When Eddie Cheever Jr. was asked to describe Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the 1998 Indy 500 champion said, "It's a living, breathing organism that changes every minute, every day that you are there."

Johnny Rutherford, a three-time Indy 500 winner, says that when you stroll through the track when there is no activity and it's closed to the public, "you can hear the history whispering back to you."

	Billy Boat celebrated last year after learning he had qualified for the Indy 500 on the last day.

The reverence drivers pay to the 2½-mile oval built by Carl Fisher and nurtured to greatness by Tony Hulman and his family is not phony. It is as real as the 60 cars parked in Gasoline Alley preparing for Sunday's opening of practice.

There are numerous reasons why Indy stands alone as the undisputed leader in racing. Besides the fact that Indy is the only track that annually hosts Indy Cars, NASCAR and Formula One, the Speedway presents a unique set of challenges to drivers who attempt to tame her and become a member of an elite group that have driven there.

The challenge is no more difficult than for the Indy car set. Unlike NASCAR and F1, the Indy Cars spend almost an entire month tackling Indy. They say May in Indianapolis is in reality two distinct races.

The first task is to make the dance and the second is to run in the show. With the 500 is still a ways off, let's just look at the first race which occupies the next 16 days.

Some fast drivers have been spooked by Indy. A guy can start the month with plenty of speed and then all of the sudden -- Wham! -- a 'wall-wacker' will rattle his (or her) confidence and the speed disappears.

"That's when you have to step back and start the process all over again," Rick Mears once said. "There's no room for brave drivers. There's only room for smart ones."

There are no provisional positions in the Indy 500. Every spot is earned on the track, with a 10-mile run under the timing clocks. The field is the fastest 33 cars. There are no exceptions.

Trying to figure out what speed will earn you a spot in the race is such a fluid and mysterious process that some drivers have guessed themselves right out of the race. That's what happened to Roger Penske's drivers in 1995 when both Al Unser Jr. and Emerson Fittipaldi -- two former winners and seasoned Brickyard veterans -- waited until the last day of qualifying to try and bump their way into the field.

Both had posted laps the first weekend of qualifications that would likely have put them in the show, but the uncertainty of their speed made them elect to wait until the second week. Conditions changed. So did their opportunity.

Billy Boat knows what pressure is. He sat on Indy's bubble last year for almost an hour as driver after driver tried to elbow him out of the race and put themselves in. Last minute deals and thousandths of a second were Boat's enemy. The stopwatch was his executioner.

While millions watched, Boat was forced to sit through each qualifying attempt and wait for Tom Carnegie -- the Speedway's public address announcer for the past 57 years -- to read the verdict. In or out?

When it was over, Boat was in and his expression spoke volumes about Indy's first -- and some say most important -- race of May.

He was 33rd quickest and his dance ticket was punched for the second race -- the Indianapolis 500.