For Schmidt, first win as an IndyCar owner a long time coming

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Sam Schmidt has been a part of the IndyCar scene since the Indy Racing League iteration, back in 1997. He’s never won an IndyCar race as a team owner, until Sunday in Detroit with Simon Pagenaud’s No. 77 HP Schmidt Hamilton Motorsports Honda.

Asked how this compares to his more frequent winning in the Firestone Indy Lights Series, where the team has won the last three championships, Schmidt had a one-liner ready to go.

“This is better,” he laughed.

“I don’t know if I’d give up all those wins and championships for this, but this is really huge,” he said. “I know what Simon is feeling like right now because I had a chance to win one race as a driver (Las Vegas, 1999). It’s been a long road, a long journey these last 13, 14 years. Obviously, we wouldn’t be here today without Ric (Peterson) and Davey (Hamilton).”

Schmidt’s career path as a team owner is almost as circuitous as that of his lead driver and Detroit race two winner.

He didn’t choose the ownership path; a devastating testing accident at the Walt Disney World Speedway in Orlando in 2000 left him paralyzed from the waist down. Come 2001, Sam Schmidt Motorsports, the team, was around in its first iteration.

Schmidt forged his path as an owner in Indy Lights, where between 2004 and 2012 he has won six championships and more than 50 races. He returned to IndyCar team ownership after the 2010 season, when he bought out the FAZZT Race Team co-owned by Alex Tagliani.

Tagliani drove for Schmidt into 2011, before a late-season driver change saw Tagliani replaced by that year’s Indianapolis 500 winner Dan Wheldon at Kentucky Speedway. Of course, tragedy struck at the Las Vegas season finale that year, when Wheldon was killed in a multicar accident.

It was undoubtedly the lowest point in Schmidt’s ownership career, but the team soldiered on into 2012 with Pagenaud as its new driver. The single-car team finished fifth in the championship, and Pagenaud won IndyCar Rookie-of-the-Year honors with four podium finishes.

Peterson has bought into the team this year, which now fields a second full-time car for rookie Tristan Vautier and also added a last minute third at the Indianapolis 500 for Katherine Legge.

Schmidt reflected on the recent grind of events leading to this victory on Sunday, and how the team has grown.

“We’ve grown substantially over the last couple years to I think 38 employees, partners there,” Schmidt said. “They’ve all meshed really well. I think we have a fantastic chemistry amongst all the guys. We’re all pushing the same direction. Nobody had their heads down. They knew what they had to do and they got it done.”

Winner Josef Newgarden earns $3.666 million from a record Indy 500 purse of $17 million

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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