The 2011 Indianapolis 500 is about to start—it's in Indianapolis, if you weren't sure—and SB Nation has been covering it all week, which gives me a number of links to offer as we come up to the start time. This year's Indy 500, the 100th, will be on ABC beginning at 11 AM CDT, and on the radio on Sirius channel 211, if you have a better idea of how to listen to a race on the radio than I do.
SB Nation ran a great preview today if you're a neophyte, with information on both the stars like Helio Castroneves and Danica Patrick and the newcomers to the public eye like Alex Tagliani, and earlier offered a look at the qualifying results and the starting grid, while SB Nation Indiana will cover the day's festivities from a local perspective.
The starting grid for what I'm told is officially the Greatest Spectacle in Racing, a strangely neutral claim to make, value-judgment-wise, is as follows:
1. Alex Tagliani
2. Scott Dixon
3. Oriol Servia
4. Townsend Bell
5. Will Power
6. Dan Wheldon
7. Buddy Rice
8. Ed Carpenter
9. Dario Franchitti
10. Takuma Sato
11. Vitor Meira
12. J.R. Hildebrand
13. James Hinchcliffe
14. Bertrand Baguette
15. Davey Hamilton
16. Helio Castroneves
17. John Andretti
18. E.J. Viso
19. Ryan Hunter-Reay
20. Justin Wilson
21. Jay Howard
22. Tomas Scheckter
23. Tony Kanaan
24. Simona de Silvestro
25. Paul Tracy
26. Danica Patrick
27. Ryan Briscoe
28. Marco Andretti
29. Charlie Kimball
30. Graham Rahal
31. Alex Lloyd
32. Pippa Mann
33. Ana Beatriz