If Tom Carnegie’s bellowing baritone was the soundtrack of the Month of May at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, then these three words were the chorus:

“Newwww. Traaaaack. Recorrrrrrrrd.”

The legendary IMS public address announcer uttered them dozens upon dozens – almost certainly hundreds – of times since he took over the mic in 1947.

And so when Arie Luyendyk rolled up to the end of pitlane in his No. 5 Ford Cosworth-powered Reynard with the candy apple-red Bryant logo on the sidepods on May 12, 1996, and Carnegie had said those three words a half-dozen times over just a couple minutes – each with increasing urgency and excitement – there wasn’t anything all abnormal about it, barring the blistering speeds.

We would see this – and more – soon enough, wouldn’t we?

Still, the four successive single-lap records were something to savor.

236.239 mph on Lap 1? Well over 2 mph faster than Scott Brayton’s fastest lap the day before during his pole run. ‘A new track recordddd.”

Lap 2, dipped under 38 seconds for the first time during 500 qualifying, at just a tick under 237 mph.

And then Lap 3 – 237.260 mph – followed by those six digits that still live in IMS lore: 237.498 mph, good enough for a 10-mile average of 236.986 mph. ‘Race fans, you’ve seen a four-lap record and a new track recordddd. How do you like that? Arie Luyendyk, a new. Track. Recordddd.’

It was all part of a couple-day rollercoaster, both awe-inducing and gut wrenchingly-agonizing for The Flying Dutchman who first won the 500 in 1990, started on pole and finished 2^nd in 1993 and felt as comfortable as ever in the cockpit with his new Byrd-Treadway Racing team and engineer Tim Wardrop in his ear.

Yet nearly 30 years later, the owner of a pair of records at the Racing Capital of the World feels rather ambivalent about it all.

“I’ve said it before, I hope they break it,” he told IndyStar this month. “It’ll create excitement. It’ll get people buzzing about, ‘Oh, tomorrow, they might break the track record!’ 'Cause that’s what it used to be. They made such a big deal about, ‘Ohh, the record’s going to fall!’ And I hope that happens. It would be good for the sport.”

Because in the 28 years since, not Carnegie, not Dave Calabro nor Allen Bestwick have uttered those three words.

Insider: Why Arie Luyendyk holds record for fastest Indy 500 qualifying run but wasn't on the pole

‘I think we can run 237’

Two months prior in the second race of an ultra-condensed three-race schedule for the Indy Racing League’s debut season, Luyendyk had put on a clinic at Phoenix. Having just switched from Goodyear to Firestone tires, the 42-year-old Netherlands-native was seemingly on rails. The pole, race win, most laps led – and new track record – were all Luyendyk’s across that March weekend out west.

And after weeks of massaging their 500 machine, along with computer simulation runs, the driver couldn’t believe what his engineer was telling him.

“’I think we can run 237,’ he told me, and I quickly said, ‘Nah-h-h man, maybe 235, but 237?’” Luyendyk recalls. It had been only four years prior when Luyendyk was part of a succession of drivers who saw single-lap qualifying speeds top 230 mph for the first time. On May 9, 1992, his lap of 229.305 mph stood as a track record – albeit briefly – before Gary Bettenhausen (229.317 mph) nudged by, and then Roberto Guerrero (232.618 mph) ran away and hid.

Rookie Tony Stewart’s unofficial track record of 237.336 mph less than a week into the month was the first real sign that history very well may be made on the newly repaved track. A day later, Luyendyk hit the track immediately spitting out 232s and soon 233s with ease. By the Thursday leading into the first qualifying weekend, he sat atop the timing charts nearing a lap of 238 mph.

Then came Fast Friday.

After more than a decade of racing at IMS, Luyendyk had latched onto a habit to get a sense of his speeds each lap without losing focus. As he carved through the exit of Turn 2, he’d set his eyes on a gate in the wall and use it as a reference point to glance ever so slightly downward toward his RPMs.

This particular lap, the needle was a tick past the norm.

“I remember I had just run 238 mph on my own, and I was on my way to complete another 238, and there was a car in front of me coming in Turn 3 maybe half a straightaway ahead, and I thought, ‘Man, I wish I could get closer’ – turned out to be Johnny Unser ahead of me,” Luyendyk said. “And as I came out of Turn 4, he was just barely less than a half-straightaway ahead still, still just too far away.

“But I’d still picked up a really big tow, which had given me another 1 mph or more.”

Luyendyk soon made it back into the pits, greeted by crew members grinning ear-to-ear, accompanied by some friendly ribbing. 239.260 mph: an unofficial track record for IMS – and just over a tenth-of-a-second shy of the track’s first-ever 240. For 28 years since, no one but Luyendyk, who ran at least one more practice lap in the mid-238s the following week, has come remotely close to knocking that lap off its pedestal.

“Oh my gosh, I was so bummed I didn’t get that 240,” Luyendyk chuckles now. “It’s just mind-blowing, 239. It’s quick, and even when you do 238, like I did on my own, you do feel the difference. And you also hear it. Everything is freed up. The engine is singing along at the maximum revs it can get, and you just know it.”

‘We came away with absolutely zero’

Saturday wasn’t nearly so smooth. Now 28 years later, Luyendyk still doesn’t understand why Wardrop and company sent him out for that morning's warmup run.

“It just wasn’t necessary, because the car was ready to go,” he said. “Just put it away, take it out for qualifying and run the laps.”

Instead, not long after he tore out of the pits, Luyendyk was dodging debris spraying all over the track as he neared Turn 3, the result of Johnny Parson’s solo wreck. The speedster thought – or at least hoped – he’d gotten through unscathed despite nearly barreling into a loose tire. But just over 20 minutes later, the yellow flags waved. The No. 5 of Luyendyk had rolled to a stop on-track.

Radiator leak. Overheated engine. Pristine car ruined.

As fate would have it, after an engine change in his primary car, that power unit, too, failed, forcing his Byrd-Treadway crew to ready his backup car for that afternoon’s qualifying run, where the top-20 spots in the field would be filled. No matter what speeds might be run the next day, or the next weekend, pole would be decided in mere hours, and the fastest car in IMS history couldn’t go.

“And we were a good team, but we didn’t have the backup car all ready to go at a moment’s notice, so they had to hustle just to get that thing ready,” he said. “It was kinda a (expletive) show, unfortunately.

“Although I’d run decent lap times in that one, the difference between that car and my primary car was huge. Just the handling, because we never ran it much.”

And yet, with just over 30 minutes to go before the pole would be decided, Luyendyk made his way on-track in his hastily-prepped No. 35. Brayton’s temporary pole run sat at 231.535 mph, prime for the taking. With three of his four laps above 233 mph, two above 234 and a single-lap record of 234.742 mph, the pole was seemingly his.

Brayton had other plans, with his Menards crew pulling his car from a provisional front row starting spot and trundling back out with just over 15 minutes left to throw down not nearly as fast a top-speed, but an overall more consistent four-lap run: 233.718 mph to Luyendyk’s 233.390 mph. The 1990 winner would start second.

Or at least it seemed that way for roughly 90 minutes, until a press conference in the trackside conference room, where USAC chief steward Keith Ward announced that the No. 35 had been weighed post-run at seven pounds under the minimum of 1,550. Having not deemed the infraction to have been intentional – “They went through a lot of turmoil today. I think it was just an oversight,” Ward said then – the run that put Luyendyk in the middle of Row 1 would be disallowed.

'We’re still paying for that': 25 years later, legends reflect 1996 Indy 500's 'dark day'

“This has put a damper on things. The fact that I got put off the pole, I could have gotten over that tomorrow,” Luyendyk said at the presser. “Actually, my biggest concern is starting in the middle of the pack. I’ve been there before, and I don’t like it. The guys worked their butts off today, and because they did, there’s an oversight.

“I want to try to qualify the car I tried to qualify in the first place and put down the big numbers. The only thing positive about this is that I don’t have to stand outside tomorrow morning for the (expletive) front-row pictures.”

Big numbers in his original car he did. Coming off a night of little sleep – “Today’s Mother’s Day, and yesterday was a real mother of a day,” he told reporters after his record-setting run – Luyendyk shot out of the pits first in line Sunday just after noon. Having felt back at home in his original No. 5 during morning practice, turning a lap of 237.567 mph, the Dutchman eased into his four-lap run – knowing full well the speeds, and therefore his marks and lines, would be different than the day prior.

And still, that Lap 1, where he admits now he “left a little on the table”? Well over 2 mph better than Brayton’s best lap just over 18 hours prior and nearly 1.5 mph speedier than his fastest lap run during his now-disqualified run the previous day. On cue, echos of Carnegie’s catchphrase bounced off the bleachers.

“I was kind of nonchalant and playing with the lines because I knew I would have faster laps than yesterday,” Luyendyk said after stepping out of the car 28 years ago. “It was easy for me today.”

And yet in the 500 two weeks later – perhaps fitting in a cruel way – a battle for positioning coming out of the pits just before the halfway mark with Eliseo Salazar would leave Luyendyk with broken suspension and bodywork, along with a damaged nosecone. He’d lose five laps for repairs and drop out with 50 laps to go.

The fastest car and driver the track had – and still has – ever seen would settle for 16^th.

“We were so quick and so dominant, and after that month of May, we came away with absolutely zero,” Luyendyk says now. “No pole, no result. Really nothing, and that was disappointing.”

7 pounds of ballast stopped new track records in 2022, 2023

Had Luyendyk’s crew remembered to stuff seven pounds of ballast in his No. 35 to bring it up to minimum weight, Calabro or Bestwick would’ve gotten a chance to put their own spin on IMS’ famous phrase each of the past two years – three words that, after the repave of 1996 and the temporary loss of turbo-charged engines starting with the 1997 edition, have seemingly been lost in time.

Luyendyk stood on pole a year later, struggling through four laps at an average of just over 218 mph that he says now were far scarier to turn than 237 the year prior.

But you still stood on pole and would go on to win the race that month?

“Yeah, that sounds a lot more straight-forward than it was,” Luyendyk scoffs now. “I have video showing my in-car camera where I was sideways coming out of Turn 2 after every restart, except the last one.”

By 2002, speeds crept back into the 230s for qualifying – albeit briefly – before spending a decade ping-ponging up-and-down in the 220s. Ed Carpenter’s second consecutive pole in 2014 saw a return to the 231s four-lap average speeds. Scott Dixon reached 232 mph three years later, but only recently has Luyendyk’s pair of all-time qualifying records felt remotely in play.

Had the eventual two-time winner slid safely into the field that Saturday in 1996 (and for simplicity's sake, let's still consider his DQ'd run now legal, given how small a change seven pounds would've made), Brayton, who would be killed later that month in a gruesome practice crash, would have come away from the 80th 500 as the race's four-lap recordholder from his pole run (233.718 mph). Luyendyk, by virtue of the third lap of his Saturday run, would've owned the single-lap record (234.742 mph).

New track records coming? IndyCar drivers weigh in on whether Luyendyk's qualifying marks will ever fall

After well over two decades of those marks appearing to be dreams, they both would've come under fire in recent years. Brayton's four-lap mark would've fallen first in this alternate universe, bested by Scott Dixon's pole run in 2022 in the Fast Six (234.046 mph). His Chip Ganassi Racing teammates, first Felix Rosenqvist, then Alex Palou, would've broken it twice in the span of just a couple hours on qualifying Sunday last year, by virtue of their Fast 12 (234.081 mph) and Fast Six (234.217 mph) performances.

During Palou's qualifying Sunday runs a year ago, the two-time champion Spaniard would've also set successive single-lap records of 234.812 mph (Fast 12) and 235.131 mph (Fast Six).

And after a progression the last two years of just six total laps run in the 234s during qualifying weekend in 2022, to now 24 in 2023 (and two in the 235s), there's reason to think neither of those records would've lasted past this year either.

Quizzed during 500 Open Testing last month as to what speeds we might see this month under ideal conditions, drivers overwhelmingly agreed those marks should again fall – aided by a car that comes in roughly 30 pounds lighter and not yet with the addition of the hybrid system. Plenty more 235s, and perhaps even a lap or two in the 236s, drivers reasoned, should be in play.

And yet, more than 2.5 mph over four laps stands between Palou’s magical run and Luyendyk’s (and just under 2.5 mph to bridge to his fastest single lap). More horsepower is coming with the hybrid system, but more weight, too. Whether the cars will come out of that update faster remains to be seen. Some drivers argue that with the potential of today’s aerodynamics, series rules and tire construction are all that separate them from celebrating history once again at the Racing Capital of the World. Others see those laps of Luyendyk’s years ago as merely a pipe dream.

“If you look at the numbers, I know it’s easy to think, ‘Oh, they’re getting so close, they just might get it,’ but it’s still such an enormous task to get that much more out of the car when it’s already at its peak,” Luyendyk said. “Back then, we had more than 900 hp. We didn’t have the aero they do, but they might be able to get it if they give them another 30 hp or so.

“We’ll see. Predictions are good to make, but you can’t live your life by them.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Why Arie Luyendyk's DQ 1996 pole day run kept record intact for 28 years