Predictions guaranteed to go wrong, 2011 Indy 500

Oh hey. Since the last time I blogged, I joined the ranks of the officially unemployed (cue the running joke this week at Indy after graduating on Sunday), moved out of my apartment and have arrived in this town where the meteorologists get to have a field day because it rains. A lot.

It's taken this week to realize a few things in a world where I now have left college, but more on that next week. For now, there's the matter of forecasting the Indy 500 for the centennial edition.

A few predictions, then, guaranteed to go wrong. The reason I know this - look no further than what I attempted to call last year. A solid golden horseshoe, 0-for-5 last year.

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Win: Scott Dixon. I've been to this race twice and both times a Ganassi car has won - Scott in '08 and Dario last year. Has the perfect combination of optimal starting position, speed in race trim, experience, pit crew and race strategist in Mike Hull. He only loses it if he beats himself at some stage, which, given his "Ice man" moniker is unlikely.

Rookie-of-the-year: JR Hildebrand. A tough call between he and James Hinchcliffe, the Mayor of Hinchtown. Both are with upper-tier midfield teams and while their respective veteran teammates figure to play into the overall equation (Buddy Rice and Oriol Servia, respectively), Panther has shown better at Indy since 2008, when Newman/Haas returned from their time in Champ Car. JR has been smooth and relaxed and is on board the same car which has finished second here three years running. Keep it smooth, get a solid top 10 if not top five.

Top finishing female: Danica. She goes out with a bang, in some capacity. Poor word choice? Oh, well. This is likely the last we see of her in a full-time IndyCar ride and invariably Mikey's team will seek redemption from its piss-poor qualifying run and promote Danica to an off-sequence pit strategy that will move her to the front. Hey, when Briscoe hasn't taken her out, she's still pretty damn good at this track with five top 10s from six starts. If she could come from 24th to sixth last year, she can do it again, easily.

Dark horse: Townsend Bell. Hard to pick just one of the one-offers and part-timers, but two reasons why I'll take Bell. Maturity and patience are vital to success here, and given he's improved a tantamount level from his early years in CART/Champ Car, Bell is the most likely to hang with the leaders all day. Also, he's mastered the one-off role the last two years with part-time pit crews running in the top five most of 2009 and '10 with a fourth place result in '09. He would have equaled it but was called for a questionable blocking call. Bell's got the Sam Schmidt mojo of the month working for him (Schmidt's teams are a perfect 3-for-3 so far with both the Indy 500 pole, Tagliani, and an Indy Lights sweep of the pole, Bryan Clauson and win, Josef Newgarden) and enough experience to bring it home.

First crash: Charlie Kimball. You were expecting EJ Viso, right? He has to make it to at least lap 139 (his finishing total in each of his previous three 500s) before he wads up one of the KVRT-Lotus cars. And actually, to be fair to Viso and that entire team, they've had a wreck-free two weeks of May. Props. This is not a slight at Kimball whatsoever - but something will happen around that area of the grid (PT, Danica, Marco, Graham and RHR are sandwiching the rookie) that might send the Californian into the wall. You hope it isn't him - or anyone for that matter -but that's an odd hunch.

Time of departure: 6:30 a.m. My colleague Allan Brewer, who has so graciously hosted my stay in Indy, and I have gone back and forth about when we are actually leaving tomorrow morning. Conventional wisdom says go as early as possible, say 5 a.m. or so, but with backups for when the track opens to fans we might get stuck and not be able to get into where we need to go. Leaving later might be taking a chance, but we're going for it ... at least until we don't.

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When these are all wrong on Monday, I'll be writing about how tough the crow tastes. Sorry in advance for four of these five - but I'm guessing Kimball will feel vindicated if he can mirror my first crash pick last year, Mario Romancini. Romancini finished ahead of Simona as the top rookie finisher, although Simona received ROTY honors.

With that, a rare pre-11 p.m. bed time is on tap given the early start. What a great, if long day, tomorrow promises to be.

Out for now, cheers.