Fernando Alonso crashes on second day of Indianapolis 500 practice

By May 15, 2019, 12:55 PM EDT
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A tough start to Fernando Alonso’s second attempt at the Indianapolis 500 took a turn for the worse early Wednesday afternoon.

The McLaren Racing driver hit the outside wall in Turn 3 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and then spun through the infield grass into a heavy rear-end impact with the inside wall. The No. 66 Dallara-Chevrolet slowly skidded back up the track and made light left-front contact with the SAFER barrier (video of the crash is available here or by watching above).

Alonso walked away from the crash and talked with Dillon Welch on the NBC Sports Gold broadcast after being treated and released from the track’s care center.

“Pure understeer on the car, I lifted the throttle, and it was not enough,” Alonso told Welch. “I lost it completely. The wall came too close and too quickly.

“Unfortunately, it happened today. We will lose a little bit of running time again. I’m sorry for the team, but we’ll learn and hopefully come back this time tomorrow.”

THE 103RD INDIANAPOLIS 500: Click here for how to watch, full daily schedules

Gil de Ferran, the sporting director for McLaren, told Welch in a separate interview that it was too early to decide whether the team would go to a backup car or fix its primary.

“We’ll just huddle around the car and assess the situation in the coming hours,” de Ferran said. “It looked like we’ve been suffering from understeer throughout the morning, and it understeered into the wall, and that was it.”

The two-time Formula One champion already had suffered through a difficult opening day Tuesday when his car was plagued by electrical problems and ranked 32nd on the speed chart.

Alonso told reporters that his car handled “much better” Wednesday before the crash.

“Definitely we were moving in the right direction,” he said. “Small steps that we learned today that hopefully we can bring for next time. … These things happen in motorsport. Better today than on (May 26 race day). Let’s see what we can do tomorrow.”

Alonso, who was part of the team that won the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona in January, finished 24th as a rookie in the 2017 Indy 500, leading 27 laps before suffering an engine failure.

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

By May 29, 2023, 6:01 PM EDT
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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