Different viewpoint
Indianapolis 500 presented in 360 virtual reality
Indianapolis Motor Speedway President Doug Boles was waiting in a drivethrough line Monday morning at a Starbucks when a stranger knocked on his car window. The man, who came from New Zealand to see the Indianapolis 500, wanted to thank Boles.
Immediately, Boles began selling the 101st Indy 500.
“I said, ‘Are you going to come back?’ ” Boles told USA TODAY Sports. “He said, ‘Well, we thought we were just coming once, but we think we want to come back.’ Now we’ve got to get them from just thinking about coming back to actually doing it.”
Moving forward to 2017 and the 101st Indy 500 was the theme a day after Alexander Rossi won a gripping 100th running of the race in front of a sellout crowd of about 350,000. Speedway and IndyCar officials got the numbers and story they wanted; now they’re eager to put a forward spin on them.
“When we started to position this race, we didn’t want it to be just a look in the rearview mirror, but a springboard to go forward,” Boles said. “The fact that we sold every reserved seat and got to the point where we felt like we needed to stop selling infield access, that says we built that springboard with a lot of new people who will come back. The job now is to retain that — to get as many as we can to stay.”
The IMS sales team has identified first-time customers at Sunday’s race, and Boles says IMS plans to market to them differently than it does the track’s lifelong customers.
A storybook ending — an American with little experience on oval tracks or Indy winning as his car ran out of fuel — can only help sell the race to newcomers.
“Of all the potential negative stories coming in here — Will they have 33 cars? Are the domed skids going to ruin the race? — we came out with positive story lines,” Rossi’s team co-owner, Bryan Herta, told USA TODAY Sports during Monday’s photo shoot on the start-finish line. “Like the massive sellout crowd, a new American hero, James Hinchcliffe coming back a year later and sticking his car on the pole, and a really exciting, unpredictable race. It can only be really, really positive for everybody — for Alex, for the team, for the series and for the speedway. This is a dream scenario.”
The foremost beneficiary was Rossi, a 24-year-old from Nevada City, Calif., who was largely unknown outside of Formula One circles. He had not driven on the 2.5-mile IMS oval before his May 16 rookie orientation program, and his first oval race was in April at 1-mile Phoenix International Raceway.
“There were huge question marks, and rightly so, over me and IndyCar and specifically oval racing, having absolutely zero background,” Rossi said Monday. “We all know it’s a different kind of animal, if you will, in terms of the motor sports world. This cemented the fact that: A) I don’t have an issue with it; B) I enjoy it; and C) I’ve fully committed to this program and being successful in IndyCar. This is what I’m looking toward for the future.”