MOORESVILLE, N.C. — Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Roger Penske remains hopeful that 250,000 fans can attend the 105th Indianapolis 500 on May 30.
But the winningest team owner in Indy 500 history with 18 victories who now owns IndyCar, IMS and the Indianapolis 500 isn’t ready to bank on it.
“We’re not making any predictions at all because anything I would say today could be completely wrong,” Penske said earlier this week. “Our goal is to have 250,000. That’s what we want to have.
“It’s outside. We’ve got the biggest stadium in the world here and it’s a matter of where we’re going to be with the CDC (Center for Disease Control) and the Governor (Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb) and the Mayor (Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett), so I don’t have any number that I’d want to hang my hat on,” he continued. “It just shows you the interest in the race and we’ve got a lot of people that are waiting. We have our general admission and what else we normally do on that weekend, but I think the good news is we’re going to have the race and it will be limited or be open based on what the current numbers are.”
According to Penske, the COVID positivity rate is about 3.1 percent in Indiana’s Marion County. He believes that is a good number.
“It’s way down (the virus) and I think with that it will, hopefully, be a big number (for attendance at the Indy 500),” Penske said. “That’s what our hope is, but what we’ve done in the meantime, we’ve been doing vaccinations here (at IMS).
“We did 16,000 in three days (at IMS) and we’re getting ready to do a mass vaccination in April. We haven’t worked out the details yet with the state, but we think there’s an opportunity to make a big impact here, where we could give back to the community. With the size of our facility and what we were able to accomplish just in three days, we think we can really help this whole area here — the city of Indianapolis and the surrounding counties.”
A crowd of 250,000 fans for the annual Memorial Day weekend classic tops Penske’s wish list. This year, the race will return to its traditional date after moving to Aug. 23 last year because of the pandemic.
That race was held without spectators.
“The good news is we’re going to have a race on Memorial Day this year, which is exactly what we want, not have to wait until August,” Penske said.
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