100th Running Of The Indy 500 Is Sold Out

Honda heads the field. James Hinchcliffe turned the fastest laps in both first-round and final qualifying last weekend to take the pole in his Schmidt Peterson Motorsports Honda. Ryan Hunter-Reay, the 2014 Indy 500 champion with Honda and Andretti Autosport, will start on the outside of the front row, in third. (Photo credit: Honda Performance Development.)

It’s been more than 20 years since the Indy 500 was sold out, and that’s just the reserved seats. With the infield also being reported as a sell out or at near capacity, ABC has lifted the blackout for the race in Indiana for the first time since it began covering the race live in 1965. For many, the 100th running will be as much about the past as the present. Generations of race fans have been raised either going to the race or watching it live. It’ll be about nostalgia, but also about the present iteration of IndyCars.

Who should you watch out for?

Honda has been more competitive than it has been since the introduction of the DW12 (the current Dallara IndyCar that was partially developed by the late Dan Wheldon) with two out of three spots on the front row. There’s also the amazing comeback of James Hinchcliffe, who captured the pole with the new qualifying format, and who nearly lost his life in a practice crash at the Speedway a year ago. Honda’s Indy update has proven worthy with eight of the top 12 positions going to the company. But don’t count Chevy out. Joesef Newgarden almost had the pole if it weren’t for Hinchcliffe’s last minute heroics when he took the pole away as the last driver to qualify.

Penske and Ganassi struggled for speed but will they have the best race setups? Team Penske’s Will Power was in contention at least for the pole but ended up down in sixth, and his teammates Simon Pagenaud and Helio Castroneves only made it to eighth and ninth respectively. However, you can never count Penske out. Juan Pablo Montoya, last year’s winner, qualified a lowly 17th, but that’s about where he started from last year and look how that turned out.

Ganassi was way off. Something with their engineering strategy held the Ganassi team back from what everyone thinks they are capable of, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be competitive. The race is a completely different animal than qualifying, so look for the Ganassi squad, especially Scott Dixon and Tony Kanaan, to be in the thick of it when it matters.

IndyCar now has the best opportunity it has had in decades to show casual race fans that it is even more exciting than it was in its prime in the late 80s and early 90s. The racing is better, and there are certainly more teams capable of winning any given race, including the 500.