INDIANAPOLIS — Indianapolis Motor Speedway and NTT IndyCar Series owner Roger Penske is determined to hold the Indianapolis 500 this year with fans in the grandstands.
He is so determined, in fact, that if fans won’t be allowed in the grandstands for the 104th running of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing on Aug. 23, Penske says the race will not happen.
“Trust me, we are going to run it (Indianapolis 500) with fans,” Penske told RACER.com on Saturday prior to the NTT IndyCar Series season opener at Texas Motor Speedway. “We’re on for fans in August and planning on it and we feel good. It’s still almost three months from now and I think we’ll be OK. But we will run it only with fans.”
Penske’s statement comes after Indianapolis Motor Speedway announced last week that the NTT IndyCar Series/NASCAR twinbill at the historic track on July 4 weekend will be run without fans due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
NASCAR has raced without fans since returning to competition in mid-May and has not announced any plans to race with fans in the grandstands anytime soon. Saturday’s NTT IndyCar Series opener at Texas Motor Speedway was held without fans in attendance.
“Look, we had a plan to go forward with fans on Brickyard weekend but it just didn’t make sense,” Penske explained. “We didn’t want to do anything to impair the Indy 500 and we would have had to be the exception but we decided we couldn’t go early.
“If we had fans and had any problems, that would absolutely close the door for us on Indianapolis.”
The Indianapolis 500 is the biggest single-day sporting event in the world. The speedway has seating for 250,000 fans, with room in the infield available for additional spectators.