NASCAR Hall of Fame team owner Bud Moore, 88, recovering from mild heart attack - MotorSportsTalk

NASCAR Hall of Fame member Walter “Bud” Moore is recovering after suffering a mild heart attack over the weekend.

According to The Charlotte Observer, Moore, 88, is recovering in a hospital near his lifelong home in Spartanburg, S.C.

“He had a procedure done and is doing fine,” Winston Kelley, executive director of the NASCAR Hall of Fame, told the Observer. “He will be in the hospital a few days and is expected to be released later this week.”

Moore, who received several honors for his service in World War II, was inducted into the Hall of Fame in its second class in 2011.

He was inducted for his success as a NASCAR team owner and crew chief. Most of his cars were either Pontiac- or Ford-powered and carried the number 15.

Moore spent 37 years as a team owner. In 37 seasons, he and his drivers compiled 63 wins, 298 top-fives, 463 top-10s (nearly half of the 958 total races his teams entered), 43 poles and three NASCAR Grand National championships.

Buck Baker won the Grand National championship in 1957 with Moore as his crew chief.

Buck’s son, Buddy, also raced for Moore and won three straight races at Talladega in 1975 and 1976.

Switching to a team owner in 1961, Moore had almost instantaneous success, particularly with driver Joe Weatherly, who won eight races for Moore in 1961 and then came back to win the 1962 and 1963 Grand National championships.

Tiny Lund won the Grand American division championship racing for Moore in 1968.

Moore expanded his ownership reach past NASCAR and in 1970 owned the team that Parnelli Jones won the Sports Car Club of America Trans-Am championship.

Bobby Allison won the 1978 Daytona 500 with Moore as the team owner.

Other drivers that drove for Moore in his career included the late Fireball Roberts, the late Dale Earnhardt, Darrell Waltrip, Cale Yarborough, David Pearson, Ricky Rudd and Geoff and Brett Bodine.

Moore’s last full season as a team owner was in 1996 with Wally Dallenbach Jr., but he entered seven other races over the next five years before eventually retiring in 2000 and selling his entire operation.

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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