He’s Not Driving Miss Daisy

INDIANAPOLIS —  Actor Morgan Freeman has driven Miss Daisy, served his time at Shawshank, and risen to “Glory,” but he has never driven the Indianapolis 500 pace car before 350,000 race-day fans.

So today, when he leads the field, 33 lead-footed drivers just itching to go fast in their snarling race cars, on the parade laps just before the start, might he be nervous?

Slowly, carefully, he responded to that question the other day to a roomful of reporters: “I’m a major, internationally famous motion picture star. I mean, 350,000! Is that all?”

If the parade laps pose no problem to him, though, the pace lap, the very last time around before the race begins, might be something else. It is the pace car driver’s responsibility, while driving at more than 100 mph, to keep the race cars in good order while getting out of their way as they head for the starting line.

“When I come off Turn 3, that’s when my blood pressure’s going to be a little high,” Freeman said. “ ‘Cause, you know, they’re going to be squattin’ down. And if you’re going too slow, you might not make it [to the pit road entrance]. The guy on the left [pole sitter Buddy Rice] may be coming up on me -- oh, God! So you really do have to be on it, coming off of there.”

And so, Freeman has spent the last several days, under the tutelage of three-time 500 winner Johnny Rutherford, who drives the pace car during caution periods, learning how to get on it in the 2004 Chevrolet Corvette.

“The hard part is, you’ve got a race car -- a Corvette’s a 200-mph car, it’s a race car -- you want to drive the racing line,” Freeman said. “But you’ve got to stay in the middle of the track because you’re leading the parade.”

Freeman, a self-professed TV racing fan who favors NASCAR stock cars, thought a year ago that he had lost his chance to lead the parade.

“I don’t even know what got me here,” he said. “Last year, the raceway invited me to come and drive the pace car. As luck would have it, I was working, so I couldn’t make the time. So, I thought it was a wash.

“Then, [earlier this year, my publicist] called me and said, ‘They want you to come and drive the pace car.’

“ ‘Well tell ‘em yes. I’ll make the time this year. If they’re going to be that adamant about it, sure!’ ”

The best part, he says, is that it has been all he’d hoped it would be.

“It is a thrill,” he said. “It’s hard to explain, if you haven’t had the good fortune to have someone ask you to do what you want to do. It is so much fun.”

Freeman has driven the car as fast as 140 mph.

“Like anything else, it all comes easier with practice,” he said.

One reporter told Freeman, 66, that fellow actor Paul Newman, part-owner of one of the cars in today’s race, had started racing sports cars late in his life, was still racing in his 70s and wondered if, now, Freeman might be tempted.

“Nope,” he answered briskly.

And when another, saying he couldn’t resist, asked if driving the pace car were anything like “Driving Miss Daisy,” Freeman quipped, “You should have resisted.”

Freeman said, though, that he did enjoy driving and that his personal stable included two pickup trucks, a Toyota Tundra and a Chevy Silverado, a GMC Denali SUV and a BMW 745 “that will actually do 160 -- ask me how I know.”

And he’s worried about Buddy Rice coming up on him?