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With the biggest day in racing quickly approaching, NBC sports racing reporter Anders Krohn joins JMV to talk about what he expects to see in the race. Krohn goes into detail on how he believes the sport of IndyCar is gaining popularity globally and believes is gaining much more interest with the recent struggles with the F1 team of McLaren.
Does it hurt the Indianapolis 500 that a big name like Fernando Alonso didn’t qualify?
“I almost think of it differently, I think people probably gained a new level of respect when someone like that and a team like that doesn’t make it into the show. I think it just increases the level of respect globally because I think that the general mindset at least from a european perspective is that oh an oval race must be easy. You are just turning left when, in all reality its one of the most complex things you can do in racing. So in my perspective, I think the only thing it does is increase the interest because of how difficult it is and increases the people’s understanding at how technically demanding it is as well.”
What is the european perspective of the Indianapolis 500 when it lands on the same day as the Monaco Grand Prix?
“Well I’ll tell you it used to be when people in Europe would just kind of go through to the Monaco GP and that would be it, but nowadays people are really opening their eyes and the audience of Sky Sports in the UK and big outlets in Scandinavia and other outlets all over Europe are following it. So I will say it now really is a global event, it’s not a North American event and as a result you will see people probably more excited for the Indy 500 than the Monaco Grand Prix simply because its so much less predictable. Because at Monaco you have to assume it will either be a Mercedes or a Red Bull driver winning the race and that’s it. Here in the 500, you can take the back row and they can win or the front row or anywhere in between.”
Krohn is quite excited for the 500 this Sunday which will start only a couple hours after the Monaco Grand Prix which is quite simply the biggest day in racing as the Coca-Cola 600 follows them both.
