ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. — It's race weekend for the 20th running of the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. And this year, a former mayor will have a chance to honor a racing legend while reflecting on his work to bring the event to life.
2005 was actually the second year for a Grand Prix in St. Pete, but it was the first for the Indy Racing League. The man waving the green flag to start the race was the mayor of St. Pete at the time, Rick Baker, a lifelong racing fan who convinced the IRL to come to our area.
“It was such an unlikely thing because Indy Car had never done a street race, they'd never done a road race,” Baker remembers.
He still has the flag 20 years later, signed by the winner of that race, hall-of-fame driver Dan Wheldon, who months before the race moved to St. Pete to live in the offseason. Baker brought the flag to the Grand Prix on Friday to show Dan's wife, Susie, who lived with the British racer in their adopted hometown.
“[There’s] so much energy here when the race comes to town,” Susie Wheldon sid. “Everybody has really gotten behind it and it for now to be twenty years on, it's just an incredible feat.”
Dan Wheldon’s legacy is now carried on by his two teenage sons who are already race car champions themselves and the subject of a new HBO Max documentary. “Lionheart” is available to stream starting Tuesday and features Dan and his racing career, including two wins at the Indianapolis 500 and his tragic death in a crash during a race in 2011.
It's a story of hope, resilience and legacy, as Susie now follows their two sons, Sebastian and Oliver, who are all but 15 and 12 years old and competing in open-wheel racing.
"I think the documentary, what I’m most proud of is that it really covers a lot of themes,” Susie said. “Not even someone that's really a fan of motor racing or a fan of Dan's, I think there's so many universal themes in the movie that people can relate to."
The documentary premiered in St. Pete earlier this race weekend, a fitting place to do it where, thanks in no small part to Dan and former mayor Rick Baker, racing has its day in the sun.