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1. #Helio castroneves drivers#
2. #Helio castroneves series#

I’m not saying I’m gonna keep driving till I’m 60, but I have the passion and I still wanna do it.” “People forget that Mario Andretti raced until he was 53,” Castroneves says. And yet here she is, dropping dimes at age 40, going for a fifth (!) gold medal at next month’s Olympics. WNBA legend Sue Bird is old enough to be a mother to some of her teammates.

#Helio castroneves series#

Even LeBron James, who’s gone from being touted as a teen phenom to torn apart for having the temerity to turn 36, is out here recreating classic Heatles posters with Alex Caruso while (just about) keeping the Lakers alive in their playoff series against the Suns … who owe their resurgence partly to Chris Paul, also 36. What’s more, in the last six months alone, we’ve seen Tom Brady win a seventh Super Bowl at age 43 and Phil Mickelson become the oldest major championship winner at 50. “We are the Next Gen.” Meanwhile, Serena Williams is still going deep into grand slams as she approaches 40. “Me, Rafa and Roger are reinventing the Next Gen,” Novak Djokovic said after a runner-up finish in last month’s Italian Open, holding the line for the triumvirate that has dominated tennis for the past two decades.

But here’s the thing about old guys: we’re stubborn. Of course this was inevitable – the circle of life for great athletes of a certain age, all of them under constant pressure to make away for the next man or woman up. But given all that Castroneves had done to help lift Ind圜ar from the wreckage of civil war and onto reconstruction, it was hard not to feel like he deserved better than a part-time Ind圜ar schedule and a new role at Team Penske’s sports car division.

After all, racing is a pay-to-play business that prefers young, cheap talent – which doesn’t make it that much different from most modern businesses, really.

That Castroneves could go on to become the redundant man at Team Penske after a two-decade affiliation should not have come as a shock. It was this happy-go-lucky boy from Brazil – not some kid from central Indiana or northern California or even Patrick, a phenomenon entirely onto herself – †who’d emerge as the face of American open-wheel racing after a 14-year civil war that threatened to sink the sport entirely. The last time I saw him in person, while tracking Fernando Alonso’s maiden Indy voyage in 2017, Castroneves was pogoing on the balls of his feet outside the drivers’ green room before the race after finishing 0.2 seconds behind Takuma Sato, he wasn’t too deflated, either. I’ve seen him beat federal tax evasion on the way to winning a third Indy 500, watched him pivot from in-demand bachelor to the proud partner of longtime squeeze Adriana Henao and doting father to daughter Mikaella who, sheesh, is 11 now? All while he’d become a heartthrob to a nation of blue-haired Dancing with the Stars fans – not least, Danica Patrick’s own grandmother – who couldn’t get enough of his Mirrorball trophy-winning quickstep routine with Hough in the show’s 2007 finale. There were the churrasco feasts in New York’s Midtown, the predawn beach workouts, the backstage hangout on the Dancing with the Stars victory tour with Joey Lawrence and Julianne Hough – “Wow, Drew! Don’t go there,” Castroneves says, cutting me off. That’s me still incredulous about having this open book for an introduction to the motorsports beat when my Sports Illustrated editors shunted me there at 25.Ĭastroneves and I have had some good times. That’s not me making myself out to be some great access merchant. In almost 20 years writing for the toy department, I’m hard pressed to name another sports figure I’ve spent more time with than Castroneves.

#Helio castroneves drivers#

Never mind if the idea of anyone doubting one of the most successful drivers in American open-wheel racing at any age seemed more than a little off track.īut then again I’m totally biased. That he’s sitting here now at age 46, in his race-worn, magenta-accented Meyers Shank team fire suit, with a sparkling Indy 500 championship ring on his finger, is as much a testament to Castroneves’s undying perseverance as the “great group of people” in his corner who “make you believe in yourself”, he says.

Which is to say Castroneves was written off by same blinkered logic that kills off most athletes after the age of 30 and buries most people post 40.