Miles mulls potential Indianapolis 500 qualifying changes - MotorSportsTalk

Hulman & Co. CEO Mark Miles filled out his executive leadership team on Thursday, and already the new hires C.J. O’Donnell and Jay Frye spoke optimistically about securing new sponsorship for IndyCar 2014.

Now, as part of Miles’ restructuring and attempts to rebuild the entire month of May, he has a potential idea for another set of changes to qualifying weekend for the Indianapolis 500.

The hat tip first goes to OpenWheelWorld.net contributor Steve Wittich for finding this on a Friday night, but Miles appeared on Inside INdiana Business with Gerry Dick to discuss the mooted adjustments.

The two-day qualifying weekend as it currently stands, first instituted in 2010, has Pole Day on the Saturday and Bump Day the Sunday before the 500. On Pole Day, spots 1-24 are filled with the first three rows, positions 1-9, determined by a Firestone Fast Nine shootout in the afternoon. The polesitter is determined at the end of Saturday.

Bump Day fills spots 25-33, but for the past two years since the introduction of the new Dallara DW12 chassis and the new 2.2L V6 turbocharged engine formula, there has not been a single bump attempt. Engine manufacturers Honda and Chevrolet already add extra engines to their allotment for the ‘500; in 2012, some potential late entries were thwarted by a lack of engine availability while only one car, Michel Jourdain Jr.’s third Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda, missed this year’s race. And he never even got to make an attempt due to that car’s ill handling nature.

The net effect of that is that broadcasters have had to fill hours of airtime despite scarce on-track activity and limited drama. And Miles doesn’t want a wasted day of on-track action, so he’s outlined this potential plan on the show:

Saturday would see all spots 1-33 filled, but all qualifying speeds provisional and the order not finalized.
Sunday would see the order 1-33 determined, with spots 10-33 decided by a second day’s run and spots 1-9 again run in the final session to build the excitement for the pole position.

“We’re playing around with ways to make (qualifying weekend) more intriguing,” Miles said on the show. “Pole Day was Saturday and Bump Day was Sunday. We thought at this point that’s a little anticlimactic.

“In our mind, (this would) culminate at the end of Sunday, and I think that makes the two days even more competitive.”

Recent Indianapolis 500 qualifying procedures have included 11/11/11, with three days of 11 spots being filled before a Bump Day on the fourth day, from 2005 to 2009; a condensed three-day run was enforced from 2001 to 2004; it was Pole Day and Bump Day for two days from 1998 through 2000; and was four days prior to that.

No official confirmation has come from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway or INDYCAR as to whether this idea will be implemented.

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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