As usual, drivers from the three teams that have the recent tradition of having/spending the most money and thereby having the most success – Penske, Andretti and Target-Ganassi – have about an 80% chance of winning the Indy 500 this year, just like every year. I think you can officially place the Dreyer & Reinbold team into that discussion this year, or at least say that they are at the kids’ table. They have 4 pretty good entries in this year’s race.

I am not a huge racing fan, so I won’t provide a hell of a lot of analysis, just give you the pick. Under normal circumstances, picking the guy who is widely regarded as the best driver to have never won at Indy is no great stretch. But this year, that dude (Tony Kanaan) is starting dead last.

Anyone not familiar with how qualifying works, let me tell you why Tony Kanaan is starting last. He crashed his #1 car on the first day of qualifying. He crashed his backup car on the second day of qualifying. His team built him another car, essentially out of spare parts from Tony’s two wrecked cars, as well as other parts from other cars on the Andretti Autosports team. Tony qualified 32nd with that Frankenstein car on the last day of qualifying. If a qualified driver decides to use a different car than the car that he qualified with, then he automatically is forced to start last. Since T.K. was already in the middle of the last row, he only lost one place on the grid by choosing to run his #1 car in the race.

So, I don’t really think this is much of a stretch. Tony Kanaan’s #1 car was easily one of the top 10 (maybe even top 5) cars on the first day of qualifying, right up until it had a mechanical failure, eventually ending up with Tony being forced to drive it into the wall, and Kanaan is one of the best drivers on the circuit. He is the only driver in history to lead at least 1 lap in each of his first 7 Indy 500’s, and he is the only driver on any major professional driving circuit to complete every lap in an entire season.

The “expert” handicappers have T.K. as a 40-to-1 shot to win the race. I wish I had an extra chunk of cash to put down at those odds…but those are sucker bets, since it is all or nothing.

I am picking T.K. to win, as I always do, but you have to figure that, starting from dead last, if he can end up in the Top 10, then it would be considered a smashing success. Well, I have him in the top 5, ready to make a run at the dancing tax evader on the pole.

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As many of you loyal readers of the blog know, I am a big fan of the “Random Thoughts” format. Most of these thoughts are not necessarily blog post-worthy on their own account. However, when you combine them into one post, then you have sports blog gold — keeping things “short” (having just a sentence or two about each subject) adds to the entertainment and definitely continues to foster the inherent laziness of the blogger himself…and I am a HUGE fan of that. When you can take several subjects that all pertain to the same sporting event, and when that event is one of the 5 most popular annual events in the world, then so much the better.

First things first, I attended Pole Day for the 2010 Indianapolis 500 yesterday with my son. He is only 5, and we did not get to stay all day. Had I been a little smarter, we would have attended just the shootout at the end of the day. Since I am a moron of the highest order, we showed up at the peak of temperature and boredom (almost every team tuning their cars in the pits and never more than 2 cars on the track at once)…the little man was telling me how bored he was before we even finished lunch. In fact, I think the lunch was one of the best parts of the trip for him — every supermarket in town sells “Track Pack” box lunches around this time of year…you get a sandwich, 2 pieces of fried chicken, chips, baked beans and a cookie, all in a cardboard box with checkered flags all over it. Let’s just say that my 5-year-old did not hate the Track Pack. It’s not exactly “sports”, but there is more to come on the food and beverage front later.

Other items of note from my son – the noise and the crowd were minuses; the Track Pack, the race cars, the 2 crashes we saw, and urinating in a trough were pluses. In fact, if pressed, he might tell you that peeing in the trough was the coolest thing he has ever done.

So, without further ado, here are the random thoughts from Pole Day for the 2010 Indianapolis 500.

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While I am not a car racing fan, I am probably more in tune with the Indy 500 than I am with anything else in that particular sport…you can’t really avoid it when you live in Indy…and yes, NASCAR fans, I just referred to the generic sport of “Auto Racing”, lumping in the rednecks with the euro-trash…deal with it.

I am not going out on a limb with my prediction, because I think this is one of the cases where all the talking heads are correct. There are basically only 6 drivers (all on the 3 best teams) that have a legitimate chance to win on Sunday. Granted, it is the Indy 500, and anything can happen, and if someone outside of Target Chip Ganassi, Andretti Green, and Team Penske happened to win, he would not be the first dark horse to do so…but the smart money is not there.

So, here are the 6 drivers that collectively have an 80% chance of winning the race:

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