A.J. Allmendinger gets his second chance - MotorSportsTalk

Following his suspension and release from Roger Penske’s Sprint Cup team last summer due to failing a drug test, A.J. Allmendinger didn’t fret over whether or not the next opportunity would come. Instead, he focused on himself.

“I had to be happier first before I got into a race car,” he said on Friday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “I always looked at it, if racing is going well, that will make everything else happy. Well, for me, it’s the total opposite. When you get in the race car, you’re totally focused — physically, mentally, everything that goes with it.

“I wasn’t worried about a phone call from anybody, getting a chance. I had to make sure if I got the chance, if and when, I was ready to go. That time period, going through that, is what I focused on. There’s no secrets. Nobody’s perfect in life. Unfortunately, mine was played out on TV over one dumb mistake. But with that mistake, you can do two things: You can keep making those mistakes or learn from them and be a lot better.”

It appears that the American has certainly done the latter, and now he has the opportunity to bring Penske a 16th Indianapolis 500 victory this May in the No. 2 Team Penske Chevrolet alongside regulars Helio Castroneves and Will Power. Allmendinger will tune up for the ‘500’ by competing in the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama on April 7 at Barber Motorsports Park.

In addition to getting a chance to repay Penske’s faith in him, Allmendinger will also experience the Month of May for the first time as a driver. He’s made four Brickyard 400 starts at IMS, but he was previously unable to compete in “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” as a result of the chaotic open-wheel split between Champ Car, where he raced from 2004-2006, and the Indy Racing League (now the IZOD IndyCar Series).

“I felt like obviously with the split, it took away from the prestige of the Indy 500 because the best of the best weren’t there the whole time,” Allmendinger said. “So for me, honestly, it was like I kind of lost a little bit of the concept of what Indy really was until I got here for the first time in a stock car and pulled out in pit lane and realized, ‘God, this is what Indy is all about,’ coming down the front straightaway for the first time.

“My mind immediately went back to, ‘What’s it like in an IndyCar, coming down at 240 [miles per hour] and turn into Turn 1?'”

It won’t be long before he finds out.

INDIANAPOLIS — The first Indy 500 victory for Josef Newgarden also was the richest in race history from a record 2023 purse of just more than $17 million.

The two-time NTT IndyCar Series champion, who continued his celebration Monday morning at Indianapolis Motor Speedway earned $3.666 million for winning the 107th running of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

The purse and winner’s share both are the largest in the history of the Indianapolis 500.

It’s the second consecutive year that the Indy 500 purse set a record after the 2022 Indy 500 became the first to crack the $16 million mark (nearly doubling the 2021 purse that offered a purse of $8,854,565 after a crowd limited to 135,000 because of the COVID-19 pandemic).

The average payout for IndyCar drivers was $500,600 (exceeding last year’s average of $485,000).

Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Roger Penske, whose team also fields Newgarden’s No. 2 Dallara-Chevrolet, had made raising purses a priority since buying the track in 2020. But Penske but was unable to post big money purses until the race returned to full capacity grandstands last year.

The largest Indy 500 purse before this year was $14.4 million for the 2008 Indy 500 won by Scott Dixon (whose share was $2,988,065). Ericsson’s haul made him the second Indy 500 winner to top $3 million (2009 winner Helio Castroneves won $3,048,005.

Runner-up Marcus Ericsson won $1.043 million after falling short by 0.0974 seconds in the fourth-closest finish in Indy 500 history.

The 107th Indy 500 drew a crowd of at least 330,000 that was the largest since the sellout for the 100th running in 2016, and the second-largest in more than two decades, according to track officials.

“This is the greatest race in the world, and it was an especially monumental Month of May featuring packed grandstands and intense on-track action,” Penske Entertainment president and CEO Mark Miles said in a release. “Now, we have the best end card possible for the 107th Running of the Indianapolis 500: a record-breaking purse for the history books.”

Benjamin Pedersen was named the Indy 500 rookie of the year, earning a $50,000 bonus.

The race’s purse is determined through contingency and special awards from IMS and IndyCar. The awards were presented Monday night in the annual Indy 500 Victory Celebration at the JW Marriott in downtown Indianapolis.

The payouts for the 107th Indy 500:

1. Josef Newgarden, $3,666,000
2. Marcus Ericsson, $1,043,000
3. Santino Ferrucci, $481,800
4. Alex Palou, $801,500
5. Alexander Rossi, $574,000
6. Scott Dixon, $582,000
7. Takuma Sato, $217,300
8. Conor Daly, $512,000
9. Colton Herta, $506,500
10. Rinus VeeKay, $556,500
11. Ryan Hunter‐Reay, $145,500
12. Callum Ilott, $495,500
13. Devlin DeFrancesco, $482,000
14. Scott McLaughlin, $485,000
15. Helio Castroneves, $481,500
16. Tony Kanaan, $105,000
17. Marco Andretti, $102,000
18. Jack Harvey, $472,000
19. Christian Lundgaard, $467,500
20. Ed Carpenter, $102,000
21. Benjamin Pedersen (R), $215,300
22. Graham Rahal, $565,500*
23. Will Power, $488,000
24. Pato O’Ward, $516,500
25. Simon Pagenaud, $465,500
26. Agustín Canapino (R), $156,300
27. Felix Rosenqvist, $278,300
28. Kyle Kirkwood, $465,500
29. David Malukas, $462,000
30. Romain Grosjean, $462,000
31. Sting Ray Robb (R), $463,000
32. RC Enerson (R), $103,000
33. Katherine Legge, $102,000

*–Broken down between two teams, $460,000 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, $105,500 Dreyer & Reinbold Racing/Cusick Motorsports