Helio Castroneves, despite the numerous fans seeking his autograph May 19 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, says the Indianapolis 500 has still not fully bounced back.  INDIANAPOLIS — Tony Kanaan, the gregarious racecar driver from Brazil, began hearing the stories from the old-timers and hangers-on not long after he arrived for his first Indianapolis 500 nine years ago. There was one common thread: the Indy 500 used to be a lot better.  Sometimes, particularly when wide patches of the enormous gray grandstands were noticeably empty three years ago, Kanaan wondered if he would ever feel the excitement the way that the veterans had described it.  But this year, as the race celebrates its 100th anniversary, Kanaan and other longtime participants in the event have seen signs of a revival. Kanaan said it took longer for him to get in and out of the racetrack. Forty-one cars were entered to qualify for the 33-car field, the most since 2002. Kanaan said he was noticed at local restaurants by many people, not just one diner.  “I didn’t become more famous because I started doing back flips or I’m doing a TV show,” said Kanaan, who will drive in his 10th Indy 500 on Sunday.  Ticket sales for the race are up by 10 percent over a year ago, and retail sales are up by nearly 30 percent, Jeff Belskus, the president and chief executive of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, said last week.  Some of the extra business can be attributed to the 100th anniversary of Ray Harroun’s winning the first race on May 30, 1911 (he needed 6 hours 42 minutes to rumble 500 miles in his Marmon Wasp), but not all of it.  The Indianapolis 500 has been battling sliding television ratings. A record low number of viewers, some 4.1 million, watched the 2010 race nationally, a drop from the 4.4 million who watched the race in 2009. An estimated 9.7 million watched the Indy 500 in 2005, when Danica Patrick became the first woman to lead the race.  This year’s field has no clear favorite and greater parity than in years past. All but one of the last 10 races at Indianapolis have been won by cars owned by Roger Penske, Michael Andretti or Chip Ganassi. Of the top 15 cars to qualify for the race this year, only three are owned by Penske, Andretti or Ganassi. There are five race teams represented in the top six on the grid, including two cars owned by Sam Schmidt, a former driver who was paralyzed in a 2000 racing accident. In 2010, Penske and Ganassi had five of the top six qualifiers.  “I’m in the trenches, and it’s a whole new way that people are talking about the race,” said Mario Andretti, who won the race in 1969 and whose grandson Marco is in Sunday’s race. “I think people who have stayed away for several years are coming back. The buzz gets to them.”  Andretti laughed, as if this development was improbable. Speedway officials are hoping to extend the buzz by stuffing the calendar with family-friendly activities and offering free tickets to children 12 and younger if accompanied by a paying adult.  Since the Nascar boom and a bitter dispute between open-wheel racing factions in the mid-1990s, there is a perception that a generation of fans was lost. So officials are trying to recruit a new one.  Belskus said the Indy 500 was not as popular as it was 20 years ago, when it was a hot ticket. “This tough economy hit us pretty hard,” Belskus said. “We recognize that for customers this is discretionary spending.”  But he added, “It’s headed in a real positive direction.”  Suites and boxes to the race are sold out, Belskus said, but general-admission tickets are available for $30. As he crossed a street near the speedway recently, John Andretti, a veteran driver who is Mario’s nephew and an Indianapolis native, was asked if he had any extra tickets.  Scott Goodyear, who finished second in two Indy 500s as a driver and is now a television analyst, said he had done more prerace radio interviews this year, some with stations he had never heard of — perhaps because a fellow Canadian, Alex Tagliani, won the pole position.  Last week, the team owner Michael Andretti, Mario’s son, bought a spot in the race from the team owner A. J. Foyt for Ryan Hunter-Reay, who had failed to qualify. Three or four years ago, few people outside Indianapolis would have noticed, but this year the transaction became a controversy.  Bob Kravitz, a sports columnist for The Indianapolis Star for 10 years, wrote about the deal between Andretti and Foyt last week, labeling it “The Greatest Spectacle in Swapping,” and said he was invited onto a nationally televised show to explain the issue. Kravitz usually appears on such shows to discuss the Indianapolis Colts.  “That tells you it’s kind of gone beyond central Indiana and the hard-core gearheads,” Kravitz said.
After some fallow years in which there were empty seats at the Brickyard, the Indianapolis 500 is once again a hot ticket.