On a day where weather ruled, a former weatherman man from Indianapolis became one of the winning car owners of the Indy 500. David Letterman of Bobby Rahal Letterman Racing enjoyed the victory indoors with his driver Buddy Rice as a tornado with a rating of F3 missed the Speedway and its fleeing spectators by only six miles as it raked across the South Central portion of Indianapolis. The tornado caused widespread damage.

The Race: The combination of impending rain and pitstops threatened to turn the result into a lottery, with the winner being the driver that hadn’t been forced to pit for fuel.

First to go is Bruno Junqueira, who originally gained the lead earlier by not pitting in hopes that rain would come before his fuel ran out. Junqueira pitted on lap 151, handing the race back to the day’s pacesetting trio of Buddy Rice, Tony Kanaan and Dan Wheldon.

Kanaan and Wheldon, respectively, came in soon afterwards.

Rice, who had steadily become the dominant car past lap 145, came in next and gave up the lead on lap 167 to Bryan Herta, who stopped in turn on lap 169.

Adrian Fernandez made it to lap 172, but the rain still hadn’t arrived. After several anxious laps, Fernandez pitted and put Rice back into the lead ahead of second place Kanaan and third place Wheldon, which remained the running order.

A severe thunderstorm finally fell to bring a halt to proceedings at lap 180, 450 miles.

As the victory celebration occurred indoors, a tornado rating F3 missed the Speedway and its quarter-million spectators by only six miles as it raked across the South Central portion of Indianapolis. The tornado caused widespread damage.

Video of the tornado:

Other notes:
Newman/Haas racing returned to the Indy 500 with Bruno Junqueira finishing 5th. Robby Gordon was forced to leave for the Charlotte 600 early, giving the seat to Jaques Lazier.

Posted: 05|17|08 at 9:24 am. Filed under: Buddy Rice, IRL, Indy 500, Rahal Letterman Racing.
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