Joey Logano rackin' up the miles this weekend - MotorSportsTalk

With dates in the Nationwide Series at Iowa Speedway and the Sprint Cup Series at Pocono Raceway this weekend, Joey Logano could likely be one exhausted driver by the time it’s all over.

As detailed by USA Today’s Nate Ryan, Logano has a packed docket. With Cup practice and qualifying rained out at Pocono today, Logano shuttled off to the 7/8-mile Iowa bullring for two practice sessions this afternoon for the stand-alone DuPont Pioneer 250 (Sat., 8 pm ET). Weather permitting, Saturday will see him do two Cup practice sessions in the morning at Pocono and then head back to Iowa for qualifying (5:05 pm ET) and the “250.” After that’s done, he’ll then fly back to Pennsylvania for Sunday’s Cup race, the Party in the Poconos 400.

If you’re thinking that this is not an ideal situation, “Sliced Bread” has already beaten you to it.

“Does going to Iowa make perfect sense to run? No, it doesn’t,” Logano told Ryan. “I’m not going to lie about that, but it was either [teammate] Brad [Keselowski] or me to drive this thing. We’re going run into the same situation in the second Iowa race [in August], so I told them I would do the first one and then we’ll go from there.”

Logano does indeed have momentum on the NNS side after winning last weekend at Dover International Speedway, but it’d be really impressive if he can do it again in Iowa with the hectic schedule he’s got right now. The Penske Racing driver is the sole Cup pilot that will face the NNS regulars in the cornfields.

Still, one of those NNS regulars, Justin Allgaier, isn’t counting on an easier day at the office just because most of those pesky Cup drivers are busy at “The Tricky Triangle.”

“I think we’ve seen it in all the stand-alone [races] – it’s like the less Cup guys you have, the more challenging the [Nationwide] races are,” Allgaier told the Associated Press in Iowa. “Because the Nationwide regulars, everybody steps up their game and pushes that much harder.”

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

Joey Logano rackin’ up the miles this weekend

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