INDIANAPOLIS — The Circle City is once again the center of the racing world but it’s even more than IndyCar right now.
The Performance Racing Industry Show brings together nearly 70,000 people in the racing industry from across the country.
”The show is really where we bring all the manufacturers of all the racing product across all various forms of racing,” said PRI President Michael Good.
The PRI Show is the largest tradeshow by footprint in the entire state.
”We take up all of the convention center, all of Lucas Oil Stadium and all of the connector in between,” Good said. “I’ve been told that’s between 1.1 and 1.2 million square feet.”
There are more than 1,000 exhibits this year with some of the greatest and newest technologies in all of racing. Good said racing is constantly evolving, so they’re working to find how these new technologies fit in.
”Whether you’re talking about AI or EV,” he said. “Not to use all the acronyms, but I think people know those two.”
The PRI Show also welcomes racers of all kinds.
“A guy or gal who has a $20,000 car in their barn they race six times a year, all the way to the higher end of NASCAR and f1 and IndyCar and everything in between,” Good said.
Shane Marchand is a PRI attendee from Louisiana.
”We’re part of a little race team in New Orleans,” Marchand said.
He’s been in Indy since Wednesday taking in everything about PRI.
“There was a lot of interesting stuff that you see and kind of wonder how somebody thought up that,” Marchand said.
The conference is specially scheduled to hit in the quietest part of the year for the racing industry connecting people that might never meet otherwise.
”We’ve made some connections already that makes the whole trip worth it,” Marchand said.
For the non-racing fans out there, you might still see some of this cutting-edge technology one day.
”There’s a lot of technology that is forming in this building by these manufacturers that will actually end up in consumer cars,” Good said. “For people that might not even care about racing, they are being impacted by it.”
The PRI Show will run through Saturday in downtown Indianapolis.
