Ready for your closeup, Mrs. Franchitti?

Because it had been only a week since about 300,000 of my closest friends and I had witnessed arguably the most thrilling Indianapolis 500 of them all, and I was still dealing with slingshot-for-the-lead withdrawal, I tuned into Sunday's IndyCar race.

There was no slingshot-for-the-lead on this place called Belle Isle, a tree-lined postage stamp in the middle of the Detroit River.

These new IndyCars apparently are not suited to racing on a postage stamp. Plus, the track kept coming apart. There were ribbons of asphalt everywhere, with chunks of concrete attached.

The race was red-flagged for two hours. Dario Franchitti said he wasn't going back out there, unless it was in his old man's Ford Country Squire station wagon with a money-back guarantee from Earl Scheib.

This development was both unforeseen and startling, but not as unforeseen and startling as what was to follow.

Despite the long delay - and the fact the airtime-filling ABC pit reporters interviewed everybody with the exception of the guy who does Takuma Sato's taxes - and despite another fact that Dario Franchitti's wife managed to conspicuously thrust herself into the background of every shot of the Target Chip Ganassi Racing pits, not once did Vince Welch or that Rick DeBruhl guy stick a microphone in her face.

This, to me, to people who follow the sport, was more remarkable than Mike Mosley starting dead last and winning the race at Milwaukee in 1981 in a car powered by a stock-block Chevy.

Has the world seen the last of Ashley Judd and her floppy hats and her print dresses and her bare feet skipping down the pit lane after yet another victory by her Scottish-born husband with the heavy right foot?

There were about 50,000 spectators in the Southwest Vista at Indianapolis on May 27 who have their fingers crossed. I can't speak for the fat cats in the penthouse boxes in the B Stand.

When Mr. Ashley Judd - this would be Dario - drove past on his victory lap, he was booed without mercy. Either Dario was not as popular a champion as Brent Musburger was telling the gearheads at home, or Boog Powell had replaced him as driver of the bright red No. 50 car.

Then when I looked up at the video screen, I saw Mrs. Franchitti waving her floppy hat and skipping down the pit lane.

The boos were mostly for Ashley Judd, not Dario Franchitti.

When they finally pulled Sato from his battered car - he had crashed while boldly trying to overtake Franchitti on the last lap, and hats off to him for trying - 50,000 people in the short chute gave Ol' Takuma a standing ovation.

Now, if you've been going to the 500-mile race for any amount of time, then you know the crowd at Indianapolis isn't exactly in the habit of giving standing ovations to ride-buyin' furriners (to use the A.J. Foyt vernacular) - regardless of how boldly they charge into Turn 1.

At first, I thought this was a Kentucky-Indiana thing, because people from Indiana generally do not care for people from Kentucky - and vice versa - and Ashley Judd grew up in Kentucky. But there are even loyalists from the Commonwealth who have turned on her for imitating a Kardashian when there's a camera with a flashing red light nearby.

"Her Kentucky basketball fandom was kind of cool for a while," said Las Vegas Wranglers president Billy Johnson, born and raised in the bluegrass. "But now it's to the point where I long for other Kentuckians to take over: Depp, Clooney, Mac King.

"Please, CBS, show the tourney action and not the Judd-Lesley Visser game recap."

There was a time when Ashley Judd kept a low profile at the races, effecting the graceful manner of Paul Newman when he co-owned Mario Andretti's team.

And then the movie "Bug" got made.

"The defining moment? When she literally tried to climb into her husband's car after his first Indy win, and he hadn't even unstrapped yet," Johnson said. "The guy just risked his life and reached the pinnacle, and I'm like, 'Get out of his shot.'

"I remember the look on his face. I kind of felt bad for the guy."

One of the photos making the rounds last week after the Indy 500 was of Ashley Judd posing with the Borg-Warner Trophy, adorned by the winner's wreath while holding three fingers in the air. Franchitti stood back and off to the side, staring down at the track.

"Behold Ashley celebrating her great victory at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway while some useless stranger photobombs the picture," wrote the blogger at TheMockDock.com, his snark showing clear through the tread to the cord, just like on Eddie Sachs' tire in '61 when he was racing Foyt for the win.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.