Cheever

INDIANAPOLIS -- After my first Indianapolis 500, my crew chief had to pry my fingers off the steering wheel. I swear I did not make that up. In 1990, after finishing eighth in my first Indy 500, I needed another human being to peel my fingers off the wheel.

If one experience is analogous of the Indianapolis 500, that is it. This race is all about cramped fingers. It's about gripping. It's about joy and anger and heartbreak and tragedy. Each and every 500 has a different story for the hundreds of participants and thousands of fans. My memories began with frozen fingers and culminated with a drink of milk.

Allow me to indulge in my stories, race-by-race:

1990 -- Team: Ganassi; start: 14th; finish: eighth; rookie of the year
I was having a terrible time making the transition from Formula One to CART. The cars were loose, always on the verge of stepping out in the corners. I couldn't believe these guys drove them like this. I asked Bobby Rahal, 'Hey, are these cars always this oversteering?' He looked at me straight in the eyes and said, 'Yeah, you've got to drive them loose.' I thought, 'Man, you guys are my new heroes.' I just couldn't believe you could drive 200 laps the same way we had to drive in qualifying. I thought they were supposed to be loose, so I drove them loose. I was a very happy camper when this race was finished and my fingers were pried off the wheel. But to this day I have bad habits because my first Indy-car ride was loose when it wasn't supposed to be.

1991 -- Team: Ganassi; start: 10th; finish: 31st
We had an electrical problem with a new Lola and only got 17 laps into the race. Whenever I'd touch the brakes, all the electronics would fade out. I called on the radio and said, "Whenever I touch the brakes, everything goes out." Chip Ganassi came back on and said, "Why are you on the brakes?"

1992 -- Team: Ganassi; start: second; finish: fourth
Two people were critical to this performance. One was Mo Nunn, the first real engineer I'd worked with at the speedway. The other was my teammate, Arie Luyendyk. I learned more from Arie than from any other driver. It used to take me forever to get up to speed at Indy. I'd go around and around and around until finally I was at my fastest. Arie would be at full bore by his second lap. His advice? "Why mess around? Get it going and get back in the pits."

1993 -- Team: Menard; start: 33rd; finish: 16th
This one came down to the last hour of Bump Day. There was no way we were going to make it with this car. Tony Bettenhausen offered one of his cars to John Menard, but I told them we weren't interested. Larry Curry, the team manager, pulled me aside and said, "If you don't take this car, you won't qualify." It came down to Rahal and me. Bobby got bumped, and I didn't. I enjoyed the satisfaction starting last more than I did qualifying on the front row in '92. If you think qualifying for a race is dull, you haven't experienced the final hour of Bump Day at Indy.

1994 -- Team: Menard; start: 11th; finish: eighth
I passed Nigel Mansell coming out of the pits and was docked a lap. They changed the rule after that race. I learned a lot about the 500 that year because we tested and tested. We ran under so many different conditions leading up to that race -- heat and cold and wind. The nuances of the track became more familiar to me. We were well-prepared, but this was disappointing.

1995 -- Team: Foyt; start: 14th; finish: 31st
This is one of my darkest Indy memories. As the race began, I noticed a shadow coming at me from the left. It hit my car and all hell broke loose. The shadow was Stan Fox's car. I jumped out of my car thinking, "Who ran into me? My 500 is ruined! Who did it?" I got to his car and saw nothing was left. The nose was gone, his legs were lying out, and he wasn't responding. They had his helmet off. I reached down and removed his earplugs, and there was no response at all. I walked away grateful that my car had been in his way. It saved his life. I visited him several times in the hospital. The third time I went, he was still in a coma, but his wife smiled and said, "He's going to be OK." Lo and behold, the next day he came out of it. I ran into Stan on and off over the years. Once I was in a gym in Laguna Beach and, out of the blue, in he walks. He was on his way to New Zealand. A few days later, I was in the same gym and someone told me he died in a car crash. It was such a tragedy, yet his life was such a triumph, too.

1996 -- Team: Menard; start: fourth; finish: 11th
Of all the years I raced at Indianapolis, no team was better prepared or had better equipment than this one. And no team was as poorly managed as this one. All the drivers were angry. We had a big advantage and we blew it. So many emotions went into this race. Scott Brayton had died, the team was in disarray, and yet it still was the best team in the race. It was sad and frustrating and promising and disappointing, all at the same time. Sometimes racing is not enjoyable. This was one of those times.

1997 -- Team: Cheever; start: 11th; finish: 23rd
This was the first 500 with the new Indy Racing League equipment and the first 500 for my new team. We had a good crack at winning it, but I had a problem with the timing chain. The pride of this race is the guy I hired to drive a second car -- Jeff Ward. He finished third in this race, but he drove to win it. He didn't put a foot wrong the whole race. He was easily the rookie of the year, and he should have won the 500. I was always amazed at how little the surroundings of Indy -- the people, the yelling, the screaming, the pressure- - affected Jeff. He was like a diesel engine. One pace, all the time.

1998 -- Team: Cheever; start: 17th, finish: first
Few people know this, but before this race we had reached a point of no return. If we didn't win, we probably weren't going to continue. Financially, we were tapped. We arranged all of our resources so we had enough bullets in the gun to have a good 500. The plan went really well. My crew chief, Owen Snyder, saved me. During a pit stop, I misunderstood one of his gestures and started to take off with the fuel hose still attached to the car. Owen had the presence to click down on the radio and yell. I stopped right as the hose was stretching. Had he not been quick, I would have carried 185 gallons of fuel down pit road. We were lucky. Very lucky. In more ways than one. We had been operating on prize money for a long time. This prize was $1.4 million. It saved our race team.

1999 -- Team: Cheever; start: 16th; finish: 18th
A few weeks before the start of practice, we announced our decision to switch from the Oldsmobile engine to the Infiniti. We realized we couldn't compete against the best-funded IRL teams, so we took another gamble. We had just taken the lead with about 100 miles to go when I started to lose power. Five laps later, we were done. The most difficult talk I've ever had with my team came after that race. I had to tell them, "We will either succeed with Infiniti, or we will disappear with them as a company. Stop thinking about why we changed engines and start thinking about how we're going to make this one work."

2000 -- Team: Cheever; start: 10th; finish: fifth
We just got killed in the pits. We had the second-fastest lap of the race, but every time I came into the pits I had to pass the same guys again after I returned to the track. We took 45 seconds more in the pits than Ganassi's team did with Juan Montoya's car. That's embarrassing. We could have finished among the top three or maybe even bothered Montoya, but we bombed on pit stops. People made a big deal about the return of Ganassi and CART cars, and they showed us something about discipline in the pits. Sure, they have more financial resources than we do, but if I had the choice between their resources and their discipline, I'd take their discipline.

2001 -- Team: Cheever; start: 25th; finish: 26th
This was a total and utter disaster. We had Infiniti's new engine, the 35A, but all of the parts arrived late. We needed probably 4,000 miles of reliability testing, but we didn't have time. We had all kinds of technical problems throughout the month of May. A lot of the fast, consistent runs you've seen at Indy this month -- Robbie Buhl, Sarah Fisher, Tomas Scheckter, Laurent Redon, Max Papis and myself -- is a result of the humiliation we went through last year. The Infiniti drivers now have the power and fuel efficiency to win the race. The question is whether one of them will get to the finish.

This is an amazing place. It's an amazing event. Years from now, my great-great-grandchildren will be able to visit the museum and see the family name. That notion still takes my breath away. This race is about people and what they can accomplish. It's tradition and history and memories and marvelous stories. Each race -- and every person involved in each race -- has a story.

Come May 26, I hope to have another good one to tell.

IRL driver Eddie Cheever Jr. owns and drives the No. 51 Red Bull Cheever Racing Infiniti car. He will be providing a diary to ESPN.com throughout the season. Cheever's team Web site can be found at www.cheeverindyracing.com.