Join driver Conor Daly and host Jim Ayello as they wrap up the 2019 IndyCar season. Clark Wade, Clark.Wade@Indystar.com

INDIANAPOLIS Ed Carpenter has made a living out of seeing what others dont.

Standing in front of dozens of strangers, wearing his blue and white Preferred Freezer Services fire suit, the IndyCar veteran plays a short clip from the camera in his car of the opening lap at Pocono Raceway. Eyes are glued on the cockpit of Carpenters No. 20 machine as the video watches him weave and jockey for position on the backstretch.

And all of asudden, the ringing of Carpenters car dulls to low roar. He weaves down onto the grass and smoke blurs the feed.

The present-day Carpenter pauses the video and turns back to the crowd of buttoned-up business types who have spent their day at Thursdays TEDxIndianapolis speaker series event listening to a climate scientist, an investigative journalist, a criminal detective, a disability rights attorney and others detailing the world from their point of view.

As drivers, were trained to look as far ahead down-track as we can, he explains. So Im guessing when you all were watching that, you didnt realize there was an accident happening until you heard the car slowing down.

But for me, I see a little puff of smoke (in frontof me on the track), and my eyes are trained to know that shouldnt be happening on a straight-away during the first lap. That tells you something is wrong, and that puts me into survival mode. I have to find a way to get myself and my car through the incident.

Ed Carpenter (20) of Ed Carpenter Racing during the Indy 500 Drivers Meeting at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday, May 25, 2019.(Photo: Matt Kryger/IndyStar)

He rewinds the video, and the crowd, almost in unison, sighs as they notice this time a blue car nearly climbing the fence, seconds from the initial spark of the crash. On race day, of course, Carpenter cant be allowed any such hindsight.

His talk, the final one of the series on Sight was designed to be instructive to diehard race fans and fringe observers alike an exclusive look into how one of the states most famous homegrown racing veterans, a stepson in the sports most famous family, reached his level of acclaim, while so many other drivers come and go.

But his 13-minute monologue and Carpenters details provide a deeper look into the inner-workings of one of IndyCars unique personalities.

Its not typically something Id agree to do, he explained afterward. They just caught me on the right day, I guess. Its something different, and I knew it would be outside my comfort zone.

Its Carpenters way of saying that the prospect of speaking in front of a small auditorium of people is what gets the steely racing veterans blood pumping. His hair was perfectly coifed as he strutted onto the stage and broke into tales of growing up in Illinois, moving to Indiana and first racing on tracks that could fit inside his teams headquarters in Indianapolis, but Carpenter was nervous.

In a car, youre in there alone with your helmet on. In a way, were performing, but were in our own element, he said. The people in attendance, though, arent right in front of you. Thats a different type of performing.

I was sitting in the green room beforehand, and I dont know if its because I had the racing suit on or not, but my wife said, Youre acting like you do before the start of a race.

Carpenter was always wired a little differently. He explains how, growing up at school, he had to weather the constant bullying of kids who participated in more traditional sports and would make the whirring noises of a racecar at the lunch table whenever hewalked by.

And that disdain for what he felt for so long would be his future followed him to college, a slight he holds onto still to this day.

Early in my time at Butler in the business school in an intro class for all majors, this professor gave us an assignment called our five-year success plan. There werent many guidelines, he tells the crowd. It was simple: Where do you see yourself in five years, and how are you going to get there?

Boom, easy. Ive got this. Naturally, I wrote about racing. I know what I want to do, and I know what my goals are, and I ended up getting a D on the paper, and the professor puts a note on the paper: Its nice to have dreams, but you need to be more realistic.

Maybe he was a bit off. He reached the IndyCar series in four years instead of five.

Ed Carpenter (20) of Ed Carpenter Racing during Carb Day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Friday, May 24, 2019.(Photo: Kristin Enzor/For IndyStar)

From here, Carpenters presentation takes off. He starts to rattle off the numbers that illustrate the strength of his career as a driver and team owner, one built on longevity. There have been 777 different drivers in the 500, he explains. 65 have won a pole, 18 of them twice and just 10 three or more.

He's one of those 10 but he's also one of two in that group who've never come away a champion. Carpenter calls going the rest of his career without a victory in the Greatest Spectacle in Racing one of his two biggest fears.

Not winning the 500 and not making my family proud, he lists. I dont fear what could happen in a racecar. What we do is dangerous and risky. People can lose their lives, but I love what I do, and that makes it all worthwhile.

Before he finishes, Carpenter asks audience membersto close their eyes and take a slow, deep breath in and out.

In the time it took for that little exercise, I lost the Indy 500. That three seconds or so is the difference between me standing here today as an Indy 500 champion and being a second-place finisher, he says. But Im not done fighting.

And its that unique vision, the ability to dissect the flashing lights inches from his face and the action taking place a quarter-mile down the road from him, that propels Carpenter nowadays. As a driver and owner, his schedules are finely tuned with a half-dozen managers who have been with him since the beginning of his team to work as a buffer when necessary. He balances his kids hockey practices and a speaking project like TEDx with meetings about signing prospective drivers for his namesake team, which can have a lasting impact on the next decade of Ed Carpenter Racing.

The ability to keep a finger on those things in the present and whats far, far down the road is a juggling act hes mastered, and it all comes from his thousands of hours spent in a racecar.

In the car, youre constantly looking at stuff on the steering wheel while also keeping an eye on everything around us. Theyre fluttering around all the time, but you know whats supposed to be happening, if something ever does thats abnormal, youre going to see it instinctively, he said. I never look at the flag stand over the course of a race, but I always see the white flag waiving. Any time something is different than 90% of the time you go by something, you notice that change.

Perhaps one Memorial Day weekend, hell catch a checkered-flag waving out of the corner of his eye.

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Ed Carpenter's unique vision created an IndyCar veteran. Now, he's driven by one thing: a 500 win - IndyStar