Thinking Pink: Lloyd to launch “PinkLloyd.com”

A Pink Lloyd cocktail, T-shirts and umbrellas. What's next, a summer tour as a Pink Floyd tribute band?

While Alex Lloyd does play guitar, the logical next step to the mushrooming attention of Lloyd's pink firesuit/helmet and No. 99 HER Chip Ganassi Racing/Sam Schmidt Motorsports car for the Indianapolis 500 is a Web site. Coming soon: www.pinklloyd.com.

Lloyd's father, David, initially mentioned it and minutes later Brett Jacobson, CEO of primary sponsor HER Energy, texted Lloyd about the idea.

"It seems everybody was on the same page because it seems to be taking off," Lloyd said. "We thought we could get a Web site up and running and have a little fun with that during the month."

Lloyd, who will start in the middle of Row 4 in his second Indianapolis 500, quickly has gotten in the spirit of the promotion.

"On the first day wearing the pink I have to say I was a little self-conscious, but now it's gotten to the point where I'm just having fun with it and it's been getting so much attention," Lloyd said. "Even team members are calling me Pink now, so it is becoming sort of a routine. It was going to draw attention – a guy having a pink car – but I don't think we expected it to go this much.

"The car is going pretty fast as well. It's one thing when you get good press but struggling, but we're having a good month so far. We're just trying to make the most of everything and enjoying the bit of attention that's coming with it."

Lloyd, a development driver for Chip Ganassi Racing, started 19th in the 500-Mile Race last year in a partnership between the Ganassi group and Rahal Letterman Racing. This year, he's running with Sam Schmidt Motorsports, with whom he won the 2007 Firestone Indy Lights championship. Lloyd was the penultimate driver to make a qualifying attempt on Pole Day (five minutes before the close of the session), bumping Andretti Green Racing's Hideki Mutoh with a four-lap average of 222.622 mph.

"It was made even better because we struggled most of the day with the setup," Lloyd said. "We started Fast Friday being quick and I was confident we had a shot at getting in the top 11. But when we rolled out on Saturday morning the car just wasn't there and we spent a lot of time trying to get it right. But we couldn't quite get it to where we were happy. We threw on a whole different setup for that qualifying run, only having one set of tires we could afford to use, so we had to put it in line, take off some downforce and go."

That in the rearview mirrors, Lloyd will work on race setup this week. He's also looking beyond the Month of May.

"I'll wear pink for the rest of my career if it means I can get in a race car," he said. "We're working hard to make this more than a one-race deal as well. Hopefully, this can just be the start of Pink Lloyd."