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At this year’s Indianapolis 500 (noon ET, Sunday), the Brickyard took its famous “glamping” — or glamorous camping, which has been a staple for several years — to the next level by offering race fans the option to rent tiny houses for a luxury living experience inside the track. From the Indiana-based company Try It Tiny, there are 15 houses with slightly different floor plans, but they all have air conditioning, electricity, kitchens and indoor plumbing with showers.
“(Glamping in) the yurt was great with space to entertain, but no running water,” Copeland, an Indianapolis resident, said of her experience at the 2017 Indy 500. She loved previously staying in what’s known as Glamptown, but added, “I have a bathtub now.”
For $3,000 — which includes tickets to the race, parking and other amenities — fans are living in a few hundred square feet with as many as four people in a house. Some have lofts with queen-sized beds; some have pullout couches. There are full-sized refrigerators as well as mini ones. And once a day, the plumbing is cleaned out and water supply replenished.The tiny houses appeal to fans who want to stay inside the 2.5-mile race track but who also want something more than the traditional glamping — which was still offered with dozens of luxury tents — or even regular camping. And they definitely don’t want to fight traffic to the track every day.
“Sleeping at the track is very auspicious because only drivers (used to) sleep here,” Copeland added. “It feels really special to be here at night and see the Pagoda when no one else is allowed here. It’s really fun to wake up here and see it all come to life.”
TINY HOUSES: See more photos at For The Win
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While certainly not everyone living in the tiny houses moved in like she did, several people still brought grills, griddles or Dutch ovens, plus tents, portable picnic tables and outdoor furniture to maximize the small plot of land assigned to each house.
But among the many benefits of this living situation that is no longer remotely close to camping, everyone FTW spoke with agreed on one critical feature“A/C is key because you don’t know what kind of weather you’ll get,” said Dan Shaw, a Lebanon, Indiana resident who said he’s been coming to the Indy 500 since 1966. He and his buddy, Rod Richards — who’s from Richmond, Indiana and said he’s at his 40th Indy 500 — took advantage of glamping for the last several years. But they remembered how excruciatingly hot it would get inside the tents.
Many people in the tiny houses this year are former glampers, but there were a handful of newcomers who weren’t interested in living in tents for a weekend. However, comfortable beds, showers and air conditioning were game-changers.
“This is the most envied piece of real estate since Boardwalk and Park Avenue,” said 18-year Indy 500 veteran Gino Lucchese, referencing the coveted spots on a Monopoly board. “We’ve got a memory foam bed, a fold-out queen bed in the couch, a full fridge and freezer. It’s great.”Three-time Grammy Award winner Kelly Clarkson will sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" before the Indianapolis 500 on May 27. A look at other recent national anthem singers at the Indy 500. Indianapolis Star
TV/RADIO SCHEDULE: ABC will broadcast the race and has a pre-race show beginning at 11 a.m. ET. For radio, all Verizon IndyCar Series races are broadcast live on the Advance Auto Parts INDYCAR Radio Network, Sirius 219, XM 209, IndyCar.com, indycarradio.com and on the INDYCAR Mobile app.
WEATHER: The Weather Channel is forecasting temperatures in the upper 80s to low 90s for Sunday's race. The Indy 500 should begin under partly cloudy skies before giving way to sunshine. Rain is not in the forecast.
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LAST TIME: In the 101st running, Takuma Sato held off Helio Castroneves, who was attempting to tie the all-time record by winning for the fourth time. Sato became the first Japanese driver to win the Indy 500.
LINEUP: Indianapolis native Ed Carpenter won the pole, but Team Penske drivers grabbed the next three spots in Fast Nine qualifying last Sunday.Danica Patrick's race car is painted in a lustrous neon green one last time, a hue that ensures its "look at me" quality even when the car is a 230-mph blur.
The color is apropos of Patrick and her racing career, which she's ending Sunday with a final attempt to win the Indianapolis 500, the race that initially made her famous in 2005.
From that race forward, Patrick — often driving the shiny green car favored by her and her longtime main sponsor, the web services firm GoDaddy Inc. — has been the driver everyone watched, analyzed and endlessly debated.
That was due not only to her on-track achievements as a female in a male-dominated sport, but also to her relentless self-promotion, which together earned her the one-name celebrity of being simply "Danica."
"I can't think of a better way to end my racing career than at Indianapolis for the 500," the 36-year-old Patrick said in an interview. "I can't think of a more cool way to be done.
"I mean, to finish up at a place that has so many good memories for me, and at the biggest race of the year for Indy cars and arguably the biggest race of the year, period," she said.
Patrick achieved several firsts as a woman in the IndyCar and NASCAR racing series, and in doing so became a role model for countless young women and their parents who admired her feats, tough persona and unflagging determination.
No less than seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson tweeted earlier this year: "Thank you @danicapatrick for being a strong role model to the little girls in my life," referring to his two young daughters.
Patrick's fame also was burnished by her blunt, outspoken manner, her savvy marketing of her personal "brand" that earned her millions of dollars in endorsements, and by the outsized media attention she always received.
Patrick's overall record on the track was middling; she had one victory in 13 years of big-league racing. That fueled the debate about whether she deserved the attention she received and made the Roscoe, Ill., native one of the most polarizing figures in sports.
"I don't know that we've seen someone who is so popular when not performing as well," said Greg Goldring, senior director of sports and entertainment at the Marketing Arm, a marketing agency.
Her impact on motor racing will be argued long after the 102nd running of the iconic race, one of the biggest one-day sporting events in the world. Patrick is adamant that she's not going to just circle the track as more than 250,000 spectators and millions more on television look on.
"I'm here to win the race," she said.Three years later, Patrick would get her only IndyCar win in Japan, thus becoming the first woman to win a major race in a so-called open-wheel series of racing such as IndyCar. In 2009 she finished third in the Indy 500, still the highest finish for a woman in the race.
Patrick drove in the Indy 500 seven times from 2005 to 2011, and she finished in the top 10 in six of those races. In the Verizon IndyCar Series overall, her one victory came in 115 starts.
She fled IndyCar in 2012 for the more popular NASCAR series, where her performance was even more scrutinized as she drove the bulkier cars in stock-car racing, where bumping and "scraping paint" are commonplace, unlike in IndyCar.
During her six years in NASCAR's premier Monster Energy Cup Series, she made 191 starts. She never won a race, never finished among the top five and finished in the top 10 only seven times.
She became the only woman to win the pole position for the Daytona 500, in 2013, and the only woman to lead laps in that race. She's also the only woman to lead laps in both the Indy 500 and Daytona 500.
It's that mixed performance that's helped foster the divided opinions about Patrick throughout her career.
Her supporters see her not only as a trailblazer, but also as having the exceptional talent and courage required to drive a race car at speeds topping 200 mph for more than a decade.
She finished her full-time NASCAR career last year driving for Tony Stewart, the hard-nosed former NASCAR champion and now co-owner of the Stewart-Haas Racing team.
After this year's Daytona 500, Johnson tweeted that it "was an honor to race with you" in her final NASCAR event.
Supporters noted that other acclaimed drivers from IndyCar, such as three-time Indy 500 winner Dario Franchitti, also struggled mightily when they tried stock-car racing.
Critics focused on Patrick's overall record in NASCAR, where she routinely drove in the middle of the pack and never finished higher than 24th in points for a season.
The critics also were irked by the fact that, despite her record, she deftly parlayed her racing into a lucrative career as a sports celebrity. Forbes estimated that, including endorsements, Patrick earned $12.2 million last year.
Patrick routinely posed for magazine pictorials, including Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue, and was featured in sexually edgy commercials when GoDaddy skewed toward risqué advertising. She was in 13 Super Bowl commercials for GoDaddy, the most of any celebrity for the big game.
The divided views of Patrick played out regularly on social media, where Patrick was lauded as a rare accomplished female on the speedway or criticized as an also-ran who used racing as a springboard to fame.
Case in point: After her initial test drive at Indy early this month, Patrick told reporters that NASCAR stock cars were physically easier to drive than Indy cars.
Twitter erupted as usual.
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