How Indy 500's JR Hildebrand made an emergency pitstop in Goodland, Kansas

INDIANAPOLIS, In. – Race driver JR Hildebrand is an Indianapolis 500 celebrity, but last week on his way to Indy he was just another repair job at Alex’s Radiator and Auto Repair in Goodland, Kansas.

Well, not just any repair job.

Hildebrand, a true car guy who’s just as comfortable driving his bagged 1960 Cadillac Coupe de Ville as he is a 230-mile-per-hour Dallara IndyCar, decided to pull the grand old ride out of storage in Boulder, Colorado, and cruise 1,100 miles to Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

At 33, Hildebrand loves the classics, especially cruising in a ride nearly twice his age. It helps him separate from the pull of Twitter, Instagram and text messages before two weeks of foot-to-the-floor stress. Interstate 70 would be his perfect world.

Except …

“It was highly eventful for the first 300 miles,” said Hildebrand, who is practicing this week for his 11th start in the 500 on May 30.

The Caddy, a 390-powered pink beauty he calls Rosie, “had been sitting for a year, but it fired right up” and cruised just fine early in the trip. But as it approached the Colorado-Kansas state line, the suspension's airbag controller started flickering, the windows were slow to roll up, the gas gauge didn’t work and the engine started to stumble.

“I’m thinking maybe I’m only getting seven miles per gallon and I’m out of gas,” Hildebrand said. “So I peeled off, ran a light and got to a gas station. It only took 12½ gallons and was dead. It’s pretty unlikely that the collector in the fuel tank was leaving six gallons in this thing. I took a jump, and once I got it fired up, I got it back on the road and it ran fine for another 40 or 50 miles, and then the same thing started to happen. I pulled in and got another jump." (His wife Kristin was following behind in their Subaru, along with their dog).

He stopped in Goodland and bought a new battery, “figuring the battery was toast at that point, whether that was the problem or not,” he said. “They did their diagnostics thing at the parts store, and it wasn’t totally clear what was wrong.”