Adam Driver chosen as honourary starter for 107th Indianapolis 500

Two-time Academy Award nominee Adam Driver, who will soon be starring as Enzo Ferrari in a biopic of the Italian automobile magnate, will serve as the honorary starter for the 107th running of the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday.

Driver perhaps most famously played Kylo Ren in the three most recent Star Wars films, and he was nominated for Academy Awards for his work in Blackkklansman and Marriage Story. Driver also has received four Primetime Emmy nominations for the comedy-drama Girls and his guest appearance on Saturday Night Live in 2020.

“Adam is going to experience one of the most exhilarating, powerful and exciting moments in all of sports as he stands atop the flag stand and waves the green flag to officially start the world’s greatest race,” Indianapolis Motor Speedway President J. Douglas Boles said in making the announcement on Tuesday.

Driver grew up in Mishawaka in northern Indiana before serving in the armed forces with the Marines. He returned from duty and enrolled at the University of Indianapolis before auditioning for Julliard, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree

His other film credits include House of Gucci by Ridley Scott, Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky and Silence by Martin Scorsese. He also appeared on and off Broadway in Look Back in Anger and the revival of Lanford Wilson’s Burn This.

Given its traditional Memorial Day weekend placement, the Indy 500 is steeped in military pageantry. There are enlistment ceremonies, helicopters and other equipment on display, and the playing of Taps just before the call to start the engines.

Driver enlisted in the Marines shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and served in the 1st Marines as a mortarman for nearly three years. After an injury while mountain biking, he was medically discharged as a lance corporal and went on to cofound Arts in the Armed Forces, a nonprofit that stages theatre and musical performance for members of the military.