Morning reading: 5/17

Preparations for Indy 500 qualifying this weekend are poised to really pick up today as the opening weekend of practice is now in the books. Let’s just hope the rain stays away — the last thing these teams need is less track time considering the new compressed schedule.

Here are stories for you to read over this morning…

As expected, the Indianapolis Star’s “500” coverage has plenty of stuff today, including stories on Dan Wheldon’s incident yesterday in Turn 4, a feature on KV Racing Technology rookie Takuma Sato, and complaints about the new schedule favoring the bigger teams. Just look over to the ‘Indy 500 Headlines’ section on the right.

Defending champion Helio Castroneves gets a nice little write-up from Jeff Majeske of the Gary (Ind.) Post-Tribune, who thinks that a fourth Indy 500 win for Helio might be the thing to re-ignite bigger interest in the world’s greatest race.

Robin Miller of SPEED Channel is back with his 33 questions for this year’s “500.”

WRTV in Indianapolis also checks in with fans, who apparently aren’t digging the new schedule for the race. Interestingly enough, IMS’ Eric Powell says in the piece that opening day attendance was up from last year. Strange.