INDIANAPOLIS – Bump Day at the Indianapolis 500 is brutal, cruel, the worst day of the year for a handful of teams and drivers forced to navigate a qualifying system designed a long, long time ago when the world was a harsher place.

It’s beautiful, is what it is.

Of course, the richest IndyCar owners want to get rid of it.

It’s not enough to have the advantage of cash and talent. No, they want more. They want a guaranteed spot in the Indy 500 for full-time teams – read: the ones with the most money – but don’t get the wrong idea: They’re not advocating getting rid of Bump Day entirely. Heavens no.

It’s fine for smaller teams to duke it out for Indy 500 qualifying. They just consider themselves above the fray.

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Here’s the thing about the Indy 500, the most charming thing about this most charming of spectacles: Nobody is too good for this race. And nobody isn’t good enough. If you can scrape together a car with four tires, put a driver behind the wheel and come up with the necessary cash to enter the race, guess what? You can try to qualify! The underdog quality of the Indy 500 helped make this the biggest race on the planet.

Here, gather ‘round. Let me tell you the story of Willy T. Ribbs:

It was 1991, and Ribbs was trying to make his Indy 500 debut. What he was going for was history, but that’s a story for later. At this moment, just know that Ribbs was one of those talented young drivers with a dream and a ride courtesy of Walker Racing, but not much money.

Ribbs showed up at Indianapolis Motor Speedway that May on a shoestring budget and proceeded to snap the string almost immediately; his Buick engine blew up during practice. Then his replacement engine blew up. Then another engine came and went, and another, as connecting rods kept shooting out the sides.

On his fifth engine, after much scrambling, Ribbs arrived at Bump Day and ran into more problems: His turbocharger failed, sending oil all over the track and leading to several hours of repairs. With the 6 p.m. deadline approaching, Ribbs wheeled his car onto the track with about 45 minutes to spare and turned four laps at 217.358 mph. He was in the field, the first African-American in an Indy 500 lineup.

He bumped Tom Sneva.

You know: 1983 winner Tom Sneva.

You know what Sneva didn’t do? Didn’t pout. Didn’t ask for special consideration or try to buy himself another ride. Nope, Sneva played golf instead.

On the surface, yes, you can understand teams with full-time cars wanting special consideration, and there is certainly an argument to be made in that direction.

This week the biggest names in the sport – Penske, Ganassi, Andretti – have called for just that, and surely they speak for smaller owners of full-time teams as well. Money from their sponsors helps fuel the sport, and their sponsors would be miserable to miss out on the biggest race of the year because something went wrong on Bump Day, as it went wrong in 2011 for Andretti Autosport’s Ryan Hunter-Reay.

As team owner Michael Andretti told IndyStar's Jim Ayello this week, Hunter-Reay sponsor DHL “probably wouldn’t be in the sport today” had Andretti not brokered a deal with A.J. Foyt to put Hunter-Reay into another car for the 2011 race.

We’ll never know, because Hunter-Reay got his replacement ride, but DHL’s withdrawal would have been a loss for IndyCar. On the other hand, I have a feeling Andretti Autosport would have found another sponsor, shaking the tree until something new fell out.

Either way, Bump Day has been around as long as this race, referred to in different terms over the years – it was once called “Bubble Day,” and bumped drivers were said to be “crowded out” – and every so often, it claims a giant. Last year it claimed one of the most popular drivers in the field, crossover star James Hinchcliffe, as well as sentimental favorite (and massive underdog) Pippa Mann. The 2018 Indy 500 survived, and Hinch didn’t lose his sponsor, Arrow.

That doesn’t guarantee that another sponsor wouldn’t take its money and go home without a spot in the 2019 Indy 500. But that’s a risk the race has always taken, and should continue to do so. This race has sponsors because it has millions of fans, and it has millions of fans because of traditions like Bump Day. IndyStar conducted an unscientific online poll about Bump Day this week, and 85 percent of the respondents opposed locked-in entries.

Fans know what we all know, what those born on third base and deciding a triple isn’t enough, don’t want to hear: There’s something unseemly about the richest of the rich trying to rig the system in their favor. It may happen all over America, but God bless the IMS grandstands, it won’t fly here.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.