SPEEDWAY, Ind. — Over the weekend, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway did something special for some longtime race fans who couldn't attend the 500.
They sent all 33 drivers out to their homes. Now, one of those visits has become even more memorable.
Jay Oakes has been to every Indy 500 for 56 years.
But he doesn't mind that the pandemic ended his in-person streak.
"If you just say, 'What's your most memorable 500 ever?' I might have to say the one I didn't attend," Oakes said.
That's because the retired health care worker was one of the lucky, loyal fans to get a surprise house call on Saturday.
First came a phone call from IMS earlier in the week with specific instructions.
"They asked if I'd be home Saturday and I said, 'Yes. If you need me to be here, I'll be here,'" Oakes explained. "Then they said, 'Now we don't want you to tweet between 11:15 and noon.' I thought, 'Something's up.'"
It was.
Saturday, he watched an Indy 500 pace car pull up to his house with some very famous company - the driver who ended up taking the checkered flag.
"I couldn't see for sure who it was," Oakes said, "and so as soon as I stood up, I saw that it was him and I said, 'Takuma! Awesome! A winner's at my house!"
At that point, to Oakes, Takuma Sato was the 2017 champion.
Sato, he said, is one of his three favorite drivers. In fact, Oakes happened to have a cutout of team owner Bobby Rahal in his yard.
Meeting Sato, Oakes said, was a thrill.
"He's an average Joe," Oakes said. "He's somebody who you'd sit at the bar with and have a drink if you didn't know who he was. He's a genuine, humble champion."
Sato delivered a gift pack of memorabilia, along with an autographed crew shirt.
Oakes is a collector, so he brought out a flag he has signed by various Indy 500 champions and asked for another autograph.
"The fact that I had a winner in my driveway, one day before the race, what an opportune time to get that signed," Oakes said.
That signature, on Sunday, got even more valuable.
As he watched the 500 on TV, Oakes said Scott Dixon was getting a lot of the attention from the announcers.
"But I'm sitting there looking there thinking, 'Oh no, no, no! I've got the winner from my house yesterday sitting there in third. He's just hovering. He's just sitting there waiting for that last you know 25, 30 laps whatever to put it in go and do something and sure enough, he did,'" Oakes said.
Even more meaningful, Sato, in the post-race interviews, mentioned his time with Oakes on Saturday.
"For that to be, yeah, at the forefront of his mind when someone asks him a question regarding fans that he remembered that moment, that makes it even more special to me," Oakes said.
So now the "Pandemic 500" at home is this fan's favorite race yet.
"Who'd have thought, yeah, a little two-bedroom bungalow in Speedway," Oakes said. "It's like, 'Oh man! I had this guy at my house yesterday and now he's top of the racing world!"