so there is some commonality between Trump and the 33 drivers he could possibly lead around the Speedway.
And some say that Trump actually keeps garages on both coasts stocked with Ferraris. We do know that when Donald Trump was thinking of selling his 118-room Mar-a-Lago Palm Beach mansion for $125 million some time back there was a gala rollout when the property was being shown to well-heeled prospects and Mr. and Mrs. Trump arrived in a red Ferrari 360 Spider convertible, with The Donald at the wheel.
In the New York Times, on March 15, 2015, it was reported by Anthony Senecal, one of Trump's longtime aides-de-camp, that Trump had a weekend ritual involving cars: "On Sunday, Mr. Trump drives himself to his nearby golf course, alternating each year between his black Bentley and his white Bentley."
And as it turns out, Trump is also familiar with one of the world's most impressive executive automobiles, especially the Mercedes Maybach 62, the 543 bhp, 5.5 liter, twin turbo V-12 also favored by a fellow billionaire, Bernie Ecclestone, who at some of the European Grands Prix, has his Maybach parked right outside his bus in the paddoc, to escape the racetrack as quickly as possible before the rest of us after the checkered flag falls.
As a teenager, was Trump ever into cars or auto racing? Sadly, no. As a New York City kid from Jamaica Estates in Queens, he was obsessed with baseball, like a lot of City kids, and more likely to be taking a subway than driving a car.
But there is one car-related Donald Trump urban legend - apocryphal or not who is to say - that should endear Trump at least to the IndyCar mechanics in Gasoline Alley. According to this Urban Legend, it is said that on one of his road trips, The Donald's limo broke down on the side of the road. An unemployed mechanic came along, stopped, fixed the limo and, in the course of this Good Samaritan situation, while Trump and the mechanic were peering over the engine bay, or fixing the flat tire (choose your version of this tale), The Donald heard the plight of the mechanic and to reciprocate sent the deserving mechanic's wife a bouquet of flowers and then paid off the couple's mortgage! If I were Trump, I would fly out the mechanic and his family to Indy as Exhibit A to boost The Donald's car credentials and check out the Pace Car convertible to make sure it is mechanically fit for Trump to tramp on the accelerator.
Robert De Niro, one of the many to pick a fight with The Donald over the years, this time over their respective politics, compared Trump to a "car salesman", so more shades of Eldon Palmer and Bernie. But, notwithstanding De Niro's sneer, you can be sure that Donald Trump will not blow his one foray into motorsports history like Palmer did because above all he does not want Mark Miles, CEO of Hulman & Company, which owns the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, uttering to The Donald the words Trump has made so famous on his Apprentice TV series: "You're Fired!"
Tom O'Keefe
picture credit: Indianapolis Motor Speedway
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