INDIANAPOLIS — Raceday was overcast and dreary, delayed briefly by morning rain, setting the mood for one of the most divisive moments in IndyCar history.
The solidarity at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1996 was potent. Just about anyone who had come to that Indy 500 was staunchly rooted on the side of the newly-formed Indy Racing League.
Meanwhile, 188 miles away, the opposing incumbent CART teams were trying to prove they could outshine the IRL drivers in Indy with their inaugural U.S. 500 at Michigan International Speedway on the same day.
Most of the top CART teams had boycotted the 1996 Indy 500 in protest of IRL qualifying rules that locked out non-IRL teams. Penske, Ganassi and Rahal Newman/Haas were among the big names that vacated the race.
Buddy Lazier had picked his side in this polarizing CART/IRL split on that Sunday, May 26, 1996. But it had nothing to do with either league.
His father, Bob Lazier, was one of the founding members of CART, and Lazier had raced in that league for years.
“I think a lot of people thought, ‘Well, the split is the destruction of all of IndyCar,'” Lazier says. “But I really feel like I was neutral in that.”
Lazier just wanted to race to the best of his ability, on either side.
“What happened is the split occurred and, for me, I had an opportunity on both sides,” Lazier says. “But I’d been driving two- and three-year-old race cars. There are the ‘haves’ that had unlimited budgets and then the ‘have nots’ — and so we would try to beat as many of the unlimited budgets that we could.”
Lazier was just looking for his chance to race in a car he knew he could win in.
“And lo and behold, that happened in 1996,” he says. “It was the first time in my career to have a car that could win a race and win a championship.”
In his first year with the newly-formed IRL, driving for Hemelgarn Racing, Lazier won the Indy 500. There’s no way to describe the feeling, Lazier says.
“It’s pretty awesome. There are some things in life you accomplish it, and you’re expecting a boom, and it’s a flutter,” he says. “That’s not one of them. I mean, it really is a boom that keeps going.”
But in the days after the race, Lazier felt the tension that had been building from the open-wheel split. “I think a lot of people were so polarized, and it became an emotional thing. Yeah, I felt the divide.”
Lazier had won his first Indy 500, and it was magical for him.
But, to some, the victory came with an asterisk as legendary names in open wheel racing hadn’t competed in that race, choosing Michigan instead.
“His win is still, even 30 years later, clouded by some people that want to demerit it by saying that he won the first ‘split race’ that didn’t have the totality of depth or quality of depth,” says Jake Query, an IndyCar announcer and host of “Query & Company” on 107.5 The Fan.
“And I’ve always felt bad for him about that because he was a worthy champion. And he has a great story.”
A comeback win overshadowed by ‘the split’
What has often been forgotten in Lazier’s Indy 500 victory is his remarkable comeback. Lazier won the race just two months and three days after breaking his back in a multi-car crash at a practice at Phoenix Raceway.
Lazier shattered nearly 40 bones in his back. He spent two weeks in the ICU.
“I was just in a world of pain. And I was very fortunate that I wasn’t paralyzed, because the injuries were severe,” Lazier says. “I didn’t know if I’d be able to race again. In the first few days, they weren’t sure if I was going to walk again. It was really dramatic.”
Yet, by Indy 500 race day May 26, 1996, after what Lazier calls “a massive effort to recover quickly,” he had passed the tests given to him by doctors, including one where he had to jump on one foot.
“And I had to pretend it didn’t hurt,” Lazier says. “And obviously, it hurt like hell.”
He was given the green light by doctors to chase the checkered flag in Indy.
“And then, when you win that race, it’s just a whole other level,” Lazier says. “And it isn’t the notoriety or any of that, although that’s nice, but it’s just the personal challenge being able to accomplish something that they can never take away from you.”
Split or no split.
“I don’t think you can overstate how divided race fans were over the split,” says Query. “It was in the middle of an era that greatly muddied open-wheel racing. It was a Civil War, undoubtedly.”
It divided the sport between the established CART and the newly formed IRL, fracturing the fanbase, diluting television viewership and inducing heated opinions on both sides.
“Everyone had a definitive line in the sand. You were either on this side or that side,” Query says. “You thought it was either, ‘This is what needs to be done. This is going to save open-wheel racing.’ Or you thought, ‘This is the dumbest, most irrelevant thing ever.’ But no one was in between.”
Query was in college when he attended that historic post-split Indy 500 and saw just how intense IRL fans were when, at the U.S. 500 in Michigan, a pre-race crash pileup happened.
“I vividly recall the word started spreading around the North Vista like a brush fire about this disaster that happened at the start of the U.S. 500 when they had the climatic start and cars were crashing,” Query says. “And it was a celebratory nature.
“It was, in a sport where people don’t celebrate accidents, it was almost celebrated because people felt that it was this karma or this instant justice … they couldn’t even get a clean start to the race.”
‘Everyone kind of came back together’
Lazier wasn’t thinking about the split in 1996 as he climbed into his car to go on a 500-mile journey that meant everything to him.
Fifteen years before, his dad had raced the Indy 500 as a rookie at the age of 42, qualifying 13th, finishing 19th and getting voted CART Rookie of the Year, one of the oldest rookies to ever race at Indianapolis.
Now, Lazier was following in his father’s footsteps with IRL. And it didn’t matter which league he was in, he just wanted to win.
The split, in Lazier’s opinion, “kind of lifted all of IndyCar.” In the end, “everyone kind of came back together,” he says.
First Ganassi came over, then Penske, then big corporate sponsors started waking up.
“And they were basically saying, ‘Wait a minute, we’re sponsoring your race team for millions of dollars, and yet you’re not running the one race that everybody watches,'” Query says. “So, the sponsors then went back to the teams and said, ‘If we’re going to pay you, you’ve got to run the 500.'”
Russ Breeden, the last surviving owner of the former Bettenhausen Motorsports, which raced at IMS for decades, recalls the drama over the split.
“CART had the owners, the sponsors, the drivers, the equipment, the venues, the TV,” he says. “But, you know, they didn’t have that crown jewel of racing called the Indianapolis 500.”
By 2008, the IndyCar unification had happened, and Lazier played a part in that, a CART driver-turned IRL champion who proved that the love of racing could overcome any divide.
“Who knows, if everybody would have been there in 1996, what would have happened,” Lazier says. But he won that Indy 500.
“And it’s pretty amazing to have that place in history.”
Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on X: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via email: dbenbow@indystar.com.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Amid IndyCar’s Civil War split, Buddy Lazier won Indy 500. ‘Yeah, I felt the divide’
Reporting by Dana Hunsinger Benbow, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
