Nearly a quarter of this year’s field consists of previous winners

By Gary S. Vasilash

On May 30 the 105^th running of the Indianapolis 500 is scheduled to be held.

While things can change between now and then, here’s something of at least moderate interest:

In the field of 35 cars (18 will have Chevy engines, 17 Hondas; all are Dallara chassis (a.k.a., cars) running on Firestone tires), there will be nine people who have won “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”*

They are:

• Helio Castroneves (2001, 2002, 2009)
• Juan Pablo Montoya (2000, 2015)
• Takuma Sato (2017, 2020)
• Scott Dixon (2008)
• Tony Kanaan (2013)
• Ryan Hunter-Reay (2014)
• Alexander Rossi (2016)
• Will Power (2018)
• Simon Pagenaud (2019)

If Castroneves manages to win, he will be the fourth driver to have won the race four times, with the current three being A.J. Foyt, Al Unser Sr., and Rick Mears.

*The phrase “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” was written by Alice Greene, a copywriter working for WIBC radio. Some sources have it in 1954 and others in 1955.