Carburetion day notebook: Hearn on standby

Rain is forecast for Sunday and if the race was delayed, Stewart would encounter a serious time problem, which could prevent him from starting the NASCAR Winston Cup race at Lowe's Motor Speedway.



Scott Sharp, the pole winner for Sunday's 85th Indianapolis 500, continued his blitz through the month of May with a perfect day on Carburetion Day. He had the fastest lap in the final two-hour practice, then won the annual Coors Indy 500 Pit Stop Challenge.

Sharp and his Kelley Racing team won all four of its rounds in the pit stop challenge, performing each successive stop faster than the previous. In the finals, Sharp's team knocked off a 9.2s stop, compared to the 12.67s stop by the crew of Al Unser Jr and Galles Racing. Galles Racing has won this event six times.

"Those guys have been the marquee of pit stops," said Robert Perez, the chief mechanic for Sharp. "They have a lot of really good guys on their team, so this is really special."

"We've had a great month," Sharp said. "This is just another thing I didn't think we were going to win. For me, I have the easy job. To ask these guys to do it perfect four times, they did the job."



Heritage Motorsports and driver Jeff Ward unveiled their new pink and silver colors for their G Force-Oldsmobile Aurora race car for Sunday's Indy 500, along with sponsorship from the rock band Aerosmith.

"I've been listening to those guys from way back," Ward said. "They're one of the number one bands in the world and for them to be at the greatest race in the world, I think it's a good combination."

Steven Tyler, Aerosmith's lead singer, will sing the National Anthem on race day.



PDM Racing was offered US$250,000 to put Shigeaki Hattori into their qualified race car instead of Jeret Schroeder, who qualified in the middle of the eighth row. Although a quarter of a million dollars is tough to pass up for an under-funded race team such as PDM, team principals Paul Diatlovich and Chuck Buckman said they weren't going to ditch their primary driver over money.

"We didn't do it because it wouldn't be the right thing to do," Buckman said. "Jeret got the car into the race and he will be the one driving it on race day."

Buckman did say that the team would run with Epson decals on the car. Epson is Hattori's sponsor.