"ROOKIE SCHECKTER LOSES WAY            
TO INDY'S VICTORY LANE"                   

Published, in edited form, in the Johnson County (Ind.) Daily Journal, May 27, 2002 ©

         All Tomas Scheckter could do was shrug.

         And shrug. And shrug again. The young South African driver who had Sunday's Indianapolis 500 in a choke-hold most of the day was giving his slender shoulders a good workout as he stood just outside the Indy speedway's infield medical center shortly after his sudden, harsh exit from the race.

         He couldn't quite shrug it all off, however. "I'm very confused about what happened," he said, then shrugged, as he tried to explain why his race-leading blue-and-red car veered into the retaining wall in Indy's fourth turn 28 laps from what was shaping up as a stunning victory Sunday afternoon.

         "Midway through the corner, I just immediately got a lot of understeer, the car just went straight."

         Scheckter's body language at once reflected his confusion and his disappointment as he gathered his thoughts and composure after clearing the required medical exam that follows every wreck at the 500 speedway. His No. 52 Cheever Racing Indy-car, comfortably in front as it had been for 85 of the race's scheduled 200 laps, lunged into the outer barrier on lap 173 as quickly and unexpectedly as a child darting out into traffic.

         The crash took away the rookie driver's ready-to-be-punched ticket to Victory Lane and left his virtually uncatchable race car crumpled up like an emptied can of the power drink that sponsored it. "I was holding it like this," Scheckter tried to demonstrate, holding his hands in front of him in roughly the familiar two o'clock and 10 o'clock steering positions.

         "And then all of a sudden, within a half a second, I was full-lock," he continued, quickly and forcefully crossing his blue-uniformed arms at the wrists, "and heading directly into the wall. That's not what the car normally does."

         He had nothing but another helpless shrug to try to provide any further answers for the nightmarish end to his young Indy dream. "I don't want to say anything broke unless I'm certain," he said, almost apologetically. "I cannot suspect anything until we go back and look at it."

         His crash brought an abnormal ending to an extraordinary day for the son of former grand prix champion Jody Scheckter taking his first crack at the May race classic. The fact that he thoroughly dominated the first three-quarters of the 500 probably was the most extraordinary part of it.

         Rookies at Indy don't generally do that, especially those who have only four Indy-car race starts on their resumés. Drivers who are only 21 don't, either, and if Scheckter's road to victory hadn't been bombed out 28 laps from its intended destination, he would have been the youngest Indy winner ever.

         He would also have been the first South African to win, not just the first one to race at Indy.

         It all seemed so easy as the slim near-six-footer with the bookworm face went to the front, taking the lead for the first time on lap 33. Over the next 140 laps, he led more than any other driver by far. It looked, if anything, too easy.

         "I was just cruising," Scheckter reported, giving his series of shoulder shrugs a brief rest. "I don't know, it just came easy; I just felt that I was quick.

         "I could pass people when I wanted; I could pull away when I wanted."

         "When everything's good like that," he went on, still shrugless, "it does feel easy. I just got into a good rhythm, and we were flying. It just comes naturally when everything's good in there and you have a good feeling."

         The feeling did a snappish 180-degree turn in the fourth corner finally, though. The Cheever Racing Dallara-Infiniti plowed heavily into the wall, which had been softened up a little by the track's new absorbent cushions. "It didn't feel that hard," Scheckter related, a series of shrugs returning to punctuate his words. "It hit me in the heart more that I lost this race, that we lost this race."

         The "we" was the disappointed driver's way of sharing the hurt with his crew members. "It was so unfortunate," he said. "These guys working on the car, they've been here all month working, working bloody hard, and now we had a chance to win it, and we haven't."

         Scheckter's shrugs had taken on a rhythm of their own as he went on in the aftermath of his cruise into an Indy iceberg. Even though it was the latest in a series of Indy-car crashes for new-to-the-scene rookie - one of which got him suspended for half a week of Indy practice at the beginning of this month -- he insisted that his feelings had not sunk to the floor of the racing ocean.

         "No, if I felt it had really been my fault, I'd be very angry," he said, his black hair no longer as ruffled as it had been when he climbed out of his steaming mess of an Indy-car. "But I think it was out of my control, so . . .."

         Scheckter let the end of the sentence get drowned out by the rumble of the resuming race out on the Indy track. Then he shrugged still again and completed his thought the only way he possibly could: "But we'll be back next year."

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 Copyright 2002 by Jerry Miller ©

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