Maybe He’s Gone About It Backward

PHOENIX —  Maybe Buddy Rice ought to wear his cap backward, as Dale Earnhardt Jr. does, to attract more attention.

No, that won’t work, he already wears it that way.

If motor racing had a Rodney Dangerfield Award for getting no respect, the Indianapolis 500 winner would be at the top of the list.

Born, raised and still living in Phoenix, Rice will be at Phoenix International Raceway today for the XM Satellite Radio Indy 200, second race of the Indy Racing League season. Rice will be in Rahal-Letterman Racing’s No. 15 Panoz-Honda, but he won’t be expecting any special treatment from the old hometown.

At Indianapolis last year, Rice dominated, winning the pole and the race. But after he’d won the pole, his hometown newspaper didn’t think enough of it to send a reporter to cover the 500.

Then, when it came time for the staff of the Arizona Republic to select the 10 top Arizona stories of 2004, what got left out? That’s right, Buddy Rice’s winning the world’s biggest auto race.

Among the select 10 was Phil Mickelson, who isn’t even from Phoenix. He’s from San Diego, but went to school at Arizona State. Others included Arizona State’s 8-3 football season, Randy Johnson’s 16-14 season, the death of former Phoenix Sun coach Cotton Fitzsimmons and Olympic swimming victories by Gary Hall Jr., Klete Keller and Amanda Beard.

In 2000, after winning the Formula Atlantic championship, Rice was considered one of the hottest racing properties in the country, yet for nearly two years all he could find were test-driving duties until Eddie Cheever’s Red Bull team called late in 2002.

More disappointment was in store. Even though he finished second in his first IRL race at Michigan, and finished in the top 10 four times the following year, Cheever ignominiously dropped him in midseason.

Things haven’t changed much, respect-wise, in 2005.

He is the 500 champion, driving for Bobby Rahal and David Letterman, but he is not even the most sought-after personality on his own team. That would be Danica Patrick, a 5-foot-1, 100-pound, 22-year-old Rahal hopes will become open-wheel racing’s first female winner. Since it was announced last December that Patrick would join Rice and Brazilian Vitor Meira on the Rahal-Letterman team, she has been the focus of interviews and TV appearances, not Rice.

“I’ve always been under the radar,” said Rice, who would have been perfect in a Norman Rockwell painting, a fishing pole in one hand, pushing his bicycle down a dirt path. More Huck Finn than Tom Sawyer.

His persona fits the image.

When his sponsor, Argent Mortgage, told Rice it would buy him any model automobile in the world, did he select a Ferrari, a Lamborghini or even a Hummer? No, he asked for a 1949 Mercury hot rod.

“I’ve always loved old hot rods,” he said. “I have four or five of them at home that I work on when I’m not working out.”

When he was presented his Indy 500 winner’s diamond-laden ring, his response was, “It’s pretty blingy, pretty flashy. It’s a cool ring.”

He still drives around town in the same 3-year-old pickup truck he drove before winning Indy, still goes to see as many sporting events in Phoenix as he can, including Cactus League baseball games.

Today, his focus will be on winning in front of his hometown buddies. Rice will start 10th, after qualifying Friday at 175.115 mph. Bryan Herta of the powerful Andretti Green Racing team won the pole with a 176.612-mph lap in a Dallara-Honda. Series champion Tony Kanaan will start in the rear after his car was not permitted to qualify because of an engine change.

“It’s always a little different, racing on your hometown track,” Rice said. “It makes it more special. I’ve raced there twice in Indy cars and I won a two-liter race a few years ago [1997 in the F2000 series]. Racing at Phoenix is different than other ovals. It has more banking in [Turns] 1 and 2 than it does in 3 and 4, and it has a different radius at each end.

“Mile tracks put more emphasis on the driver. On the longer tracks, you can drive flat out all the way around, so it’s more of an engineering exercise. On a mile, you can’t run flat out. You’re constantly in traffic, there’s more driver involvement. It can get windy too, and when the temperature rises, like it does a lot in Phoenix, the track starts getting a little greasy. That can make it more exciting for the drivers, and for the fans too.”

After last year, when Rice won five poles and races at Kansas and Michigan, besides Indy, and finished third in the IRL standings, he was hoping for a fast start this season. In the season opener at Homestead-Miami, he dropped out with engine failure, a rare occurrence for Honda, which powered 14 of 16 winners last season.

“It was just a freak thing,” Rice said.