Dozens of people who have been to over 75 Indianapolis 500s.
Oh my god.
Hoosiers are great people with great hearts that want to get good work done.
Very subtle changes that's the difference between winning and losing.
Who's the coolest celebrity that's been to the Indy 500?
From South Bend to Evansville and everywhere in between, this is Get IN.
The show focused on the Hoosier State and the incredible stories happening here today.
I'm Nate Spangle, founder of Get Indiana, and I will be your host for today's conversation.
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Now let's get into the episode.
What's going on y'all?
I think you're gonna love this episode with Allison Melangton and Doug Boles.
We're gonna cover what it takes to host a massive sporting event.
Now, Allison has experience with hosting the Super Bowl back in 2012 and Doug obviously with the Indy 500 every year.
We get an inside look at just how much work goes into bringing the Indy 500 to life.
And we wrap up the episode talking about what's going on on the Speedway outside of the month of May.
Along the way, you're going to hear both guests favorite race day traditions, their favorite drivers.
And if you listen until the end, Doug makes a promise that we will cash in on next May.
Let's get into it.
That's fantastic.
No, we're, we're excited to be here.
It's always fun when we get a chance to talk about the Indianapolis 500, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but more importantly, The impact on the community.
We always, internally at the Speedway, we think of two things when we're putting on events.
How's it impacting our customers, but more importantly, how's it impact our community?
Are we able to do something that makes our community better?
Mark Miles, who's our boss, uh, loves our community.
And Roger Penske, who lives in, uh, Michigan, he lent his voice to the Economic Development Corporation for their big commercial to encourage people to come to Indiana.
So we work for an organization that we put on big events, but really what we're trying to do, just like you, we're trying to tell people the story of Indiana.
Heck yeah.
And I know that you currently every year you host the biggest sporting event in the world.
And I don't think people understand like it's, it's right over here on the west side of Indianapolis is the biggest sporting event.
But before we get into all the things that it takes to host Indy 500, Allison, how, how you kind of got into racing and all fun stuff kind of started with football, correct?
Yeah.
And so talk to us about your experience helping, uh, organize and, and execute the, the Super Bowl that we hosted here in Indianapolis.
And how did that process go?
Yeah, my entire career, uh, has been.
Um, yeah. trying to lift Indy up, the state of Indiana, Indianapolis through sporting events.
I always feel like sports is the greatest excuse to bring the community together, uh, to get volunteers to meet each other, to work together for the greater good.
And so the sporting event itself, what happens on the field of play isn't always my focus, but everything around it.
And so the Super Bowl was, it was a new level for Indiana because we, the entire state of this we had hundreds of businesses involved and you know I were to eight Super Bowls leading into ours and no other community came together like ours did for that event.
What you worked in eight different Super Bowls.
Holy smokes.
Yeah.
That With the, with the different host committees and as an observer with the NFL, because we were bidding.
We hosted the Super Bowl in 2012, right?
So how many years before 2012 were you starting to work on this?
We, Oh my gosh, way back to the early two thousands, we started looking at the Super Bowl and trying to make sure we were laying out a path that we'd get there eventually.
Cause you have to have a lot of different infrastructure pieces.
We had to build the JW to be able to bid on the Super Bowl cause we needed one hotel with a thousand rooms.
We needed a different airport.
We, and so on and so on.
So way back in the early 2000s, we started looking at it.
We bid on it in 2007 for the first time for 11 and we lost that bid.
Um, then we bid in eight and we got it for 12.
So it was a decade long process.
I just think that's crazy.
I mean, we had a Leonard in here a few weeks ago and he was talking about, like, they already have events scheduled for 2034.
Like thinking a decade forward is just wild.
Like four years early for the, for the super bowl.
What were some of the organizations that all had to work together?
I know that one big thing that people in Indiana talk about is like, Oh, we just come together and you know, people from Gainbridge are helping Lucas oil and all things like that.
Like I know there are some cool stories about the community coming together and really showing that Indianapolis and Indiana are, are just a little bit different than these other, these other.
Yeah, and that started early on in the bid.
We were trying to find a way to, to set ourselves apart from all the other cities that were bidding, and it was interesting because I was in a meeting with Jack Swarbrick, who just retired as the athletic director at Notre Dame, and Mark Miles, who was the chairman of the Super Bowl bid, and we said, how can we make it different?
NFL binders in and getting the NFL to look at the binders and the owners to open them up, what do we do different to, to, to show what we are and showcase who Indiana is?
The decision was to pick eighth graders to fly all over the country and meet with NFL owners, so think about that.
Eighth graders meeting with, uh, Jerry Jones.
Hello, Mr.
Jones.
Yeah, exactly.
Uh, and to trust them with our message and say that we're about the future development and those kids would be seniors in high school in 2012 and we wanted to keep those 33 kids involved and at first I was very nervous like Are we making the right decision or is this like a really bad decision because if it goes wrong, it's gonna really go wrong But frankly, it was one of the best decisions we ever made and And one of the best things I've ever been involved in because we did put up 12, uh, 33 eighth graders, uh, to go meet with the owners.
They met with everyone.
They gave them our pitch and why Indy would be different and how our community would come together.
Uh, and we wowed all the owners with it.
I love that.
That's like one of those things where you kind of take that risk and you're either genius or like.
What the Indianapolis rolled in these eighth graders like, yeah, like that's awesome that it worked out.
I mean, as well as it did.
And when you're talking about like these large sporting events, uh, like what's something that people might be over?
Like, obviously, you know, you're bringing people to 12, 000 volunteers.
Are there any other crazy, cool stats like that, that the people might not think off the top of their head, like.
Oh, that, that makes sense when it comes to hosting a Super Bowl.
Yeah, we did.
We did it very different than any other Super Bowl because we have a more urban environment than the previous Super Bowls.
If you think about Miami and Arizona and Tampa, they're very, very spread out.
Our stadium is right downtown.
Our key hotels are right downtown.
So we took a completely different approach, um, in, in making a nucleus, almost what Salt Lake did for the Olympics, uh, back in 2002.
We looked hard at their, at their planning, and pulled everybody downtown.
Back to your question on numbers, we had a million people go through the NFL experience at the convention center, and that, that, and the Super Bowl Village downtown.
That was a massive number of people to host downtown over a Seven and eight, eight day period.
It changed how the NFL looked at Super Bowls going forward.
And the best compliment that you can get as an event organizer is when then the rights holder requires something in the next bid, like a city does something amazing and the next time it's required for their bid.
And we had a Super Bowl village, then became a requirement in NFL bids as, as did a number of the things we did in the NFL experience.
That's super cool.
And were, were there other, you talked about infrastructure upgrades, right?
Mm-hmm.
So airport.
Uh, new hotel, all that fun stuff.
I've heard rumors.
I don't know if it's like actually true, like the bubble at UND or like maybe some other like football facilities had to be built.
Now they're owned by, I mean, a university.
And is there another one?
Like how, how did that, were there other infrastructure upgrades that had to be made?
They have this huge list of, of venues and I can't, we used a lot of our venues, but some of the individual event spaces that, you know, That opened around the stadium, we had to have, and so we've got those now on site.
We had the JW Marriott, we had a couple hotels, uh, on the north side that had to open.
So I don't remember cause it was 12 years back, but we had a list of things we had to accomplish.
And as a community, as a city and as a state to get done, to be considered.
And, uh, everybody worked hard to get there.
The airport was a big piece of it.
Yeah.
Well, when you're thinking through, uh, I mean, this monumental event now, now it's kind of like And maybe I take it for granted, right?
I've been in Indianapolis for five years now and it's like, Oh, we always get like these awesome, cool, like the entire NCAA tournament comes to Indianapolis.
But I mean, as of 2012, like it wasn't always that way.
Minus the biggest sporting event every year.
Were there other like landmark events or sporting events that Indianapolis had hosted before the Super Bowl?
Yeah.
We had a, we had a Super Bowl.
It's a number of years where we were definitely planting things.
The Big Ten football championship was one of those saying we've got to host a number of events that they have confidence in us.
I will tell you that the Indy 500 was a key cornerstone in us getting the Super Bowl because they knew, uh, the NFL knew on an annual basis, uh, that we hosted the world's biggest sporting event and the confidence they had in our law enforcement, in our public safety, in our hotels, being able to host all those folks successfully.
And so on.
That was a big piece of it.
And in each of our presentations in 11 and 12 we had, uh, Indy 500, uh, represent in there, you know, footage and other things.
So over the years, I think that we did a great job putting all the pieces together, um, surrounding the Indy 500 as the core.
I love that.
And I mean, talking about, you had a million people through the, uh, the, the Super Bowl experience, Super Bowl village, all that fun stuff that I think we kind of take for granted sometimes, like how many people come through the Indianapolis 500 and just the month of May and the Speedway and all that fun stuff.
So, I mean, in a number, any given year, what does, what do you guys use to gauge total attendance?
Maybe not attendance, but total visitor impact of the Indianapolis 500.
Economically, it's a little over a billion dollars a year to the state of Indiana, and that's new dollars to the state.
It's not anything that's redistributed inside our state, so it's a pretty big deal.
But, those million people that came through in 2012, over the course of those seven or eight days, is basically what we bring through the gates in, in 365 days a year.
So that was why that was such a big deal for us in this community, to really showcase how many people we could do in a short period of time.
And, and, uh, And if you think about, if you were to poll the owners and the people that came, it's still one of the best Super Bowls that's ever been presented in terms of the, the way it worked, the closeness of everybody in our community, the way this community accepts people, and that's, we get the benefit of that every year in the Indy 500.
So on race day for the Indy 500, the second largest city in the state of Indiana is literally inside the racetrack.
So that's one of the fun things for us.
So we, we, we spread our million people out over 365 days, but we put 350, 000 of them in, in one day.
You just knock out a third of it right there.
We just get it all done in one day.
And it's, it's, uh, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a great event.
And then Allison coming on board as we were leading into the 2016 race, which was our 100th running, which we knew was going to be a big anniversary.
If you look back at the way we did things in before 2016, we've made a lot of changes now that's made the event better, the pre race better, and we've treated it more like a Super Bowl and really planning and making sure that we are doing things in a completely different way.
And you've seen our net promoter scores, you know, what our fans think of our event have gone up over the years because we've just really changed our thinking for a long period of time.
It was, Hey, it's Indy 500 come back every year.
It is what you, it is what it is as part of what you do.
And that was fine, but now that we really treat it like a big event, and we treat pre race like a show in and of itself, those are the things that we've been able to change, because you bring somebody on like Allison, who isn't a racing person, she's an event person and cares about customer service and how do you present differently.
We've just continued to make it better because of that.
Yeah, when did the term, uh, the greatest spectacle in racing, when did that kind of come on board?
You know, that's back into the 70s.
It's been no way plus years at that, that that's been around at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
If you think about Carl Fisher, who founded The Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1909.
The first Indy 500 was in 1911.
He called it the international sweepstakes at the greatest race course in the world right away from the beginning.
So we've had that sort of moniker, um, really since the very, very beginning of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
And Carl Fisher is a Greensburg guy, right?
He's a Greensburg guy, and he's known in this community for the Indy 500, but Miami Beach doesn't exist, but for Carl Fisher, the Lincoln Highway, our transportation system in our country, frankly, probably doesn't exist the way it does except for Carl Fisher.
He was an amazing visionary, an amazing promoter, but he really cared about making experiences for people and that's why, you know, he did the Speedway for a while and then he did Miami Beach, but transportation was something he was always interested in.
And I talked to someone from, uh, the Indy Chamber.
Yep.
And I think in night, like an early stage, like right, the international sweepstakes is held in Indianapolis.
And then like Cincinnati started to like get involved in Greensburg's like halfway, you know, roughly between here and Cincinnati, he thought about moving it to Cincinnati.
And then something happened with the chamber, the city came together and like brought it back here, right?
It's exactly what it was.
He was thinking about moving it and wanted to make sure that the city stayed committed to it and the city did.
And that's why, that's why it's still here.
And look at, look where we are now and we can't pick it up and move it.
It's not like a football team or somebody, we can't say, Hey, we're going to go.
So I guess we could, but what makes us special is you're racing on the same racetrack.
You're sitting in the same grandstands or at least the same locations or areas that they've been sitting in since 1909, 116 years next year that this place has been around.
It's pretty crazy.
116 years.
Well, what running of the So it'd be the 109th running the Indy 500.
So we didn't run for a couple of years in world war one.
We didn't run for four years in world war two.
So that's why we're kind of six years apart.
The great thing about that is we got to celebrate, uh, A hundredth anniversary of the Speedway in 2009.
We got the hundredth anniversary of the Indy 500 in 2011.
And then the hundredth running in 2016.
So over those seven years, we got to have three centennial celebrations.
And, and that, that made it a lot of fun.
That's pretty fun.
And so you Allison, you joined the team in 2016.
Yes.
Okay.
2015.
2015.
And Doug, how long have you been with the Speedway?
Uh, since, uh, well, a couple of days.
It'll be 14 years in November, 2010.
Heck yeah.
I love that.
And so when you guys think about the shift over, let's say the last decade, right?
So since 2014, was that right around the time?
Uh, when was the 100th running?
2016.
2016.
So 2016, 100th running.
Like what are some of the shifts or changes that you've seen, uh, in the Indy 500?
Versus like the, obviously you don't want to lose the legacy.
You don't want to lose the, you know, your grandpa's, your grandpa's dad probably went there and had the same tickets, but you also want to innovate and be, be modern and like, uh, attract to a younger age group.
So what are you, what are the big shifts you've seen over the last decade?
The Speedway was created to test new technology and the new technology in 1909 was the automobile.
And that's why it was created.
So I think if Carl Fisher came back today, he'd still be thrilled because we're testing new technology.
Think about tech, think about what we do on our phones, the way we communicate with our customers.
That's changed a whole ton from 2010 when I started, and even from 2016.
The way we use that technology to communicate, to engage our customers, to give them a voice in something that they love so much is one of the things we've changed.
I, I noted that,Allison came in and said, Hey, pre race is great, but how can we make pre race a show in of itself so it flows well, it makes sense, you bring celebrities in, that's completely changed really from where it was pre 2016 and we continue to get better with that year after year after year.
And this year it really showcased that because the weather was so bad this year and we had to push everything, the timing changed and so our pre race obviously changed and to be able to have, have it planned out literally by the second over the course of the four hours or so that lead to the Indy 500.
We just were able to adjust that and plan it and still have that amazing pre race that's so special to folks and that's The planning on that has changed.
We've become busier at the racetrack in terms of our events since 2016 a whole lot of activities that go on and our idea behind that is Make sure people know that the speedway is here But more importantly how are we getting people to come to our community whether it's a handful of people?
Or it's hundreds of thousands of people like the Indy 500.
Oh my gosh.
And you talk about the rain delay this year, like, and people talking about maybe we have to come back on tomorrow.
Like what's going on through, like from the Speedway staff while you're deciding if we're going to run this thing, the weather it's down boring.
Like the people in the infield, like myself are just like hunkered down in their tents.
The question that Allison and I get a lot is what, what scares you the most about your job?
And I think people think we're going to say terrorism, active shooter, you know, some of the things you see in the news.
But honestly, it's weather because you can't really prepare for weather because it can pop up at any point in time.
And the more people you have in the venue, it was built in 1909.
So we don't have places to go hunker down, right?
So, and we don't know.
Some of our customers park over a mile away and walk, so it's not like we can say, Hey, just go back to your car and sit for a while because we don't know how long it's going to be.
So the biggest thing for us, and literally it was throughout the entire night, was thinking about when's this weather going to come and at what point in time are we going to have to ask fans to go somewhere.
Whether it's their car or under the grandstands, we just want them to go where they feel like they're going to be safe.
We'd had 163, 000 people who'd scanned through our gates when we said, Hey, guess what?
The weather's going to be here in 45 minutes.
We need you to leave the facility.
And that, that was a challenge for all, all of us to make sure the messaging's right.
Make sure we give people enough time to get out, make sure we take care of our staff.
Who makes that call?
Like where does it, where does the buck stop?
And someone says, Hey, we got it.
We got it.
So we have a group of people who actually meet in what basically a war room and they And we sit down and we go through all of it.
And it's a collective decision.
I guess at the end of the day, it's, it's, it's mine, but it's the whole team with input from our weather folks with input from our staff where we are.
And at one point in time we said, okay, this is where we, and we kind of have an idea going into it.
If something like this happens, here's roughly what, how much time we need.
And we ended up implementing that and, and, uh, Was there a thought to, like, were we close to saying, Hey, we gotta come back tomorrow?
So the last thing we want to do is force people to have to either miss the race because they had flights, or get other hotel rooms.
A lot of people stay and they've checked out of their hotel and they're gonna go home that night.
Or, or people were, even if they weren't, they're planning on going home because they have family functions.
So for us, we want to get it in.
The other challenge that people don't know is, If we've got half a day or three quarters of a day We've spent at the speedway and we're telling you to come back tomorrow our catering companies our food service Can we we supply enough food basically to get through race day?
There's no way we could restock on food and drinks and you know a lot of bathroom, you know toilet paper Just things that are really hard to get re staffed overnight 10, 400 people to put on the indianapolis 500 We figure you know 40 of those people may not be able to come back.
They work one day a year for us They work Indy 500 day And to get them to all come back the next day.
So for us, everything was about how do we get the race in on that Sunday?
And fortunately the weather turned out great and we were, we worked with law enforcement.
We said, Hey guys, how late are you okay with us going?
And we agreed that eight 15 was as late as we wanted to go before we told people to head out.
And it worked out.
I feel your pain on forecasting.
We were hosting a tailgate and like before the first lap goes, we're out of beverages.
We're out of food.
We're like, what?
All right.
Like I watched it.
Which I don't know if this is, I mean, I'll just tell you the truth.
I watched more laps of the race this year than I have all of the previous six years.
Cause we ran out of everything at the tailgate.
We're like, let's just go watch the cars.
And I loved it.
It was a crazy fun race to watch.
And by the time, I mean, obviously the rain delay is, you know, less than ideal, but it's one of the most memorable five hundreds for me.
I mean, I've gone.
Since I was a sophomore in college, I think.
So like the last seven or eight years, uh, and this is one I'll never forget just because the rain delay and everything, you know, you just kind of have to commit to like, Hey, you're going to be soaking wet, but by the end of this, we're going to have a good time.
And it's the Indy 500 baby.
Well, and, and your experience isn't unusual when you said, Hey, maybe I shouldn't say that I don't watch all the race.
There are a lot of people that don't, they, they want to see pre race.
They want to see the start.
Then they go back with their buddies.
They're doing whatever they walk around, look at people and maybe get back and watch the end of the race.
So that's the cool thing about the Indy 500.
It's an event that happens to have a race during the event.
I mean, that's what makes it so special.
We have so many fans.
Who don't watch another race the rest of the year.
This is what they do This is a racing experience and they and part of it's a family reunion or buddy's reunion or whatever it is And that's what makes us special and so we can't ever forget That we are an event not just a race there happens to be a race inside of that event But if you start forgetting about the event elements of it and the and the casual fan that comes to that event Then it doesn't work and that's the message that you that like I try to get through to people What do you even have going on indiana?
I'm like the indianapolis 500 Like You just watch cars turn left.
I'm like, that's a piece of it.
But then there's like a full on music festival in the center and there's all the, the people watching on the race day is immaculate.
Like you can see some true characters.
Uh, we'd maybe Indiana might not claim them all, but like there's some characters there and it's just like, there's just, it's a spectacle truthfully.
So you're saying that takes 10, 400 people to put on race day, race day.
What did it take to put on a super bowl?
How many, how many total staff to make that come to life?
A lot less.
Um, because we're, we're in a stadium that's a lot smaller.
You can fit six NFL stadiums physically inside the, uh, Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
So this was a part that I wanted to say is like, I mean, we've all seen the graphics of how many, you know, things it takes to, or how many things can fit inside the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
But I love that.
Yeah.
So a lot less people.
Um, but the Indy 500 is harder to oversee and run in my opinion than a super bowl for many, many, many reasons.
It's a much bigger, it's an outdoor event.
Most of the super bowls are in, inside stadiums.
And it's just a lot more complicated.
Uh, the pieces, you know, I always look at putting events together as hundreds of little puzzle pieces and it takes every single piece to put it together and make it work and the Indy 500, because of its scale and the number of people that it takes to do it, uh, and that attend, it's just much harder.
So I'll give you the recap of what I spent my Indy 500.
And I saw the inner, some of the inner workings, maybe from the outside looking in, but it's like, you have workers showing up.
Midnight 2 a. m.
Like getting in line, like they're getting in a specific line to like get in there to like take tickets or sell merch or do whatever they're doing in there.
So I got there at.
10 30 Saturday night before in my 1986 Dodge W two 50 that I bought on Facebook marketplace.
And I'm just hanging out like befriending.
Oh man.
I can't remember.
There was a guy who's worked the North gate for a lot, a lot of years.
If you said his name, I can't think of it off the top of my head, but like, he's like, Oh yeah, I've been here for 15 years or whatever.
And I just like would chat him through the.
Like when, whenever he arrived, I chatted with him and learned about all the stories in the history.
And I mean, there was a, there's a very famous racing fan who, who was the first car in for many, many years.
I can't think of his name either.
Um, yes, and he, I got a van and would sell all of us.
So we were like, let's just take a, take a page out of that book.
We did the whole thing.
Um, but like you see, like the first person behind me was, he's like, Oh, I'm, I'm here to work today.
And probably the next three or four people were all not spectators.
They were there to be staff members.
And I think that's crazy.
And sometimes, you know, when people are out there at events and.
And I always kind of like double check myself, like be, be extra polite to the staff there because they got here, they probably woke up before you did and they're out here working on a day that you're just, you know, having some beers with your buddies.
It's true.
And it's funny that so a lot of those folks that you, you know, 15 years.
That's what that's their Indy 500 experience.
That's what they love to do They love to be part of it and we have we've got a core of Like 700 folks that are our safety patrol the yellow shirts That do all of our events and have done it for a long time and then and then we add on to get to that 10, 400 so you were probably dealing on the north end with one of those 750 that that's what they do and they come to our other events and they all Have an area.
A location, you know, just like we have people that are doing, um, that are in a certain grandstand and they get to know the people and the people get to know what their name is.
And just like you, they start asking questions and most of them love to tell you the story of why they love the speedway or why they work in there.
Oh, I love that.
And like you think about the tradition, you talk about people have been doing it for many, many years.
What's the longest.
Just like renewed ticket.
So our, our records go back to World War II.
We don't really have records pre World War II, but we have dozens of people who have been to over 75 Indianapolis 500s.
Oh my gosh.
It's funny because we run into people all the time, I'm like, Hey, I've been to my 25th race this year, next year is my 30th.
I'm like, that's awesome.
Keep going because You've got a long way to go to be, you know, to be where some folks are.
You really have to be north of 60 Indy 500s to really start being in that rare air.
It's amazing how many people have come for so long.
We've had several who have, and we don't have records to prove it, but claim that they came in the late 30s, early 40s before World War II.
But certainly we can go back and we can tell for sure if Nate's been coming since 1946, we know.
Wow.
That's, that's wild.
And you think, yeah, you get to 50 years and you're like, cool.
You're almost, you're almost to the hallowed ground, like just about there.
Well, I think that's super cool.
And so when we think about innovation, right.
And there's a ton of cool stuff that, uh, that happens at the speedway that we're going to get into towards the end.
Um, but we kind of talked and dove into changes that you guys.
Have seen throughout the last decade when you think about the Indy 500 and just racing in general What kind of innovations or changes do you see coming down the pipeline that we have to look forward to?
So I think safety still continues to be something that we really pay attention to whether it's safety Safety just for our drivers or safety for our fans or safety that we learn on the racetrack that transfers to the cars we drive.
So Firestone is our tire supplier.
A lot of the technology that they learn in the way that they build tires and the way tires wear are things that will benefit all of us.
When we, when we drive our cars, you see a lot of the AI stuff that's happening right now.
I think you're going to see that become something that's implemented in these cars, not to replace drivers, but to give drivers more information while they're driving to help them be safer.
You know, drivers have spotters right now that, that kind of are standing at the top of the grandstands, if you will, and they're able to tell drivers what's going on, because they can only see little bits of it.
So I think you'll see sensors and things in race cars that'll help them understand, Hey, there's a car approaching you and it's coming at this quickly and it might pass you this lap.
Just a lot of that technology.
You see it in the pit stands with the teams who are working on strategy, the AI that's involved in thinking through.
You know, when, when should we pit what happens if there's a yellow and we have this much fuel in the car, really helping, helping them make better decisions.
But safety is the biggest thing, I think, where we, where you'll see a lot of the innovations just to make it, making the continuing to make racing safer.
I love that.
And I think I was talking to, um, one of some of the team at who goes Hollinger and they were saying like, The shift between how many like, I call them like more like mechanic blue collar type to like computers and data scientists is like, it's become like a pretty even like the split has become more even on that and you need just as many people working on the computers and the data and I don't even know the like physics of it all as like turning wrenches.
It's very true and I think even the mechanics.
It's probably not the right term for them.
A lot of the folks that are what we would think of as mechanics are college educated folks who are engineers who love the challenge of putting these cars together and figuring out how to make them go faster.
And there's so many elements in a race car that changes and all those little subtle changes impact the way the car performs on the racetrack.
And that's so everybody kind of gets the same box, if you will, to work with and the same tools, but then there's just so many things that they can adjust.
And when you start thinking about.
An adjustment that allows you to go a hundredth of a second faster in one lap, you know, in a four lap qualifying effort, that's four hundredths of a second faster.
And that could be the difference between being first and being fifth.
I mean, so all these little subtle things, you know, cause people say, Oh, they're just driving in circles.
Well, in a way they are, but they're doing so many things to just be one 10th of a second better than somebody else.
And it's, it's, it takes those engineering minds.
And so the mechanics there are as much.
Engineers as they are, you know, the guy down the road who's fiction in your car and changing your world like millimeters.
That's the thing Where's like how many things like not just millimeter you think about a nut that has five sides on it?
They say what are we gonna do?
Let's lower the car a flat So if you're gonna lower the car a flat That means all the way around you find the nut that allows you to lower the car and you just move it one of the little flats of the nut, not all the way even around.
So let's lower it a flat and that impacts the way the car performs.
So it's just tiny, very subtle changes.
That's the difference between winning and losing.
The attention to detail is wild.
100%.
And so, so safety is a big focus on the future of racing.
Racing when you think of, uh, Allison, the innovation that might be coming down the pipeline for actual race day and the spectacle and maybe not race day, but just the month of May and the spectacle that is Indy 500, uh, and 500 festival, all those fun things.
What do you, what do you see coming down the pipeline that we should be looking forward to there?
We go back to the last 10 years, we've, we've continued to try and will continue to try to enbr engage the community in all sorts of different ways.
I think it's one of the things that makes the Indy 500 different than every other single event in the world, including the Olympics.
Um, the, the difference in the way people love this event, love being part of Indiana, love being part of the celebrations, and continuing to bring ways for people to do that.
So, we partner with the arts community to do welcome race fans.
We partner with the city on a number of things.
So, as we look at all of our community programs, we have 20 or 30 going on now.
We have to continue to make those relevant and change as people change, and bring in people of different generations in ways that they can enjoy and celebrate.
Celebrate that we have something very special here and continue to do that quick pause in the action.
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Now let's get back into it.
So outside of actual racing. the race itself.
I want to go through what are your guys favorite parts about the month of May, the Indianapolis 500, all the, the, all the, the spectacle and celebration that it is.
Favorite minute is, uh, during the pre race when we play taps and that, that series there, because 300 plus thousand people stand in reverent attention.
Without movement and without any noise, without speaking, um, and give that moment the respect that it deserves.
And in all the events I've worked all over the planet, I've never seen anything like that, that, that series of, um, things that happen, uh, leading up to the Anthem, like makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and you're just like, wow, like, like you just take a minute and you're like, I'm watching racing on a beautiful day here in Indiana.
Like.
I'm very grateful to be in the place that you are.
Like, I love that.
That's a great, great answer.
It's really all about pre race is, is my favorite part.
And there's so many elements of that that I love taps is one of them.
And Allison is right.
I mean, you go from just lots of noise.
All of a sudden everybody, it's just dead silent in 275 acres, the second largest city in the state of Indiana isn't speaking right there, listening and watching that.
But the way we celebrate the men and women who serve as we have the military march in our.
Crowd slowly stands up and respectfully cheers for me.
It's just this really slow wave as we celebrate that.
It's Memorial Day weekend, so you're remembering the men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our, for our, for our freedom.
And then at the end of that, when Back Home Again in Indiana, those 90 ish seconds.
It's the most powerful time of the year for me when that when we're because you look around you go man 10, 400 people set the stage again for 33 men and women to try and become immortal when the Indianapolis 500 and 350, 000 people have decided to show up for this Indiana Indiana's on this international stage And I don't care where you're from, when you're in the venue that, that day, you're a Hoosier when, when Back Home Again in Indiana is sung.
So that, that's, for me, that's, so, as we're taping this, 208 days from now, that'll happen again.
And I love the Indy 500, but at some point when, when the commanding start engines is given, I'm like, dang it.
I gotta wait another year for all those special moments that lead up to the race.
Because once the race happens, we can't control it.
All those other things.
You know the planning to make sure pre race works.
I mean and you look around at all of the people who put so much time in to make it work and then all those fans who put so much passion into coming because you talked about early it's a big day right it's a long day it's it's not simple to get in and out it's a commitment if you come to the Indy 500.
And then the other thing just generally I love to see uh families bring kids.
There's nothing like watching a uh a second generation or a third generation you know three generations of folks coming to the Indy 500 and watching a kid.
And we focus a lot on making it easy to bring kids because that's really what it's all about.
How do you Watch those families together, but we need those kids to continue that tradition and for me Every day walking walking around watching kids come through is probably you're down in the pits and you see them like Like looking like watching someone take apart a car do all stuff and they're just like, you know You know, I mean, I'm in awe, but like also like a, you know, a kid is just, uh, loves that it could be the highlight of their year.
You know, it's, it's amazing.
And you know, we're 15 and under free at the speedway for, if you have a GA ticket, we let 15 and unders come in for free.
I mean, it's really important to us that we get kids.
And then you got the craziness, like the snake pit, you know, you talked about that concert, 25, 000 young adults under the age of 30, over the age of 18.
Um, and I did that one time I I've been out there once.
For about 10 minutes and then thought, you know, I don't need to see this anymore.
This is really important, but I don't, it's anecdotally.
Now you see people who say, you know, we started in the snake pit, but now my buddies and I, we just, we come to the race day.
It's what we do.
The Memorial day, Sunday, we're going to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
And every once in a while, maybe we'll go down the snake pit cause there's an artist we like, but it's no longer.
Stay down there all day and not know a race is going on.
What's the history of the Snake Pit?
Like, how did that get going?
Well, the Snake Pit actually was an organic party that started in turn one at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway long ago in the 60s and 70s and it became, I mean, it was just crazy.
Things went on in the Snake Pit that you don't want to endorse and you don't want going on.
And eventually in the 80s, the family that owned the speedway said, You know what?
This is getting a little out of control.
Let's just stop it.
And so they just basically started cleaning it up, not allowing that organic party to start.
And in 2011, we kind of brought it back, and we had, I think, like 600 people show up.
And it was around the EDM music, and then over time, it's just grown and grown and grown.
Who said that in 2011?
It's like, you know what we need to bring back?
EDM and the Snake Pit.
So, a gal named Jessica Gunter, who was a family member, and she worked at the Speedway at the time, and she was younger, and we were trying to figure out, how do we connect to kids?
How do we get, and young adults, how do we get, you know, those folks to come back?
And she said, well, why don't we create this EDM concert, and we'll call it the Snake Pit.
And then, so over time, we've adjusted it, we've changed it, it's kept Allison up many nights, because early on, it was anybody, we had, you know, young kids in there, and so we've gone to the 18 and over, and we've changed things.
We, you know, limit some of the things go on in there, but it's, it is the best marketing tool we have for, for young folks.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
Cause people come and they don't know anything about racing, but they leave there just like, It was just wild like cuz like you you pop out of there Maybe there's an artist that you're like, okay I can take a break for a little bit and you like walk out and then you hear like The cars going around you're like, oh my gosh, you're in awe there And then you go back and there's flames coming out of the snake pit and Marshmello's on stage doing his thing and it's great It's important for us So what we've what we learned early on is that when pre race is happening? we shut all the music down because you know, everybody wants to enjoy it and that but but You The people that, you know, are sitting in turn three who are close to the snake pit, they want to be able to see pre race and not have to hear the music.
And then that gives us an opportunity for those kids in the venue to see pre race.
And the last 10 laps of the race, then we actually have the race on there at the end.
And so my stepson's an IndyCar driver.
His name's Connor Daly.
He's fascinated, loves EDM music.
And so his he goes out there every race in his fire suit and it takes his helmet before the race starts To remind everybody out there and say hey guys if I wasn't racing today I'd be out here with you guys.
You gotta follow indycar and you and and so we've got these young kids young drivers Who also like EDM.
So we're trying to find ways to just, how do we pull these folks along and make them race fans?
I did not know that Conor was your stuff.
So he had a heck of a finish, uh, at the end of the season this year in Milwaukee, he had a really good race.
Yeah, that's awesome.
I love, I love that.
He's an EDM guy too.
Like huge.
You just imagine like in his head, like what you're playing, what guys you're driving around the track and you're like, yeah, I love it.
Okay.
So, so let's talk about race day.
Where are you all positioned?
During the race or before the race, during the race, at the end of the race.
I really stay in one place because he needs to be everywhere.
So we have a command control center in the Pagoda.
And so I, I based there all day.
I don't really leave the Pagoda.
And you're just watching, having fun, having, enjoying your day, right?
Exactly.
You know what I always said, and I said this about the Super Bowl, you can lay all your plans and everything can go perfectly.
And that would be the best day, but that's never what happens.
And so it's never a boring day.
Because when you have that many people, you have issue after, after, after issue after issue.
And this year, of course, wasn't boring at all because of the weather.
For me, being there as a staff resource, as a problem solver, um, in one location has, has proved over the last 10 years to be the right decision because he needs to be other places.
Take us through wake up to like you're a full day.
What's the What's the schedule look like for Doug Boles on, on race day?
She wake up Saturday morning.
And you don't go to sleep till Sunday night.
Oh boy.
You just, you can't, right?
And so, you start Saturday, we got all our pre race, Allison and the team are going through, we actually do an entire pre race show with NBC and all the celebrities, exactly like it's going to be on race day, to make sure that it works.
So we walk it through, the drivers get intro'd, but they're not drivers, they're fans who get to walk up on stage and act like they're the drivers.
How do I get that gig?
It's a cool gig, but they love it.
They love it.
You need someone to like practice waving the green flag on Saturday.
We go through everything.
It's really important.
And that's one of the things that Allison brought to the team is let, let, this is important enough.
We should know that it's right.
And then we, we share some of the elements with our TV broadcaster, that, that they're going to broadcast something while it's simultaneous in venue.
And other times we're doing something venue and they're doing something different.
So we're trying to make sure we're not stepping on each other.
So it's a really important process.
We do the parade that day, we come back that night, make sure everything's set up for the snake pit, you just kind of make sure that we're ready to go, and then by 11. o'clock I usually take off my tie.
Uh, put on a t shirt and I go spend the evening walking through the campgrounds and watching crazy people.
People that are there for the event, right?
Who are passionate.
Who are super passionate.
These are super passionate fans.
I love them all.
And it's, and there's a group of folks that sing Back Home Again in Indiana at 12 o'clock when it becomes race day.
So I try and go there and watch them sing.
I don't sing with them, but I try and watch them sing.
And then The town of Speedway, without the town of Speedway, that we couldn't park everybody.
So, so many of the neighbors there, you park in people's driveways.
And it's the same people, year after year, that go back to the same location.
So, you can walk through the town, And then, you know, people have their garage doors open and they're just partying and you walk in and it's, it's actually really fun.
You walk in and somebody goes, uh, you, you Doug Boles?
You don't have tile.
Why are you doing here?
And you just, just seeing fans is part of the fun.
The next morning, we all, by, by, you know, 5 o'clock, we're all focused on the gates are going to open, 6.
The, the, the, we're going to shoot the cannon off.
Mark Miles loves to go do the cannon.
So Mark goes and shoots the cannon to kind of let everybody know it's time to come in.
And then it's game on.
You're trying to do everything that Allison and her team have prepared for us in terms of pre race, beginning at six o'clock, and you're solving problems, really, is what you're doing.
Wait, and then that's whether it's gates or traffic and you're waiting for, and that's, you just run around and do that.
I have a list of customers.
That I try and go see.
So somebody that's been 75 Indy 500, I'm going to go find Butch, who, you know, has been here for 75 races and congratulate him.
And then you just base, I think that's special.
What I'm going to pause on that real quick.
Like when, when you first said, Oh, I have a list of customers.
I'm thinking, okay, the biggest sponsor firestone, like, Martha's in the, is there, you know, hanging out or whatever.
But no, like you're going to someone who maybe has bought a GA ticket or a pavilion or a Stan's grandstand ticket for 75 years.
Like that's awesome.
So the last, the last place you will find the Allison or you will find Doug is in a suite.
We are out taking care of customers or taking care of our staff.
It is, it is absolutely what we do.
And I do have that list and I'll walk around and it's crazy.
You walk up in the grandstands, you're trying to find somebody you've never met before and their seat and, and just, and.
I think people just love the fact that we care enough that we're spending our time thanking people for coming.
And that's, that's kind of what I do.
The one, the one cool thing I get to do?
I get to, uh, drive the front event car at the start of the race.
So there's the pace car and then in front of that there's four, uh, Event cars and I get to take two laps and I take usually like the Gainbridge CEO or something and somebody like that goes with me and we we drive around the pace car and and run 125 miles an hour down the backstretch and pull the car in the bummer about that as I usually miss the start of the race Which I mentioned about Connor So the nice thing about that is because I'm his stepdad.
I don't have to worry about it I'm doing something else and then I just make sure when I get that I got through turn one.
It's all good Now I'm going back to work.
Oh, man You That is crazy.
How do you pick who gets to do all the fun thing, right?
So of this past year, Dylan Sprouse was the grand marshal.
How do you pick who waves the green flag, drives the pace car, rides it on, like, how does that all work?
So some of it's sponsor related, right?
So you've got some commitments to sponsors who are helping you put your event on.
And then other of it is when you, we look at the celebrities that we bring in, and this is one thing where if you're a hardcore Indy 500 fan, you're like, it should be a race car driver or whatever that's doing those things.
But our philosophy really is if we can bring somebody in who has a following, who can introduce our sport to somebody else because they want to go see Dylan Sprouse or, Brad Pitt, if Brad Pitt showed up, that's a good thing because, you know, so, so a lot of it is how can that person and their platform help us introduce Indiana and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to new people.
So that's, it's a, we've got a whole group of people that actually help us.
Organize and decide.
I'd be the worst person to decide, right?
So we have, we have a group of relatively young folks on our staff who say, this person's important because here's their, here's their platform, here's their reach.
And that's how we get to it.
Well, let it be known it's on my bucket list.
So I'm as I'm on this journey of getting more and more followers and got like, I'm, There will be a number where it's like, one day, you know, the IMS is going to give me a call.
Hey, Nate, you know, you just crossed 250,000 followers and we want to get this.
And you're going to wave the green flag.
I put that out publicly.
So let it be known that it's on my bucket list.
But can you sing?
Uh, I can't carry a tune in a bucket, so that's probably not me.
But, uh, you know, maybe just got there a nice, like, you know, green flag.
It'd be fun.
I love that.
And I think that it's so important though.
Right.
So, and when you think back to getting new people invested, you know, I saw, uh, Dylan Sprouse as the grand marshal, I believe.
Right.
Yeah.
So he was the one that's dead drivers to your cars and not start your engines, but getting the drivers to get strapped in.
Who's the coolest celebrity that's been to the Indy 500.
One of the coolest celebrities we had, and cool in my mind is maybe a surprise for me, was Lady Gaga.
She came in 2016, and I don't know that I had an opinion of her before that day, you know, just, She's aware of who she was, but I will tell you, she was amazing race day.
She stopped and signed hundreds of autographs.
Every single person that asked her, she signed, she showed up in jeans and her hair in a ponytail and no makeup and walked in and was super friendly to everybody, very engaging, asked a lot of great questions about the race, about the track, about the drivers, uh, and then spent her whole day.
Fully invested in, in, um, understanding the event and being great to our customers.
So for me, uh, she was probably the biggest surprise.
That's awesome.
And the cool thing about her, that's a great, that's a great one.
She showed up, it was sort of last minute.
We trying to get it to get literally we, I think we were working on the deal the night of the 500, all kinds of challenges.
Sometimes we bring celebrities.
She showed up and I think we all thought, man, this is going to be tough.
And she was great.
And back then we did this thing called the fastest seat in house where you got the two seat IndyCar, Mario drove you.
And so she got to do that.
And with that, they put her in a fire suit to get in there.
And she got down the front of the grid and she realized it was Mario Andretti going to drive her.
And her mom is a Mario Andretti fan.
So she FaceTimes her mom from the front of the grid so her mom can meet Mario Andretti.
And then she gets out of the car and she says, I, can I keep this fire suit?
Cause I'm never taking it off.
I mean, that's the kind of stuff that you got, okay.
Cause oftentimes it's the celebrity's people that are harder than the celebrity themselves.
So she, she was really a great one.
For, for me it was, it's, maybe a guy named Colonel Crandall who um, is a Medal of Honor recipient who flew helicopters in Vietnam.
And, and there's a movie out called, it's old, but it's called We Are Soldiers.
And it's basically about Colonel Crandall, who refused to let American soldiers stay in, in, in a situation where the firefight was so bad, they said, nobody can go in and rescue these guys.
He said, well, I'm going to go rescue them.
So he flew helicopter missions, getting people out.
And there's this story, there's this really cool movie about him.
So he was actually our honorary starter in 2011.
That was maybe one of the neater points for me because that was a way to celebrate men and women who serve on Memorial Day weekend.
And this true American hero who risked his life over and over and over again to save, save American soldiers.
And he got up in the grandstands and, um, waved the green flag and said, uh, I, gosh, I don't want to get out of here.
He said, how long am I allowed to stay up here?
And somebody said, oh, well, I think Jack Nicholson stayed up longer than anybody.
He stayed up for like seven laps and Colonel Crandall stayed up like 45 laps.
He was so excited about it.
And.
Um, he's in his nineties now and every once in a while I call and check in on him.
His son takes care of him now and, and it's just, those are the, those are the things that I think I sit back and remember the most.
They're just cool stories.
That is a, that's incredible.
I'm, I'm going to have to go look at that.
Bruce, Bruce Crandall.
Bruce Crandall.
Yeah.
We are soldiers.
We are soldiers.
Okay.
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Who's your 500?
It's always fun when we get people like, you know, Peyton Manning came or you have celebrities in Indiana that are on a national stage.
I don't know that I really have anybody that I'd say, gosh, we got to get that person.
Let me plant a seed because I just think he would crush it.
Dwayne The Rock Johnson.
So we've tried to get him for a few years and unfortunately, so our biggest challenge, it's Memorial Day weekend.
So if you're in that industry, oftentimes you're not filming and it's your one weekend off.
Where you can do stuff with families and it's really a challenge So he's had interest and we just have never been able to make that one work, but he would be a fantastic one for sure Oh, that'd be fun.
Yeah.
Okay.
So so when we think about what's going on at the speedway Outside of the month of may right?
Everyone knows indianapolis 500 all the fun stuff going on there but like I mean, this is a year round business.
There's always things happening at the Speedway.
And Allison, I know you're doing a lot of work there.
Like talk to us and give us a scope for, uh, the amount of people that we see outside of race day and all the, like some of the bigger events that are happening.
Yeah.
Doug can give you a better breakdown, but we, we've been. got cars on track about 160 days a year.
Is that right?
160 days.
And we have, we have all kinds of things.
And as Doug said earlier, it's, it's not always public events, but we've got OEM testing, we have some of the driving schools that we have are fantastic.
My husband actually took the BMW driving class out there, uh, and he loved it and recommends it to everybody.
Uh, he, it was the first time he actually felt like a race car driver, except on four 65, he acts like a race car driver, but, uh, you know, those, those individual Uh, type OEM testing and, uh, driving schools are really fun for people.
Yeah.
We have like right now going on, we have a big Chevrolet event where Chevrolet brings in.
Yeah.
Their products that you can buy in the showroom and they bring their competitors products as well.
And then they invite out their dealers and their sales people to actually test the vehicles and they'd go, you know, speed testing, uh, testing through cones, you know, just a lot of things that you couldn't do normally so that they can sell the product differently.
We start next week.
I think we rolled into another, um, like a GMC event.
So we do a lot of those.
So OEM being those folks.
So, but it's, BMW does stuff at our place.
We've got Ferrari does things at our place.
We've got Lamborghini, just a whole host of folks that aren't public events in the sense of us selling a ticket, but are on track either at high speed or something related to the performance side.
And then we've got our ma, our major events obviously May and the Bricky yard, and then our two sports car events.
And then we have a vintage race and a small dirt track race.
And then we have testing for that.
So if you're a race team that's gonna run in our six hour IMSA race or our eight hour SRO race.
Oftentimes, there are days where those, those competitors come in throughout the year and they're, they're testing.
So they come in for an entire day or, or sometimes up to three days and they're, they're testing on track.
So those are the things that we've got going.
What are some of the big non racing events or non traditional car racing events that uh, that happen out the speedway?
So we've got a vintage race, so that's cars that are older that, um, collectors basically go out and race artwork is what it's exactly like.
It's kind of crazy.
Um, you know, obviously the Brickyard with our NASCAR race and then the two sports car races I talked about are sort of our big ones.
But then in terms of non racing events that we take, so the Indiana Sports Corp, she used to head the Indiana Sports Corp.
The Indiana Sports Corp is so important to our community.
We do the Indiana Sports Corp challenge, which is their big Olympics event at the Speedway because there's no place else in the city.
It's big enough to host it all in one location.
So we invest in that one.
We've worked with our Indianapolis Public Safety Foundation for several years with their big fundraiser.
So we pick and choose.
A handful of important events for the community, the REV event that we do to kick the month of May off that benefits IU Health Foundation is something that's really important for us.
And those are things that, Don't necessarily help us, but are great for our community.
We have one great thing coming online next year, though.
Uh, the museum is having a full renovation and will come online in May.
Uh, I went through there maybe a month ago.
You might have been through sooner.
It is going to be an unbelievable asset for the city and the state.
Oh, well, what can we expect from the museum? a So it's a 65 million dollar renovation.
So we closed in October of last year.
It'll open up leading into May next year.
Hopefully it'll open by April 1st, but certainly by May 1st.
But if you went in the museum last year, when it was open, it's got amazing race cars.
Cars that have competed at the Indianapolis 500 sitting static in a big warehouse, basically, is what it was like.
So if you're Allison Melangton who isn't a race fan or a car fan to begin with, You look around and go, yeah, this is kind of cool, but why does it engage me?
It was kind of like an automobile graveyard.
It was kind of that way.
It was so the, the building was built in 1974 and it hadn't changed.
Uh, and then now it's going to be an immersive experience that walks you through the history of the Speedway and you still get to see all those cars, but it's going to tell the story in a way that will appeal to somebody who's visiting from Indianapolis and says, well, I got to go to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Because that's what you do when you're in Indianapolis.
And hopefully, it'll be a much better experience for them.
And as Allison said, I think it's going to transform the way we tell the story about our city.
About how our city was so important in the way the automobile has, has continued to grow over the last century.
And certainly as, as it relates to the speed, the speedway and the events there.
It'll be great for, uh, visit, uh, Indy to be able to have that as an asset to bring to the city.
To the convention people that come to town and so forth because the museum's always been popular in that way But now it's gonna be really relevant and updated.
I love it I'm super excited to check it out and I feel like I could talk to you guys all day long But unfortunately, we are coming to the end of the show But I have a few fun fun segments here at the end where we kind of hit some rapid fire questions So the first segment we have is called our younger years segment And so this question is brought to you by our friends at Orr Fellowship They're a great organization here in Indiana, helping develop young business leaders across the state.
We have two Orr Fellows that we've hired full time.
Oh!
They're really key in our organization.
So uh.
Heck yeah!
I love that.
Alright, so I don't need to give you guys the spiel.
That's great.
Well, we'll start with Allison and then we'll go to Doug.
So, Allison.
Allison, what advice would you give to your 22 year old self?
Uh, be the first one at work every day, the last one to leave, absorb everything, be observant, and that will separate you from others.
Uh, hard work, right?
The great equalizer.
So, I, I love that.
Uh, Doug, what advice would you give to your 22 year old self?
It's similar to Allison's.
I think patience.
You gotta add patience to that, because oftentimes when we're young, we think, Man, I'm ready to do the next thing.
And sometimes the next thing isn't going to happen for two or three or four years.
You just have to continue to execute where you are.
So patience, I think is, is super important.
The other one is don't lose your passion for what it is you're trying to do.
And I think oftentimes we can easily be.
Give up on that passion.
And if you're passionate about something, I'd just stay continue to stay focused on it.
Okay.
Now I know I can't ask, well, you might, uh, Doug might be biased, right?
If I asked who your favorite IndyCar driver was, cause you know, you happen to have a son in the, in the game, but I'm going to ask Allison, what's your favorite IndyCar paint job or design?
I'm always a fan of whatever Helio does to his car.
Cause I always think it's catchy.
He's got a lot of pink in there lately.
Uh, so I don't know.
Probably cause I love Helio and I want him to get the drive for five.
I want him to be the only human on the planet that won five Indy 500s.
And so, uh, I probably lean towards his, whatever he's doing.
Uh, Doug favorite IndyCar design?
Probably the Yellow Submarine, which is just a pure yellow Pennzoil car.
But the question on favorite driver, obviously, is Connor, right?
Because he's my stepson.
But I grew up as a huge AJ Foyt fan.
That was sort of my hero.
So just the fact that we get to interact with AJ still is pretty powerful.
And then I became a TK fan, Tony Kanaan, who lives in this community now.
He's great for our community, passionate.
Took him 12 years to win the Indy 500.
Our fans loved him.
Uh, current driver, um, if you, if you have to put Conor's side as a guy and and Will Power because Will's the same way as TK was.
He's crazy, he's passionate, he gets out of the car, you don't know what he's going to do and that's the kind of thing as a promoter.
You want those drivers that you look at and you go, man, this guy loves what he does and he's super passionate about it.
So that, that's sort of my, Um, my driver, um, I love that Rushmore, uh, you're talking about AJ Foyt.
I was just down in Salem and the Salem, the high banks there.
Oh my, we have a whole video that's coming out, but obviously they said, Nate, you're not allowed to drive a car.
So they let me drive the little mini crotch rockets around and we raced on the high banks.
The car would probably have been safer.
Yeah.
I did wreck at the end.
I will.
There's a whole video that's going to come out, but we were racing at the historic high banks of Salem.
They're talking about how AJ Foyt is driven down there.
And.
Jeff Gordon and all these just racing legends.
So I think Indiana does have a lot of history in racing outside of just the speedway, which is super cool if people start to dive into that.
For sure.
There's so many short tracks, but Salem and Winchester.
So Winchester, which is on the East side of our state.
And then Salem on the South in the South part of our state were two iconic race tracks that especially drivers that came up in the sixties and seventies would have raced there forever.
A lot of NASCAR drivers.
And like you said, Jeff Gordon have raced at both of those, those venues.
And they were.
Super high banked, super fast and super dangerous.
And when you go see those and you, you realize what they were racing on, it's pretty crazy.
And some of the racing that they still have at those venues are is fantastic still to this day.
Yeah.
They say, uh, Tony Stewart will never come back.
He like flipped outside of the banks on one side of both of those racetracks.
Uh, oftentimes people were out of the park, which is not a, not a fun ride.
Yeah.
You don't want that.
That's, that's wild.
That was, uh, it was a heck of an experience.
Okay.
A couple more questions we have.
Who is the biggest celebrity that's actually a race fan?
Matt Damon.
And he voiced one of our, uh, video pieces a couple of years ago.
Oh, that's pretty cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's an awesome one.
Okay.
Yeah.
Matt, hard to get bigger than that one.
Probably.
Yeah.
Right.
And it's like using Ford versus Ferrari.
It's like he got a place, a part of, uh, you know, a racing outfit very well.
It's weird though.
You see the people that are race fans, you don't expect them to.
So like court coach someone who was a college football coach and then a coach in pro football as well.
I went to Pike High School and he's a huge race fan comes back every year and you wouldn't just people you wouldn't expect and you see that come back every single year that that kind of fly under the radar that are celebrities that the 500 is what they do.
I'm going to add Andrew Luck to that list.
He used to ride his bike.
I know he rode his bike to the Indy 500 for like five years in a row and he lived here.
That's so hard.
Probably come in a hat.
So nobody knows who he is.
He's great.
He would engage in everything and just love every minute of it.
He's easy. and it's partly because Andrew's so cerebral, you know, that he really took time when he moved here to understand the cars, how they worked, who the drivers were, all of it.
So he's a, he's a good student of IndyCar and he loves the Indy 500 and he still has season tickets.
John Green, the Fault in Our Stars author is a huge IndyCar fan and sits in turn two with his buddies and his same kind of thing.
So there's a bunch of those people that Maybe aren't Matt Damon, but are certainly celebrity.
I would say John Green might be the only one that rivals me for like putting out pro Indiana content.
Like he puts out some awesome videos, promoting all the cool stuff going on in Indiana.
Um, okay, Doug, I do have one final question that that's not related to like our three lightning round.
What does Indiana have to do to get an F1 race?
That's so I said the biggest question we get all the time is what do you the rest of your second biggest is probably Hey, when's f1 coming back?
So the racetrack is still FIA grade one So the way that racetracks in the world are rated is by a safety and a performance rating and the highest rating you get is Called FIA grade one.
There's two tracks in the US There that COTA where they just ran this past weekend or two weekends ago Um, and which is in Austin and then the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
So we are set if F1 ever wanted to come back, we would be happy to host them.
The challenge with the F1 business model is the state of Texas, for example, paid FIA or they paid Liberty Media, F1, almost 45 million dollars to get them to show up.
So and then you have to figure out how to make that make sense on ticket sales.
For us, it doesn't make financial sense.
And while I think Roger would love to have them back, you know, Roger's a businessman.
I don't think it's not about making money necessarily, but you can't lose millions and millions and millions of dollars.
And so until that, that, until that economic scale gets right, righted, I don't, I don't see them coming back.
Well, If there's any large donors out there that want to help us bring F1 to Indiana, uh, Please talk to my friend Doug.
Yeah, well, I'd love for that to happen.
But, um, right now I think, you know, we love the Indy 500.
It's a great event.
Our NASCAR race, we've got great racing and it's affordable.
You know, we'd have a hard time doing 15 and under free if we had to pay 45 I love that.
And I think I'll take the Indy 500 over any F1 race, but that's just my bias.
All right.
Final three questions that we have is.
We ask these to every guest, uh, always the same.
First thing is Allison, what's something the world needs to know about Indiana?
It's easy to do business here and people, people here in versus all the other places I've lived, put the collective agenda ahead of individual, individual agendas.
And I, I know I've known that since I moved here in the eighties, but I live it every day, uh, lived it, running the Super Bowl, lived at running the Indiana Sports Corp, and live it at the track.
And that's, uh, in the other locations I've lived in, and the people I talk to in business, that's not, uh, the norm.
And so, I think for, for us, Hoosiers are great people with great hearts that want to get good work done, uh, for all the right reasons.
Heck yeah.
Doug, what's something the world needs to know about Indiana?
A little twist on Allison's, Hoosier Hospitality is a thing.
It's not just a slogan.
And when you come to Indiana, you will realize that people do care about you.
People do want you to have a great experience here and people will help you have a great experience in our state, whether you're here visiting or whether you've relocated here to work for one of the great companies in a state that's great to work in.
So it's, it's not just our slogan, Hoosier Hospitality is in our DNA and it's a real thing.
I love that.
Doug, what is a hidden gem in Indiana?
And one of the cool things about leading into May is going to drive around the state of Indiana and go to where the tenderloin was first made up in Huntington or, or whether it's, uh, go to Attica and, and ride a four wheeler on this in, in the dunes or in the sand, you know, the sand up there.
There are just so many things in Indiana when you dig in, uh, that would, that would qualify as hidden gems.
Those are two of them just off the top of my head.
There's amazing museums throughout our state that tell, The history of our state, the history of the automobile, the history, you just, the history of just about everything here.
I, I think the, the other one is just the way we celebrate our military men and women who serve across our state.
Through the, through um, all of the different memorials that we have for them and, and opportunities.
And if somebody's interested in history, there's so much of it here in the state of Indiana.
That is a first.
That is a, no one has talked about museums or history.
It's usually like a restaurant or a, you know, an attraction or something like that.
So, I love that.
Uh, Allison, what is a hidden gem in Indiana?
Uh, Well, first, I'm going to throw out the Brickyard Golf Course that we have because, um, the improvements that have been made by Roger Penske in the last three years make it, uh, separate it from every other course in the state, in my opinion.
And second, I think the other hidden gem, well, it's not that hidden, is French Lick in Indiana.
Yes!
I think the French Lick and the resorts there are just fabulous and people need to take more advantage of it.
And it's where Carl Fisher was originally going to build the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Oh, that would have been unfair.
So Mayor Taggart, who was the mayor of the city of Indianapolis in the late 80s, early 90s, was one of the. was one of the investors and owners of French Lick Resort back in the day and, and Carl was looking for a place to build his racetrack.
And so he went down there because the mayor was trying to get him to build it down there.
It was a resort city.
He got down there and loved it, but he realized that it wasn't flat enough and what he envisioned was a flat oval.
So that, so that people could see around it and it was consistent throughout.
And because he didn't build it there, we build it here.
So French Lick could have been, it could have been the French Lick 500 and not the Indianapolis.
Wow, that would have been crazy.
I was just down there for the first time, uh, for the, uh, the Korn Ferry golf tour.
Uh, and it was crazy cool.
We were down there for maybe like Wednesday to Sunday and I never got bored.
I was like, there was.
Literally a million things to do.
So when, and I'm now like recommending to everyone and it's beautiful down there and everyone's always like, Oh yeah, we have French Lick, but a lot of people like say, like know about it, but don't actually go, it's like get in your car, drive there this weekend.
It is phenomenal.
And the history of it too.
I mean, the way, The way it was, there's just so many cool stories around the history when you start digging into it.
That's the other thing about India.
And we've got so many of those, but French Lick, the, the history of that, and even just the little story I told just about Carl, I mean, there's so many connections to French Lick.
Oh, I got into the, like the Al Capone, like what's going on down in French Lick.
There is some, some wild history there.
It's crazy.
It's crazy.
Well, hey, I appreciate you guys making the time to come on and talk all things from the Super Bowl to Indy 500 and what's next for, for IndyCar racing.
Uh, you know me, I love, I love the month of May.
I'm excited.
Uh, I currently have the truck parked, but we're gonna, we're gonna bring it back for its second voyage next year.
I don't know if I'm, I'm committing to being the first car, uh, in again, but.
Honestly, when May comes around, I'll probably like fold and do that again.
Well, I'll come out and help you pass out donuts.
There we go.
All right.
And then we, and then I'll take you out in the camp lot with us and we'll have some fun.
Yes.
You heard it here first.
Doug said we're going to be the first car through the North gate at the Indy 500 this year, and he's helping us pass.
So instead of 25, we'll go the first hundred cars this year.
We'll pass out coffee and donuts to them.
You have to sing Back Home Again.
No, no, no.
We watch the drunk people in the lot singing.
We watch.
I mean, I carry auto tune with me, right?
I love it.
Thank you all so much.
Thank you for all the work you do promoting the state of Indiana everywhere.
I mean, it's amazing and I appreciate you guys coming on and being guests.
Thank you.
Thanks for having us.
This is great.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Get In.
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