Five thoughts after the greatest weekend in motorsports — Formula One’s Monaco Grand Prix, the Indianapolis 500 and NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600…

1. Big Takeaway

More than 400,000 people spent part of their Memorial Day Weekend attending a motor racing event in the United States.

In Indianapolis, the crowd of more than 325,000 people was the second largest in decades (with only the 100th running of the Indy 500 in 2016 drawing more attendees); in Charlotte, the Coca-Cola 600 was sold out for the scheduled Sunday race and still saw a strong crowd return Monday after it was postponed at a track that listed its grandstand capacity at 79,000 in 2019 (the last year for publicly available records).

Millions more watched at home, with the Indy 500 drawing an average of nearly 5 million viewers to give NBC its most-watched Sunday afternoon broadcast since the final round of the U.S. Open last June. As of this writing, numbers were not yet available for the Coca-Cola 600 on Fox or F1’s Monaco Grand Prix, which aired on ABC, but you can certainly assume there will be a few million more added to the weekend total.

Regardless of the exact numbers, motorsports continue to experience a renaissance. Less than a decade ago, there were questions such as: “Is auto racing a dying sport?” People came armed with the viewership data, attendance figures and sponsorship declines as their evidence. When factoring in the rise of electric vehicles, it was easy to speculate on how long auto racing could maintain a relevant place in modern society.

Well, it certainly seems quite relevant at the moment. Maybe it’s still some of the post-pandemic desire to travel that has people showing up in strong numbers for races again. Maybe it’s “Drive to Survive,” which not only got more people interested in F1 but served as a gateway into other forms of racing for new fans who might not have understood motorsports previously.

Whatever the reason, it feels like auto racing has reestablished a foothold as an important sport around the world. This weekend embodied that trend, with good vibes spilling out of the TV screens showing each of the big races.

2. Main Character: Roger Penske

This was the biggest Memorial Day Weekend yet for 86-year-old Roger Penske.

That’s saying a lot for a man who has now won the Indianapolis 500 a stunning 19 times as a team owner. But this was the first year in which Penske won the race while also owning the racetrack and the series itself — not to mention capping it all off by seeing one of his Team Penske drivers (Ryan Blaney) win the Coca-Cola 600 as well.

A NASCAR crown jewel win is great, of course, and it probably gets more attention than Indy in some ways. But what Penske has done with Indianapolis since taking over is an achievement in itself. He has revitalized the 114-year-old speedway and transformed it into an Augusta. It is indeed “Penske Perfect” to the point where anything the slightest bit out of sorts comes as a surprise (like when a swarm of bees suddenly decided to find a new home in the eaves over one grandstand during Sunday’s race).

You can sense the pride Penske takes in being the caretaker of the iconic venue and race, an event so important internationally that Monaco winner Max Verstappen responded to a long question with “What time does the Indy 500 start?” during his postrace press conference. Indy truly is the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing,” held at a place that rightfully calls itself “The Racing Capital of the World.”


Team owner Roger Penske (left) celebrates with his driver, Josef Newgarden, after their Indy 500 victory. (Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)

Track president Doug Boles deserves a tremendous amount of credit as well for continuing to build off the momentum from the 100th running in 2016, but Penske is pulling all the right strings since he took over. It’s truly one of the most jaw-dropping scenes in sports to witness the pre-race tradition, with people as far as the eye can see in every direction, and some of the bravest humans on earth racing at speeds that could kill them at any moment.

In an era when it would seem easier to stay home rather than battle traffic and hundreds of thousands of fans to reach your seats, Penske and his staff have played hosts to eager hordes of motorsports lovers who create one of the biggest parties on the planet. He has done all this while still being the owner of a team that fields competitive cars in both IndyCar and NASCAR — and is now a double winner on his favorite weekend for the first time.

3. Question of the Week

How will Corey LaJoie fare in his long-awaited opportunity to climb into a good car?

LaJoie, substituting for the suspended Chase Elliott, has the best chance of his career to prove his talent to the NASCAR world. LaJoie once suggested if he had the same car as Denny Hamlin, he’d win races. Well, here’s a chance to at least run in the top 10 all day and try to make something out of it.

In some senses, it’s a bit unfair to put so much pressure on one race. This isn’t LaJoie’s team, it’s not his car and he’s only in it for one week. Very few substitute drivers find themselves in contention for wins.

But LaJoie has also built a brand off “stacking pennies,” with the unspoken promise that if he ever gets the chance to drive a fast car, he won’t disappoint. Now we’ll all get to see what he can do.

Meanwhile, another question: Did NASCAR get the Elliott penalty correct? Well, it’s pretty obvious from this corner: Absolutely. He should have gotten the same penalty as Bubba Wallace received for a similar incident at Las Vegas last fall, when Wallace hit the wall while racing with Kyle Larson and then retaliated by hooking Larson in the right rear down the frontstretch — the most dangerous thing you can do to another competitor in a stock car. And that’s exactly what happened.

Some Elliott fans — not all, but also no small number — twisted themselves into a variety of explanations on Monday night. There were screenshots and videos and all sorts of excuses and reasons for why Elliott didn’t do what the vast majority of impartial observers saw him do. On the Fox broadcast, Clint Bowyer and Tony Stewart explained it clearly; the replays, in-car audio (and Hamlin’s screenshots of the SMT data) told the story. Still, there’s undoubtedly a group who believes Elliott was not at fault.

NASCAR disagreed, and their decision was likely as straightforward as it gets. Did officials want to suspend the most popular driver for a race after his recent return from a broken leg seemed to give the series a ratings boost? Of course not. But in the end, they concluded Elliott left them no choice.

4. Trash and Treasure

Trash: Monaco racing

“Monaco isn’t a good race” is not exactly breaking news. This story from a couple years ago laid out how rare Monaco’s on-track passes for the lead are; the last one came in 1996, and even that was because the leader was running wet tires on a drying track. Before that instance, the most recent straight-up pass for the lead was 1987.

The city streets are so narrow, there’s really no place to pass. So, as usual, the pole winner has a massive advantage barring some sort of strategic miracle.

Even rain on Sunday couldn’t add enough spice to the race to salvage it. Perhaps if Fernando Alonso had put on intermediate tires instead of dry tires when the downpour was starting (whyyyy, Fernando?), he could have challenged Verstappen for the win. Alas, there was no drama.

But what’s the solution? It doesn’t seem much else can be done there to improve the racing, but F1 struck a deal to return after Monaco’s position on the calendar was in doubt last year. The epic scenes of the harbor and the beauty of the city are supposed to carry the race. That’s fine, except Monaco draws in the most casual/non-F1 fans of any race — so that lackluster racing ends up being their lone impression of F1 for the entire year.

And when you combine Monaco’s follow-the-leader affair with Verstappen’s dominance, which continues to suck all the oxygen out of the F1 room, even the eye candy of one of the world’s glitziest cities isn’t enough to keep fans engaged year after year.

Treasure: Monaco qualifying

As much as the race itself was lacking, this year’s Monaco qualifying session was one of the most phenomenal in memory. In Q3, the provisional pole bounced from Esteban Ocon to hometown favorite Charles Leclerc to hungry veteran Alonso. Then cameras showed Verstappen significantly off the pace, down two-tenths of a second on Alonso’s time entering the final sector of the course. No way he could make that up; no one could.

Oh, but he did. Verstappen pulled out the pole and set himself up for the victory in what will surely go down on his personal highlight reel. It was as though Verstappen finally got the epic qualifying moment after his what-might-have-been, near-perfect Saudi Arabia lap in 2021 ended in a crash at the final turn.

Monaco qualifying reminded us it’s not just the car when it comes to Verstappen. The precision and execution which allowed him to overcome Alonso’s time in the final sector will go down as something of legend.

5. Five at No. 5

• The movement to turn the Charlotte Roval playoff race back into the Charlotte oval playoff race is alive and well after Dale Earnhardt Jr. gave it a bump on his Twitter account Monday night. And he’s right, of course. The Roval was a genius concept by Marcus Smith at a time when 1.5-mile-track racing was boring and road courses were all the rage (and there were only two on the schedule at the time). But now, intermediate tracks like the Charlotte oval are the best racing NASCAR has to offer, and the schedule is oversaturated with road courses (six). Putting the playoff race back on the oval, with how well the Next Gen car has performed there the last two years, seems like an easy win at this point.

• The double rainouts for the Coca-Cola 600 and the 300-mile Xfinity Series race created the longest single day of NASCAR racing in history. Two drivers attempted their own version of a Memorial Day Weekend Double. Justin Haley and Ty Gibbs ran both races on the same day, putting them 1-2 on the list of NASCAR drivers who have raced the most miles in a single day. Haley finished on the lead lap but was one lap down in the Xfinity race (he was subbing for Kyle Busch and the seat didn’t fit correctly) for a total of 898.5 miles completed; Gibbs was two laps down in the Cup race and finished on the lead lap of Xfinity, which left him at 897 miles run. Either way, those records figure to stand forever (let’s hope, at least).

• With 15 playoff points (the equivalent of three wins) on the line, the battle for the regular-season championship is suddenly wide open after Ross Chastain struggled to a 22nd-place finish on Monday. Chastain is still the points leader, but only by one point over Blaney. Four other drivers — William Byron, Kevin Harvick, Martin Truex Jr. and Christopher Bell — are also within 17 points of the top spot. The most impressive among those is Byron, who is in the mix despite a 60-point penalty which could have taken him out of the mix completely. Instead, he’s already erased it (Byron is four points behind Chastain) and could end up winning the regular season title in spite of the setback.


Chase Elliott leads Ross Chastain during the Coca-Cola 600. Chastain, who finished 22nd, is still the points leader by a point over Ryan Blaney. (Jim Dedmon / USA Today)

• Speaking of points, how about Alex Bowman? It was clear Bowman was still in pain after recently breaking his back in a sprint car, but he returned to Charlotte and ended up with a 12th-place finish in the longest race of the season. Now he’s four points inside of the current playoff bubble (this despite missing three races) and has the chance to point his way into the 16-driver field even if he doesn’t win a race. That said, Bowman’s position is far from safe. The problem is a new winner from outside the top 16 (like A.J. Allmendinger on a road course, for example) would move the cutoff line.

• When Ricky Stenhouse Jr. won the Daytona 500 to lock himself into the NASCAR playoffs, our reaction was something along the lines of “Well, we know one team that will get eliminated in the first round.” After all, Stenhouse finished 26th in the point standings last year and hasn’t ranked in the top 20 since 2018. But the Daytona 500 was no one-off fluke. Stenhouse and his No. 47 JTG Daugherty Racing team are 13th in the points (ahead of defending series champion Joey Logano) just past the halfway point of the regular season. Stenhouse has improved his average finish by an astounding eight positions so far this year and has already matched his top-10 total from last season (five). If JTG can keep giving him cars like the one he had on Monday, when he finished seventh, he might make more noise than expected when the playoffs arrive.

(Top photo of Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden leading the field after taking the checkered flag in the Indy 500: Michael Allio / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)



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