Brazilian rookie’s ‘fruit salad’ gives Indy a refreshing treat

INDIANAPOLIS – Dr. Frankenstein would have been proud of the car that Thiago Medeiros drove into the Indianapolis 500.

Different colored chunks, bits and spare parts from more than a dozen other vehicles were scrapped up and fused together in a furious rush last weekend to give the Brazilian rookie the ride of his life.

This monster is not pretty, but hey – it’s in the field for the Indy 500.

“The team has a lot of nicknames for the car,” said Medeiros, the last driver to qualify for the 33-car field for the 90th Indy 500.

“They call it ‘fruit salad,’ because it’s pieces and parts from everywhere, and ‘Baghdad,’ because it looks like it was in a war – and ‘Kaboom,’ well that’s not a good name,” said the 23-year-old racer.

Of course, putting together the jigsaw puzzle that turned into his Panoz No. 18 race car would not have been necessary if Medeiros hadn’t crashed late in practice May 18, just 72 hours before the end of the final qualifying session.

That car was a writeoff and, after somehow scraping up the funding to buy another bare tub from another team late last Friday afternoon, the underfunded PDM Racing team, co-owned by Paul Diatlovich and Jeff Matthews, got to work.

The crew stayed in the team’s garage at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway until 2 a.m. last Saturday, then returned to work at 7 a.m.

By 9:45 that night, they were able to put a Honda engine into the shell and fired it up for the first time.

It was alive!

The work continued again until 2 a.m. last Sunday and resumed once more at 7 a.m. for finishing touches. The car passed the technical inspection at 11:56 a.m. and made it onto the track for the first time at 12:43 p.m.

“Typically, it would take two weeks to build a car,” Matthews said. “These guys were incredible. Spirits were high and we knew we had something special.”

Medeiros ran 57 practice laps on the 2.5-mile Indy oval last Sunday afternoon before the team decided it was time to qualify.

“The other car would not take well to changes, where this car worked,” he said. “I was able to adapt myself to this car and everything went good. We know we have the speed now.”

The lanky Medeiros was the day’s only qualifier, posting a four-lap average of 215.729 mph. It’s the slowest speed in the lineup, more than 13 mph slower than Sam Hornish Jr.’s pole-winning speed, but it was a golden run for Medeiros – and a big relief.

“We had some options with other drivers Sunday and Thiago thought we had lost confidence in him,” Diatlovich said. “We didn’t, but it was very frustrating. In the end, though, we had faith in him and he also had faith in us.”

Medeiros won the championship in the IRL’s developmental series in 2004, but found himself without any ride – Indy Pro Series or IndyCar Series – in 2005.

He stayed visible, paying for his plane tickets to fly to IRL races, where he could talk with team owners. Finally, he found paying work as a commentator for Brazilian TV.

Then, over the past winter, Medeiros canvassed the IRL teams, trying to find a ride. He convinced Diatlovich to let him observe a U.S. Auto Club Silver Crown test in Homestead, Fla., and wound up running 15 laps in the unfamiliar car.

“It felt good right away,” said Medieros, who was hired by PDM to run the Silver Crown series as teammate to Aaron Pierce and wound up getting the shot he so coveted at running Indy.

“It’s a dream come true,” Medeiros said. “I’ve been walking around the paddock area for two years trying to get into this race, and now it’s here.

“I just don’t want to make any mistakes. I’ve talked to a lot of the other drivers about it and they tell me the start will be the toughest, especially from the back, with the turbulence from the other cars and the methanol fumes making my eyes water for the first couple of laps.”

But Medeiros has a plan.

“I need to stay out of trouble for the first couple of laps and then get through the early pit stops without making a mistake, because I’ve never made pit stops before,” he said. “Then, I need to stay on the lead lap.

“But I’m here and I’m in the race. That’s the big thing.”