11 totally true Indy 500 facts that sound completely fake

The 109th running of the Indianapolis 500 is set to kick off tomorrow — Sunday, 25 May — at 12:30 p.m. ET or 5:30 p.m. BST.

To get into the spirit, we’re sharing 11 of the most unbelievable facts from Indy 500 history that — believe it or not — happen to be completely true!

We still don’t know for sure who won the first Indy 500

Everyone knows Ray Harroun won the inaugural Indianapolis 500 behind the wheel of his Marmon Wasp back in 1911… but did he really?

The fact of the matter is, we have no idea who actually won that race!

Event founder Carl G. Fisher knew that the hardest part of hosting a 500-mile race was the fact that it was near impossible to tell where the cars were at any point in time. So, he installed a timing system called the Warner Horograph.

We don’t know much about the system today, because its failure in the 1911 Indy 500 meant it was scrapped. But we do know that it involved wire timing loops on the track itself, typewriters, dictaphones, bells, marbles, and a massive staff of people yelling out car numbers and running to change leaderboards around the track.

The system was failing well before a car went careening toward the wooden timing stand midway through the race — but at that point, all hell broke loose. Officials fled the stand for a handful of laps, then attempted to resume scoring without having paid attention to on-track action.

Driver Ralph Mulford believed he was in the lead of the race when the checkered flag flew, but he ran a few extra laps just to make sure. By the time he made it to Victory Circle, he found Ray Harroun there celebrating the win.

Officials holed up in a hotel room with reams of scoring data, trying to determine who had really won, before deeming it fruitless. Harroun maintained his crown, and Carl G. Fisher burned all the scoring data to prevent their mistake from being discovered.

On Sunday, 1 in every 1,000 people in America will be at the Indy 500

For the first time since 2016 (which was the event’s 100th running milestone), the 2025 Indianapolis 500 has achieved a sold-out grandstand crowd. Over 350,000 people are expected to turn up for the race — 250,000 in the grandstands and 100,000 in the infield general admission zones.

Those attendance figures makes the Indy 500 the world’s largest single-day sporting event. It also means that one in every 1,000 people in the United States will be at the event — or, one out of every 24,000 people in the world!

Formula 1 often shares its attendance figures for the full three-day weekend, but for contrast, the largest single-day attendance at any F1 race was the 2000 United States Grand Prix at none other than the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. That day, 250,000 keen race fans turned up.

Qualifying order for the Indy 500 used to be determined by your entry

Today, qualifying for the Indy 500 is a complex affair that lasts for two days and involves multiple sessions to determine pole and the final row of the grid. Drivers have the option to try to set fast laps multiple times throughout those two days, which is done by taking the average speed of a car over four laps.

This is a tradition that has lasted for years — but not since the start of the 500!

In fact, there was no qualifying to speak of. The starting order was determined by the time in which the track received your entry. If you were the first person to enter the race, you’d be lined up first on the grid, no matter how fast you could go.

The four-lap qualifying format was introduced in 1920 in order to trim down the ever-growing fields and to prove that the cars capable of making the race were also capable of running several quick laps back-to-back.

Qualifying used to take place over two weekends, with two days per weekend used to qualify for the race. That was shrunk to one weekend per year.

For decades, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway only hosted one race: The Indy 500

In 1909, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s doors opened to a packed summer of racing that included a hot air balloon race, an air show, a motorcycle racing weekend, a car racing weekend, and several record attempts.

That mindset continued into 1910 — but there was a problem. Track founder Carl G. Fisher wasn’t drawing the massive crowds he’d been hoping to attract because there was simply too much racing going on, and no one knew what race was important.

So, he and track co-founder James Allison decided they’d trim the fat off their racing schedule, with IMS hosting exactly one event per year: A 500-mile extravaganza that was long enough to feel important, but short enough for early race fans to watch in a day.

Up until 1994, the Indy 500 was the only event. The track opened its doors on May 1st to allow keen participants to start practicing, and the event would take place at the end of the month. Hence why the name “the Month of May” is used when describing on-track activity at IMS ahead of the 500.

In 1994, NASCAR’s Brickyard 400 was added to the schedule, meaning there were two racing weekends scheduled for the first time since 1910.

Soon after, an infield road course was built to encourage Formula 1 to race at the venue. Now, IndyCar competes on that infield course, while the IMS racing season consists of IndyCar, NASCAR vintage racing, IMSA, and GT racing.

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The most cars entered in one Indy 500? 117!

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway determined in 1912 that the starting grid for the Indy 500 should be limited to 33 cars; that seemingly arbitrary number was determined by the American Automobile Association. The AAA decided that each car should have 400 feet of race track all to itself; divide the 2.5-mile track into 400-foot parcels, and you’ll end up with 33.

But back in the day, the race was huge. Full-time American open-wheel competitors wanted a slot on the grid, but so too did a whole heap of one-offs and private entrants.

And in 1984, the entry list swelled to a whopping 117 cars! Only 84 of those machines and drivers turned up in the garage to qualify, and only 33 could start the race — but you can see now why qualifying used to stretch over two weekends!

Every Indy 500 has taken place in May… except for one

While many major races trial different dates in different months before settling on a tradition, the Indianapolis 500 has retained a May date every single year since 1911 — aside from one.

In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic brought motorsport to a screeching halt, IndyCar was left wondering how to tweak its schedule in such a way to maintain momentum. Restrictions prevented any racing to take place in May, but organizers were able to reschedule the event — with no fans present — for August.

From 1911 to 1973, the Indy 500 was hosted on Memorial Day proper, May 30, no matter what day of the week it fell on — though several runnings were postponed to the 31st for weather.

And from 1974 on, the Indy 500 has been scheduled for the Sunday before Memorial Day, which was mandated to be celebrated on a Monday. But May 31st was the latest a 500 had ever been held — until 2020.

Passengers were mandatory at the Indy 500 for years

We tend to take it for granted that cars can be operated by a single person in the modern era, but for a long time, that wasn’t the case — and in the Indy 500, riding mechanics were used from 1912 to 1916, 1919 to 1922, and again from 1930 to 1937.

Riding mechanics — also called “mechanicians” — served a variety of purposes. First and foremost, they functioned as a kind of rearview mirror, keeping the driver abreast of any cars approaching from the rear.

They were also in charge of making on-the-fly repairs (which meant those mechanicians sometimes hung out of the car to tweak it while it was in motion), maintaining fuel and oil pressure (which were done manually), and so much more.

By 1923, mechanicians had been phased out, but the Speedway required them from 1930 to 1937.

The riding mechanic role was dangerous and unforgiving. Few newspapers or historians bothered to list the mechanicians alongside their drivers, and many of their names have been lost.

It took four months and an appeals case to decide the 1981 Indy 500 winner

Bobby Unser took the checkered flag at the 1981 Indianapolis 500, with Mario Andretti hot on his heels. Unser celebrated his victory and the next morning was issued a one-position penalty that moved Andretti into the win slot.

That penalty centered on the allegation that Unser had passed cars illegally under the yellow flag while exiting the pit area in order to blend back into the pack. Andretti himself had done something similar, but was not penalized.

No stewards or timing officials noted the passing, nor did the broadcasters mention it on the live broadcast. Nevertheless, Andretti was determined the winner — and Penske Racing appealed.

The case went before the USAC appeals board, with both sides arguing their point — only to discover that their own rulebook featured no clear instructions on how drivers should handle blending into traffic. Finally, on October 8, Unser was deemed the winner of the race, though he was fined for passing under yellow.

Mario Andretti, however, wears the 1981 Indy 500 winner ring to this day.

No Smiths have ever raced at the Indy 500

The most common surname in both the United States and the United Kingdom is “Smith” — and here in the States, no other surname compares.

The 2010 US Census reported that there were 2,442,977 people in the country with the surname Smith. The next closest surname, Johnson, fell about 500,000 people shy of that number.

Yet no driver with the surname ‘Smith’ has ever competed in the Indianapolis 500!

Hundreds of drivers have competed at the 500 since its founding in 1911. Some Smiths have tried to qualify for the race, and they’ve failed. The closest we’ve ever gotten is Sam Schmidt, an American whose surname is the Germanic spelling of Smith.

Making this stat even stranger, almost every other one of America’s 10 most popular surnames has been represented in the race:

• Johnson: Art, Eddie, Herm, Jimmie, Luther
• Williams: Carl, Doc
• Brown: W. W., Walt
• Jones: Ben, Bubby, Davy, Ed, John, Melville, P. J., Parnelli, Will
• Miller: Al, Al, Chet, Eddie, Eddie, Jack
• Davis: Don, Floyd

The ither major surnames not represented at Indy are of Spanish origin: Garcia, Rodriguez, and Martinez.

Women were banned from the garage until 1971

Women were banned from the garage, pits, and press box at the Indianapolis 500 until a reporter named Mari McCloskey sued the circuit for access.

An assistant editor of Women’s World, McCloskey was irate that track personnel had banned her from areas that her fellow male reporters were able to access — and she filed a lawsuit citing the 1964 civil rights act as part of her case.

The case was ultimately thrown out when the Indianapolis Motor Speedway assured McCloskey that she’d be adequately credentialed and allowed into previously restricted areas of the track.

That doesn’t mean women were welcomed. Another female reporter Bette Cadou rushed to the track after the ruling, only to hear a mechanic threaten, “I’m gonna run over the first d*mn one I see!”

The New York Times wrote of the groundbreaking case, “There was also speculation that this breaking clown of tradition could lead to women crew members next year, women owners and — who knows — even women drivers. Women drivers at Indianapolis? Male chauvinists will have to supply their own punchlines.”

In fact, women had already owned cars that competed in the Indy 500. Before World War II, Lucy O’Reilly Schell fielded a car for Grand Prix star René Dreyfus. Still, rather than be allowed in the pits or garage, track officials constructed a special wooden stand for her to spectate the race.

In 1976, Janet Guthrie attempted to qualify for the Indy 500 and in 1977 became the first woman driver to race in the iconic event. Even she was greeted with boos, jeers, and cries of “no t*ts in the pits!” from a rambunctious crowd.

Takuma Sato has won every Indy 500 Fernando Alonso has competed in

Two-time Formula 1 champion Fernando Alonso has only competed in two Indy 500s (though he did try to compete in a third) — in 2017 and 2020.

In 2017, Alonso skipped the Monaco Grand Prix to try his hand at the 500-mile classic; in 2020, he’d “retired” from F1 and was therefore able to race without any conflicts.

And in both of those races, Takuma Sato won the race.

Sato is a former F1 driver himself, having made 90 starts over the course of seven years with teams like Jordan, BAR, and Super Aguri. His final F1 race was in 2008, and he almost immediately moved over to IndyCar.

Sato has taken six wins in IndyCar, with two of them coming at the 500. And the unique factor of those 500s was the presence of Fernando Alonso!

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