Yesterday was Carburetion Day, when teams traditionally get some final track time to fine tune their cars before the green flag drops for the 500. Unfortunately, the weather was miserable. Heavy rain essentially canceled the session—it lasted a scant 12 minutes—and forced the scheduled Indy Lights Freedom 100 to be postponed. But Mother Nature’s lack of cooperation was good news for me, as that meant the race was rescheduled for today. The biggest difference between Indy Lights machines and standard Indy cars is horsepower—700 compared to 400—but that didn’t make things less interesting. Winner Dillon Battistini dominated—leading 38 of the 40 laps—but only beat his closest competitor, Richard Antinucci, by .02 seconds. The first lap was run under caution, as driver Jon Brownson lost control and hit the wall—or in NASCAR speak, got into the fence—on turn three, but the rest of the race went like clockwork. This video of the start isn’t terribly compelling, though I did manage to capture the "most famous words in motorsports" and subsequent deluge of engines firing on tape. This clip of the race cars ripping past—the sound is beyond awesome—is a lot better. The weekend is just getting started, so stay tuned! 

Look out! That’s the advice I’d give anyone before attempting to walk through the garages at Indy Motor Speedway. While I was navigating that gorgeous mess of carbon fiber and horsepower earlier today, I was living in terror of tripping over something and breaking off a very expensive piece of very expensive race car. And I wasn’t even drunk—that’s how crowded it is. Crew members on golf carts or bicycles are constantly whizzing by, race cars are being towed through the throngs of fans, and the soundtrack is a cocktail of racing engines, crackling radios and utter awe. All the cars set to race the 500 were safely tucked into their garages, but I did manage to snap a bunch of decent pics of the Indy Lights cars before they hit the track for the Freedom 100. Check them out after the jump.

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