Josef Newgarden is the one credited with the victory at the 108th Indianapolis 500, but I left the track late Sunday night as rain, thunder, and lightning lit up the skies, with the firm belief that IndyCar, Penske Entertainment and 300,000-plus devout fans who braved an exceptionally long day were the biggest winners of the event. I feared the long weather delay would kill the TV ratings for the 500 as well, but it was actually up eight percent for viewers over 2023 and had the race’s largest streaming audience to date, so even that was a huge win for the series and NBC. The hyper aggression from lap 1 onwards, and those insane restarts afterwards made for one of the most exciting start-to-finish 500s I can remember.
My only concern is for any newcomers who attended the race or watched it from home for the first time...
this was about as good as it gets, so please don’t be disappointed if the 2025 edition isn’t as crazy as what just happened on Sunday. Bravo to everyone — including those daredevils in the cars — who put on an Indy 500 for the ages. ON TO THE NEXT ONE It’s a short week with practice kicking off on Friday at Detroit, so let’s fire through some (but by no means all) of the topics of interest from Indianapolis.
I DID IT MY WAY Having seen the recent examples of huge star drivers from other series who parachute into Indy and are pulled in 10 different directions at all times, it was delightful to see how Kyle Larson dealt with the non-stop demands on.
