INDIANAPOLIS — Drivers, start your calendars.

When all 33 cars hit the throttle collectively to start the 107th race of the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday, every move they make will be measured by the smallest and largest time increments. Laps recorded in the smallest fractions of the stopwatch, those results produced by runners whose careers and lives are measured in years and decades.

“On the track, we’re seconds apart, actually not even seconds, barely seconds,” explained Ryan Hunter-Reay, the 2014 Indy 500 winner who will start from row 6 on Sunday, right in the middle of row 11 – row field. “But when we’re all together, you realize we’re also years apart. Me and the boys I came up with, we used to be the young ones. Now we are definitely not that. I don’t feel old. ..until I start talking to some of these other guys!”

From polesitter Alex Palou to Jack Harvey, the slowest car in the field this year, the entire 33-car field was separated by just 2.121 seconds after their four-lap qualifying efforts were recorded.

But the age gap between the oldest driver in the field, 2013 Indianapolis 500 winner and soon-to-be retired from IndyCar, Tony Kanaan, and this year’s youngest competitor, David Malukas, is nearly 27 years. Kanaan and his longtime friend, and four-time Indy 500 champion Helio Castroneves are 48 years old, older than Al Unser Sr. in 1987, when he became the race’s oldest winner and its second winner. on four occasions.

At the other end of that timeline, three drivers: Malukas, Sting Ray Robb (yes, that’s his real name) and Christian Lundgaard, all 21, will have a chance to break one of Indy’s oldest records. On May 30, 1952, Troy Ruttman became the youngest winner of Greatest Spectacle in Racing at the tender age of 22 years and 80 days. To get that victory, Ruttman, a kid from California short tracks, had to hold out against a field of largely older, experienced and World War II-hardened elders.

Back then, Ruttman was vastly outnumbered. Today, unlike just a few seasons ago, the kids represent a rapidly growing part of the grid. Sunday’s top five starters average just 25 years of age and fewer than 3.5 Indy 500 starts per driver.

The liveliest souvenir vendor is 24-year-old Duck O’Ward, whose trademark hats are the most popular merchandise on the field for fans and who still openly and unapologetically longs for a ride in F1. The liveliest American host is another 23-year-old, Colton Herta, who remains a fan and an industry darling to one day make the leap overseas. But both have learned to refocus on the Hoosier State’s current task here and now.

Still, any of today’s youngsters looking to get into the winner’s circle will have to do what Ruttman did in ’52, traversing a field that includes nine former winners of this race, one shy of the record for a single. career. Most of those 500 champions are well over or in their late 40s. The only exceptions are last year’s winner Marcus Ericsson, 32, and 2016 milk eater Alexander Rossi, 31, both of whom spent years in the F1 system before coming to IndyCar in America.

“I think the first time you guys really started writing ‘changing of the guard’ stuff was when Rossi won the race as a rookie,” Will Power, 42, and reigning IndyCar champion, recalled during Indy’s press day. 500 on Thursday. “Then I won the race the following year and I was 37 years old. So Takuma [Sato] he won it twice in three years and was around 40. Simon [Pagenaud], Helio, us seniors kept winning this race for years after that. So, the guard didn’t change, right? At least not yet. But I know I’m not getting any younger and yet when I look around the paddock it looks like a lot of these guys are getting younger. You can’t keep them at bay forever.”

No, You can not. Nobody can. Father Time remains undefeated. Or, as OG’s four-time Indy 500 champion AJ Foyt once put it, himself a young party boy back in the day (in the 1959 race, Foyt made his second start and was the only driver of the 33 under 30 ) as he rubbed his sore, fuel-burned, and rebuilt knees, “A race car never kicked my ass. Another race car driver never kicked my ass. A swarm of killer bees never kicked my ass. Even a lion didn’t kick my ass. my ass. But Father Time, he’s kicking my ass. Getting old sucks.”

“Well, getting older is definitely a challenge, I know, and for a lot of reasons,” said Scott Dixon, 42, who last year eclipsed Foyt and everyone else in the Indy 500 led laps with 665. Sunday will mark six o’clock. time the IndyCar Series champion’s 21st race at the 500, with “only” one win in 2008. one entrant, and then it’s understanding the duration, the constant changes in conditions and the cost of a small mistake . I’ve been doing this for a long time, and it was a one-second mistake in pit road that cost me the win. a year ago. At a younger age, I don’t know if I could have processed it correctly, or who knows. Maybe being young allows you to get over things faster.”

Watch: Long Beach less than two months ago, when Dixon tangled with O’Ward after the latter dove inside Dixon in Turn 8 of Lap 20 of the race, touching tires and sending the veteran into the barrier. front tires. When they arrived in Indianapolis for a pre-500 test session just a few days later, Dixon was still upset about the accident and the juvenile aggression he believed to be the cause. O’Ward shrugged, saying, “We’re big…people made it sound like it was the end of the world, but it was racing.”

.@scottdixon9 is in the tire barrier after contact with @PatricioOWard.#INDYCAR // #AGPLB pic.twitter.com/NvIAefN3hl

— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) April 16, 2023

It’s a racing story as old as, well, time. Youngsters with seemingly countless years and the Indy 500 starting ahead of them, all while being touted as the future of the sport, compared to living Hall of Famers who are nearing the end of their careers with a finite number of opportunities. remaining to have their faces carved in silver on the Borg-Warner Trophy.

Add to that this unpredictable new era of the Indianapolis 500 and the IndyCar Series as a whole. A world where five different drivers have won the first five races of the season. And a world where a tried-and-true Indy 500 mentality of strategy and long-range deliberation in the pits, even at 230 mph, always the key to winning the greatest motorsports event on Earth at the end of 200 laps has been replaced. by a parity-packed field which has produced more “Where did it come from?” return finals. moments of the last decade than in the previous century.

“There’s a fine line to walk and run,” said Marco Andretti, now a grizzled veteran at 36 and making his 18th Indy 500 start. Mario’s grandson was the undisputed champion of the “changing of the guard” the 2010s, after losing the 2006 edition of the 500 by 0.0635 seconds. “When you’re young, you’re not as cautious as you should be, but you also think you’ll have a much better chance to win this race. Then one day you wake up and it’s me, 0-of-18 and not far from 40 and the boy who starts next to you on sunday [Malukas] It’s like, ‘Yeah, I grew up watching you run.’ You learn to be patient as you get older, but you become impatient when you feel that time is not on your side.

Exactly which side the World Center of Racing will be on this weekend is yet to be determined (youngsters or veterans, legends or lucky ones), but with every tick of the clock moving forward and every tick of the lap counting toward Indy 107. checkered flag, the arrival of that youth movement so boldly predicted seven years ago seems increasingly inevitable.

“I’ve been coming here for over a decade and I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a talented field,” recalled Pagenaud, who turned 39 a week ago. “I’m very excited to see where these youngsters can take this race and this series and their careers. I think all of us who have been here for years are excited to see what the youngsters will do…”

Pagenaud glanced at Ericsson, the defending Indianapolis 500 winner, addressing the media at a nearby table. The French driver smiled and winked.

“But not yet.”