Throughout the Indy 500 – from the first false start to Helio Castroneves celebrating in Victory Circle – fans, bloggers, journalists and race teams pumped out a steady stream of updates using microblogging service Twitter.
With a 140-character limit and the necessity to post quickly and often, live blogging using Twitter doesn’t encourage deep analysis – but its strengths include immediacy, diversity of voices and the ability to capture the raw emotion of a passing moment.
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BritsOnPole was among the Twitter users bashing away at the keyboard during the 93rd running of the Indianapolis 500, and here is what we said:
Got Twitter running in Safari, @estradawriting ‘s liveblog in Opera, live timing / video in Firefox. What to put in IE and Chrome?
Holding the green flag – too strung out, not side-by-side. And who’s surprised Helio and Tracy were the ones who jumped?
Dario grabs an early 2nd – Moraes already wrecked – I knew he was too good to be true… fast but inexperienced. His day will come.
Have we lost Marco too? Could be… aw, what a shame! *snork*
Marco on Moraes: “The kid doesn’t get it. He never will.” Like he’s one to talk!
Dario grabs the lead on the restart, builds a lead over Helio, then Briscoe, Dixon, TK
Busy day for Alex Lloydbusy day for Alex Lloyd: lap down after having to pit with problem and @furiouswedge says his pregnant Mrs has started contractions
Poster boy is out – Ryan Hunter-Reay, who only just scraped into the field, spins, hits wall, crashes into pit road. Oops.
early attrition mostly hitting the good media stories – Marco, Izod poster boy RHR, dark horse Moraes, plus Pink Lloyd a lap down.
mass pitting under the yellow for RHR. Dario still leads but Briscoe takes second from team-mate Helio. Dixon 4th.
update on Brits: Dario leads (qualified 3rd), Wheldon 13th (Q18), Wilson 14th (Q15), Conway 29th (Q27), Lloyd 30th (Q11).
Robert Doornbos still trying too hard… clips wall without major pileup (unlike practice). Damaged and slow and in pits.
and while we were watching Doorknobs, Briscoe grabs the lead from Dario Franchitti
And Graham Rahal hits the wall… he’s doing it less this season but clearly he still has a magnetic attraction to the barriers.
Lapped traffic is becoming a factor for the leaders – bunching due to it may have done for Rahal
Justin Wilson drops to pretty much last after screwing up his pit stop and – by the sound of it – nearly killing his crew.
Changes from the pitstops, Dixon, TK, Danica all gain places. Wheldon running well, too.
order under yellow: Briscoe, Dixon, Dario, TK, Helio, Matos, Danica, Power, Wheldon, Carpenter, Tracy, Servia, Bell, Meira
4-wide on restart4-wide on restart, Dixon grabs lead, Briscoe fades to 9th from 1st, Matos and Danica both take Helio. And Briscoe pits.
Brit report Dario 2nd, Wheldon 8th, Wilson 15th, Conway 19th, Lloyd 26th
Looks like we’ve lost Davey Hamilton. Shame, who didn’t want him to do well? Elsewhere, Danica drops to 7th, Meira sliding back too
pitstops under caution following crash, 86 laps complete, Dario gets lead back. Then Dixie, TK, Helio, Matos, Power, Danica, Dan W.
Tagliani has gone from 33rd to 11th but he’ll still get booed because of the way his team dumped Junqueira to get him into the race
Dixon grabs a big lead on the restart, Dario holds second from TK who’s led every Indy 500 of his career but might lose that streak today.
And TK loses his record of leading every 500 of his career with a big hit. “Only half a car left” says @curtcavin
Almost everyone pitting again on lap 99 / 200. Servia’s engine seems to have died. Leaders on restarts aren’t doing well this year.
Order under caution is Dixie, Dario, Power, Matos, Helio, Wheldon, Bell, Tracy, Carpenter, Danica. Conway 13, Wilson 21, Lloyd 22.
TK no idea what happened: “Something broke in the rear suspension and I hit head on, then I went for a ride – it was pretty wild”
The Ganassi cars running away with it at the moment, Power holding off Helio for 3rd. Alex Lloyd back on lead lap, gaining places.
RT @FuriousWedge Tags deserves a serious black flag, he’s lucky he didn’t hit Conway with that block
RT @paddocktalk Pink Lloyds wife’s contractions are down to 10 minutes… @MyNameIsIRL says she plans to wait for end of race
Yellow again for Nelson Philippe’s inevitable exit from race. Still Dixon, Dario, Power who on past form will be the next to crash.
Meira on fire in Foyt pitbox Pitstops under caution, Meira on fire in Foyt pitbox – put out and he’s racing again. Dario screwed by stuck fuel nozzle, now 8th.
More big changes from pitstops: Matos plunges to 20th, Tracy is 4th and Wheldon 5th. Briscoe back up to 10th.
And Helio BLASTS past Dixon at the restart, Power still 3rd, Wheldon and Bell take 4th and 5th off Paul Tracy
Brit update: Dario 12th, Mike Conway 10th (does he have a nosebleed that high?), Wilson 17, Lloyd 21.
Catching up after a few minutes away from keyboard, Power has grabbed second, Tracy is fading, Patrick is up to 6th, Dario to 9th
lap 160 Justin Wilson is the first Brit to fall, back end escapes him in Alex Lloyd’s dirty air and he’d gone.
looks like the whole field is pitting – most probably were about to anyway. Power has tyre-change problems and falls back.
Big shakeup (and likely another to come on restart). Helio leads, Briscoe back to 2nd, then Wheldon, Patrick, Bell, Power, Dixon.
Not sure how many are fuelled to end without another caution… Rafael Matos, near the back, certainly is and Ryan Briscoe isn’t.
Vitor Meira – who flew last season – has had another major, major aerial wipe-out and took Matos with him.
RT @the500 That was a big hit. And Meira wasn’t sliding on left side, he spun and flipped and skidded backward on car’s right
Still waiting for signs that Meira is OK. They’ve readied a stretcher but they did that for Ana Beatriz and she just had a cut chin
RT @estradawriting ABC’s Marty Reid: Meira was alert but complaining of pain.
Briscoe, Conway and some backmarkers take on fuel. They’ll be laughing if the leaders have miscalculated. And last if they haven’t.
Brit update: Dan Wheldon 2nd, Dario 7th, Lloyd 14th, Conway 17th. Wilson will be classified as 23rd. It’ll be a sprint to the end.
Helio speeds off into distance on restart, Wheldon holds off Patrick, Bell grabs fourth from Power
Just 10 laps left and it’s Helio’s bar disaster. Patrick pushing Wheldon for 2nd. Bell 4th still and WHO would have expected that?
Three laps left and Helio, who six weeks ago was facing jail and the end of his career, is running away with the Indy 500.
And it’s over. CRAZY result. Helio wins, then Wheldon, Patrick, Bell, Power, Dixon, Dario, Carpenter, Tracy, Mutoh, Tags, Scheckter
Helio climbs the fence Helio climbs the fence to celebrate, his crew join him while stewards flap ineffectually, and now he’s heading for Victory Circle.
“This is the best Month of May ever” says Helio Castroneves, winner of the 93rd Indy 500
For those not across the mysterious world of Twitter abbreviations, the @ symbol produces a link to another user and is particularly helpful when replying, while ‘RT’ is short for ‘re-tweet’ and, like forwarding an email, is a way of repeating someone else’s post while giving credit to them as its author.
For brevity (mostly), the following shortened names were used: Dario, for Dario Franchitti; Danica, for Danica Patrick; TK, for Tony Kanaan; Marco, for Marco Andretti; Helio, for Helio Castroneves; Tags, for Alex Tagliani; RHR, for Ryan Hunter-Reay.
