Columnist Davey Hamilton: Fourth-place finish dedicated to biggest fan

Davey Hamilton

Tuesday, May 26, 1998 | 11:28 a.m.

MY BEST FINISH of fourth in the Indianapolis 500 is dedicated to my grandfather Leonard Hamilton. His funeral was last Tuesday in Idaho. He was my biggest fan, and it would have been absolutely fantastic to have him here today. I will miss him greatly.

I told myself last year that I could win the Indianapolis 500 if I just didn't make any mistakes. I know you can't make any mistakes in this race but I did. I screwed up.

I have never stalled my car in the pits until today on lap 152. Eventually, it forced me to go a lap down to the leader. And that's where I finished, in fourth and just one lap behind winner Eddie Cheever. He had a very strong finish and is very deserving of winning the Indianapolis 500.

I don't think I had enough car to have beaten Eddie for the win, but I felt like my car could have finished second. But I finished fourth and that's the best I've ever finished here. I think that's a tribute to this new team consisting of the Reebok sponsorship, car owner Bob Nienhouse and general manager Rick Galles, who has been through a lot of these races. This was only our third race together, and to be as competitive as we were today is a tribute to the entire Nienhouse Motorsports team.

They know I gave it all I had today. And they gave me a very consistent car, which ran laps between 208 and 211 miles an hour. The leader (Cheever) was running 213 miles an hour near the end of the race. I didn't have that much left in my car, but I would have liked to have been there to challenge him for the lead.

The race started under cloudy skies and cool, but humid, weather. My car was knocked almost sideways from behind by J.J. Yeley in the first turn on the first lap. He wound up spinning, and I had my hands full trying to keep my car from going around.

Then I got hit again in a real scary accident that eventually involved seven cars on lap 49.

I was in a wolf pack going into the third turn. I had two cars to my right, and did not see Sam Schmidt coming fast on the inside. I held my line. If I had seen him I would have let him go because at the point, we were in no man's land. The only alternative is the wall.

At that point, he (Schmidt) was in no man's land. He knocked my left rear wheel. And all I could think of was that same contact when Al Unser Jr. and Emerson Fittipaldi collided for the lead in 1989. All those guys crashed behind me, but that incident did not hurt us.

Later, at the halfway mark, the car had lost a little grip, but I really started to get hungry. All I could think about was a hamburger from the Steak & Shake across the street from turn 2.

As the race progressed, the air temperature and track temperature heated up. The heat seems to affect this G Force chassis adversely. The front end began to push and I had less grip. That allowed me to "roll" through the corner but I couldn't quite go flat out because of less grip.

The car and I were one, and that felt really good. We were fast and we were competitive. It was a pleasure to be on the same race track with Arie (Luyendyk), Eddie (Cheever) and Buddy (Lazier). They race you clean. They don't try to cut air off your car when they pass you going into the corner.

It was a good day.