Posted on 05/18/2025 4:10:32 PM PDT by God luvs America
A year after locking out the front row, none of the three Team Penske cars were able to make a run at the pole position for the 2025 Indianapolis 500. And the man starting first is an IndyCar Series rookie.
Robert Shwartzman was a stunning pole winner on Sunday after he posted the fastest four laps during the top-six shootout. Shwartzman, a former Formula 1 reserve driver, posted a four-lap average of 232.790 MPH to best Takuma Sato for the top spot.
Sato, a two-time Indy 500 winner, will start second. Pato O'Ward will start third.
Shwartzman is the first rookie to start on pole in the Indianapolis 500 in 43 years. It's a shock. His Prema Racing team is in its first season in the IndyCar Series and has been an absolute mess so far in 2025. Shwartzman is 24th in the standings and his teammate Callum Illott is 26th. There are 27 full-time drivers in the IndyCar Series.
"Honestly I can't believe it, I was closing my eyes like this is a dream it can't be true," Shwartzman said after he officially won the pole.
The Indianapolis 500 is Shwartzman's first-ever race on an oval. He didn't compete at all in the opening day of practice because his car wasn't ready.
(Excerpt) Read more at sports.yahoo.com ...
None of the Penske cars ran in the final six for the top qualifying spots- one accident this morning in practice and two failed tech inspection...
May the Swartz Be with You !
Team Penske isn’t Penske material!
Maybe they should have taken the larger office.
Grew up karting, then F4 and through the Formula Series to being F1 reserve driver for Scuderia Ferrari. Pretty good racing pedigree.
I’ve been to the Indi 500 a couple of times. Even took my little kids once, too long and noisy for my daughter who just yowled. People nearby said they felt like yelling too.
Knew the woman whose family owned the stadium, Antoinette Hulman, a friend of mine who died years ago. No clue who owns it now.
Fun sport if you’re into it. I’m not any more. Just watch golf on TV.
Ta Ta, Tuttle!
Guess the driver isn’t Penske material
Penske owns the whole show now...i was there in 2015- absolutely incredible!!
Is he a Black Man as his name suggests?
Penske is the right owner.
Glad you enjoyed the race. I was there when Lotus was in the race. I managed the Lotus showroom in Chicago, Weird job for a woman. but sold a lot of cars. Even owned an Elan, which we drove down to Indi from Evanston, IL.
Today? blind in one eye, gave my car to a friend.
Truly amazing what this young man did, first race on an oval and he gets pole position. This simply does not happen.
The Penske Corporation owns it now...
I’ve never been to one of these but I drove my new 88 Dodge Daytona CS on the Hungaroring for $5 an hour!
We went for years. A friend had a block of tickets through his company, and the race was a big annual thing. We saw some great races and were also there in the jinxed year of 1973, although we gave up after slogging up to Indianapolis for the second day, which also didn’t see a finish. We weren’t far from the spot where the spectator was killed by the tire in ‘87; we saw the tire spin off in the accident and come sailing over the grandstand, but we stayed glued to the rather dramatic events on the track. Then kids and school schedules made it too complicated to try to get back to Indiana for Memorial Day.
My favorite memory many years later does not involve actual racing; it has to do with Jim Nabors getting outed. As you may recall, God put Jim Nabors on earth to sing Back Home Again in Indiana. No one has ever done it better, or ever will. He had always lived very quietly with no public scandal. Everyone knew he was gay, but no one cared.
Anyhow, some idiot outed him and the powers that be got worried about what 300,000 drunken hooligan race fans might do. This was slightly unfair as most of us were not denizens of the Snakepit, and I think it’s possible that at least a few of us were sober, although race day is definitely a big day for the beer merchants in Indiana (and a sad day for chickens).
So I can tell you what 300,000 drunken race fans did when someone else was announced as singing Back Home Again. Nabors had been quietly asked to stand down and someone else was given the gig. Someone started a chant, “We Want Gomer,” and the chant was picked up by everyone, rolling around the grandstands for longer than it took to run the race. I may exaggerate slightly about the duration, but not about the deafening level of emphatic fan support.
Gomer was back the next year and continued until advancing years finally forced the legend to stand down for good. And the race ain’t been the same since.
My wife’s 2nd cousin got killed testing tires @ Indy in Oct. 2003. He had finished 7th in that years Indy and was on a fast track to rock & roll. No known video, but witnesses said it was the worst crash they ever saw.
If you believe that then you haven’t seen Dan Wheldon’s crash. Sickening.
Cool. My mother was a terrible bitch who hated me. So I wanted to go away for my last two years of high school. She said, OK as long as it was a Catholic school. My dad, who loved me and could afford anything, drove me to various Catholic girl’s high school. Ladywood School in Indianapolis was located on the largest estate in Indianapolis, whose very Catholic owners donated it to the Sisters of Providence. I went there for my Junior and Senior years of high school.
Had a lot of fun there and got a seriously great education. My roommate was the daughter of GM president. We had a wonderful and not very holy time together disobeying the ridiculous rules. Antoinette Hulman, who graduated before I got here and was daughter of Tony Hulman,, came to our fashion show, thought I was the best (very chaste) model. We knew we would be best friends for life.
Most pole sitters do not win Indy.
Qual is kind of a sprint, but Indy 500 race is more a marathon than sprint.
Good luck!
wouldn’t know. weldon’s crash was a couple of years later. I just saw the video...pretty bad.
I thought andretti going airborne was pretty bad and he lived: https://youtu.be/kMeE9NAh60I
Here’s one account of my wife’s cousin crash. (Some Rumors were he was decapitated.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20040105163604/http://www.indyracing.com/indycar/news/story.php?story_id=2184
here’s a bunch of conjecture; https://www.reddit.com/r/INDYCAR/comments/2x9w9a/i_probably_shouldnt_ask_but_what_actually/
interesting here; https://lostmediawiki.com/Tony_Renna_(lost_security_camera_footage_of_fatal_IndyCar_test_session_crash;_2003)
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