30 years after first Indy win, Mears sharing advice with Firestone Indy Lights drivers

Thirteen rookie drivers will get their first opportunity to compete at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway May 21-22 during the Firestone Freedom 100 Firestone Indy Lights event.

Rick Mears Celebrates his Indy 500 win in 1979 Credit: Indy Lights

Helping them understand the daunting 2.5-mile oval is driver coach Rick Mears, a four-time winner of the Indianapolis 500.

"They all know that you have to start here to get there (Indy 500), and that's where their focus really is," Mears said. "They're thinking more about today and what do I need to do today to get to the next level. And that's the way it should be. If someone comes up to me and says, 'I want to win Indy,' I usually say, 'You're thinking wrong.' You have to take care of today before that one will happen.

"I didn't plan any of it, but I can look back and see what made it happen. Partly, I wasn't thinking about going forward. I was thinking about getting the most out of what was in front of me right now. If you do well (in Firestone Indy Lights) that result creates the next opportunity. You can't have one foot in tomorrow and one in today. It almost boils down to a lap to lap, corner to corner, minute to minute.

"It's small picture, but you have to look at the big picture so you don't do something stupid to not be able to get to the end. The No. 1 priority is the checkered flag, because if you don't get the checkered flag nothing else happened."

This is a special year for Mears - the 30th anniversary of his first Indianapolis 500 victory, and the memories are as fresh as ever.

"It seems like yesterday," he said.

Mears, driving the No. 9 The Gould Charge Penske-Cosworth, took the lead for the third time in the race on Lap 182 (Penske teammate Bobby Unser had led Laps 97-181) and went on to beat A.J. Foyt across the line. Mike Mosley finished third, followed by Danny Ongais and Unser.

"The '79 win holds memories in a lot of different ways," Mears said. "First of all, it was only my second attempt and it was our first time we ever qualified on pole. That's a special memory. I really felt we had a shot at winning the race going in, and really I thought we had a shot at winning the first year (started third).

"One of the main memories of '79 was that I didn't really understand at that time what it took to win Indy and what it meant to win Indy. I thought, 'Oh, great, I won another race' and went on down the road. Then you go another year or two and you don't win it again and you start looking around and you realize that not a lot of people ever get an opportunity to run here let alone win it. The odds of winning it more than once are very slim.

"Then you learn more about it, more about what it takes and how difficult it really is to do. Then when we got the second ('84), it made the second one a little more special because I understood more what it meant. That just progressed through all four."

Today's Firestone Indy Lights drivers hope the first step in creating a Mears-like legacy of their own begins under his tutelage at the Firestone Freedom 100.

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