Columnist Sam Schmidt: Team’s goal at Indy is to make top five rows

Sam Schmidt

Friday, May 11, 2001 | 9:32 a.m.

Editor's note: This is the first in a series of columns by Indianapolis 500 car owner Sam Schmidt of Henderson as his team attempts to make the field for the 85th running of the Indianapolis 500.

My strategy has always been, since day one of coming here even as a driver, to get in the field the first day of qualifying and seize the opportunity when you get it. Just be prepared. We have to be ready when eleven o'clock rolls around -- we just have to have the speed at that point.

We don't think realistically we have the budget to go out there and get the pole. So we're just trying to put it in the show that first day at a reasonable speed that will get us in the top five rows.

I think it will take more than 219 to make the show, especially with the numbers that people started putting up earlier this week. We really don't feel like we're where we need to be for a qualifying setup. We want to really concentrate on that again today. We're getting closer. We made a big step earlier in the week. I just wish we had unloaded Sunday at the point we were with the car after Tuesday's practice. We got a little behind at Atlanta with the accident there. I've got to give my crew credit for getting everything ready and being here as quickly as we did.

We're all trying to work together and make the car go faster. What Gary Bettenhausen (driver coach) contributes is just another piece of the puzzle. He started here 21 times. This track is like no other track. It is so unique and it has a lot of idiosyncrasies. Gary knows a lot about setups and it's just not engineering out of a book. He can help us with street smarts, so to speak, in the car.

It would be a huge relief to get in on the first day of qualifying. Everybody on this team has been working for a month, non-stop 12, 13, 14 hours a day. Then I can send them all home and give them Sunday off and they can all watch it on TV. We can come back on Wednesday and start on the race setup. There's going to be a number of teams still trying to get their car in the show that second week. We need to be working on race setups. It makes all the difference in the world as the month goes on and the conditions of the track change. We don't want to have the huge amount of pressure of trying to get in the race that second weekend. It's very, very difficult to get to what is now the third day and still be looking for speed and searching. It's tough on the mind to be going at five o'clock on that last day.

This is a big challenge. Being a car owner now is my passion just as much as it was when I was a driver. We want to be in a position that we know what it's going to take to get in the show. We just want to go out there and do it on pole day.