Indianapolis Library Becomes Qualifying Weekend Sponsor

Note to the mentally challenged: This is all made up.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway hopes having qualifiers "in the books" will translate into more patronage for its newest sponsor, the Indianapolis Public Library.

"We noticed a huge upsurge in people checking out books on Saturday morning," said Georgina Swedlow, deputy assistant librarian for circulation services at the Indianapolis Public Library. "I did some checking into it, and a bunch of the books that were checked out were about Indy qualifying in the early 1980s."

Track officials who declined to be named said the format Saturday, especially, caused about 13 cars to be looking to make a run in a tight, six-hour window. That led to a lot of dead track time.

"I could see about 6,000 people reading in the stands," said one Indy insider. "It was almost like we were at a library."

With only 11 spots up for grabs, drivers and crews with cars that had no shot to go 223 mph took the day off. No one seemed real anxious to get a beat down in front off the book-reading crowd, much less "put it into the fence driving for 11th." Many took advantage of a 2-for-1 discount offered at the Brickyard Crossing golf course which has holes on the inside of the speedway.

"Yeah, we saw it coming," said a gleeful Bernie P. Carnabee, marketing manager for Brickyard Crossing. "You have maybe 20 to 25 teams with jack to do on Saturday, so we thought why not see if we can get some incremental business off them on Saturday while those 11 were qualifying? Green fees were up 34% on Saturday alone."

Track observers did notice an up-tick in attention paid to the track during the last half hour of qualifying when the pole position was being contested.

"Not sure why they can't have 11 cars qualify over the space of, say, two or three hours, instead of six," said one fan leaving the track carrying a couple of heavy tomes. "But, on the bright side, I caught up on my calculus homework, so I guess it wasn't a total loss."

"We're real excited about the sponsorship," said Indy librarian Swedlow. "We hope our sponsorship will let IMS move to qualifying just nine on the first day next year while expanding the qualification window to between 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. We may set new circulation records of that happens."

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Comments

[MoneyCJ]

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[pressdog]

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