Ryan Briscoe remembers his first oval race. He was driving one of Chip Ganassi Racing’s cars in 2005 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. On the first restart, he lined up behind teammate Scott Dixon, who was then in his fifth season as an INDYCAR SERIES driver.
“Scott moved up five positions, and I went backward three, or something like that,” Briscoe said Thursday. “I was like: ‘Holy (crap).’ You have to be on it.”
That experience is one Briscoe, a seven-time race winner in this series who now serves as PREMA Racing’s driver coach, has tried to describe to rookie Robert Shwartzman, who starts on the pole in the No. 83 PREMA Racing Chevrolet for Sunday’s Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge.
At the green flag of the 109th Running of “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing,” Shwartzman will make his first oval start, and he will have a pack of hungry and seasoned drivers flanking his sidepod, mirrors and gearbox. Two-time “500” winner Takuma Sato will start next to him, and on Sato’s right will be two-time “500” runner-up Pato O’Ward. Those two, among others, will be eager to capitalize on the rookie’s inexperience.
“It’s not going to be easy (for Shwartzman),” said Briscoe, who won the Indy pole in 2012 as part of his 10 starts at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “He’s never taken a start on an oval; he’s never taken a restart on an oval. He is studying a lot, and I don’t think he’s going into it with any illusions that it’s not difficult. But I don’t think too much is going to surprise him.
“Like we all do on race days, as much as people tell you about what it’s like to walk out to the grid on race morning, it’s hard to really know what to expect until you experience it. But he seems to handle the big stage really well. That will be another test, I guess.”
Shwartzman, who was born in Israel and lived primarily in Russia, is the first rookie to claim Indy’s pole since Teo Fabi in 1983. At least Fabi had made one start in the series prior to that, starting ninth in the race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Before Fabi, Walt Faulkner was this event’s last rookie pole winner, and like Shwartzman, he had never done an oval race to that point.
Shwartzman said many of the drivers in this field have offered advice, and he singled out Team Penske drivers Will Power, who won the race in 2018, and Scott McLaughlin, last year’s pole winner. Shwartzman acknowledges he doesn’t know what he needs to know.
“For sure it’s going to be a big challenge for me, but at the same time I want to learn, I want to experience, I want things going smooth,” he said. “I try to be calm throughout all the race. From what we’ve seen, the race is decided on the last lap. Just hopefully be there at the top battling with the guys for the win.”
Ten first-timers have won the “500,” although in the past half-century only Alexander Rossi (2016) was comparably inexperienced on ovals. Rossi’s only such race was seven weeks earlier at Phoenix International Raceway.
Shwartzman has frequently credited Briscoe for easing his nerves on Pole Day. Briscoe said Shwartzman was prepared for the moment – as much as a rookie can be – because they had spent all week solely focused on qualifying, and in the Fast 12 practice, they didn’t go out for fear they’d change their setup amid conditions they knew would change.
“Then like 10 of the 12 cars went out (to practice), and we were like, ‘Maybe we should have gone out,’” Briscoe said, laughing. “Then McLaughlin crashed, and we said, ‘Well, we’re glad we didn’t.’”
Briscoe said Shwartzman is consumed with going fast, even when things look sketchy. The goal for Friday’s two-hour Miller Lite Carb Day practice is for him to experience as much traffic as possible, knowing he is bound to find himself mired in it at some point Sunday.
That Shwartzman is so new to all of this doesn’t concern Briscoe.
“One of the easiest ‘500s’ I had here was when I was a rookie because it was just another race, and you don’t think about it too much,” he said. “When you’re not a Hoosier and haven’t grown up around the Speedway your whole life, it’s easier. If you’ve raced in Europe your whole life, as he has, you show up in America, and it’s like, ‘Let’s see what (Indy) is all about.’ I thought, ‘OK, this is cool, there’s lots of people, but it’s the same basic stuff.’
“That’s Robert’s approach at the moment, and let’s try to keep it that way for now. Let him realize what a big deal Indy is maybe later.”