Last weekend at Road America, a friend posted that he was attending his 100th Indycar race. I congratulate him on reaching an amazing milestone. I have never kept track of how many races i have attended. i am sure it is more than 100. Guessing on the conservative side, I have probably attended around 120 races, 56 of which are Indianapolis 500s. Note- total does NOT include Ray Harroun’s win.

I began to wonder how many different drivers have I seen win races. After some research to jog my fading memory, I came up with a total of 57 different drivers. The number seems low, but I have seen multiple Indyc 500 wins by nine different drivers, which lowers the number of winners I’ have seen at IMS to 47.

As I looked up other races I have attended, I found that most were won by Indianapolis 500 winners. That makes sense. If a driver has won the 500, it is usually one of many victories in his career. I did find drivers who never won the 500 that got to the checkered flag first in races I witnessed first hand.

I do know that my first Indycar race was the 1959 Hoosier Hundred, won by Rodger Ward. I went to six or seven Hoosier Hundreds. A. J. Foyt won most of them. Mario Andretti and parnelli jones each won one. The low number of individual winners makes more sense with the results of these races. The Hoosier Hundred is the race no longer on the schedul;e that I miss the most.

The Ten

Drivers who never won the 500 that I saw win races, some of them more than once, are:

Ryan Briscoe

Carlos Munoz

Sebastien Bourdais

James Hinchcliffe

Alex Palou

Pato O’Ward

Felix Rosenqvist

Rinus VeeKay

Charlie Kimball

Graham Rahal

Who have I seen win the most? That is a diffidcult thing to remember, but I would say it is between Scott Dixon and Will Power. I didn’t start attending races outside the 500 until 2008.

What I learned by checking out the winners I’ve seen is that drivers who get a 500 win are the best at their craft, regardless of the era. My statistics confirm that winning an Indycar race is hard.

If you’ve been to at least 25 races, look back on how many different drivers have won those events. Like me, I think you’ll find that number surprisingly small.