SPEEDWAY, Ind. — A national audience of football fans got a dose of the Indianapolis 500 this weekend.
On FOX NFL Sundays, host and Pro Football Hall of Famer Michael Strahan announced he would be the honorary pace car driver for the 109th Indianapolis 500 this May.
Along with the announcement was a sneak peek at the livery for Will Power’s IndyCar and a look at a Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 Coup, the pace car for the Indy 500.
For the first time ever, the Indianapolis 500 and the entire NTT IndyCar series will be broadcast on FOX. IMS President Doug Boles was in the FOX studio in Los Angeles for Strahan’s announcement. Boles said exposure like that helps grow the sport.
”To be able to do it with that platform of the 15 million-plus people that are watching that show, and they actually talked about it in the halftime of the afternoon game, so there’s another 20 million people or so, that see the IndyCar brand, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway brand,” Boles said. “There’s an awful lot of value in that.”
Strahan mused on the show about the speed of the Corvette ZR1 and how “it’s going to be hard to catch me.”
Boles said this is the second time they’ve tried to get Strahan behind the wheel of the pace car but they couldn’t make schedules work before now. Even this year, there were some initial questions about whether Strahan could even fit in the car.
Boles said they took a car out to Los Angeles last weekend for Strahan to test out.
“With the helmet on he’s going to be right, basically, at the top of the car,” Boles said. “It wasn’t built for tall football players like that, especially, with a helmet on, but he fit in just perfectly. We got the seat back and as low as it can go.”
Monday marks six months till Strahan will lead the 33 drivers to begin the 109th Indianapolis 500. Boles said it feels even closer than that.
”Once you’re in January, you might as well be into May because it goes that quickly,” Boles said.
The 108th Running of the Indianapolis 500 finished near sunset on May 27th after race fans endured a four-hour rain delay.
Boles said IMS was closing in on a sellout until the forecast came out.
”Day over day, as we were heading into May, we were selling more tickets than the year before and I felt like we were going to sell out reserve tickets probably that Monday or Tuesday of race week,” Boles said. “And then the 10-day weather forecast came out that basically said 100% chance of rain race weekend and you saw our ticket purchases decline.”
A reserve ticket sell-out typically means a lifting of the local TV blackout. Even without the sellout, the decision was made to lift the blackout after the delayed race began.
There has not been a reserve ticket sell-out at IMS since the 100th running of the historic race in 2016. Boles said they have kept momentum going since then and have been able to increase attendance each year since the pandemic.
As of right now, Boles said ticket sales are outpacing this same time last year. The hope is for a reserve seat sellout in 2025 and a lift of the local blackout.
“That’s one of those things I desperately want to do is sell this place out in a time that’s not the 100th running in the Indy 500,” Boles said.
