It’s billed as the fastest racing on earth. Indy Cars, as they’re called, can hit 240 miles an hour on an oval track – that’s more than a football field every second. And a second is about all it takes to end someone’s day.
In this sport, not all the big names are drivers. David Letterman has co-owned an Indy Car team since 1996, and in that time, Rahal-Letterman-Lanigan Racing has won the Indy 500 twice.
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We asked Letterman himself what made Indy Car racing so appealing. “When I was a kid, my family (and every family on our block) would have it on the radio. And it would be Memorial Day, and Dad would be home from work, and we’d be having a cookout. And I can remember listening to the broadcast sitting in a tree. So, that was my first memory of it. It wasn’t an option; it was mandatory. It was part of the culture of living in Indianapolis.”
I asked, “And now that you’re a co-owner, which you’ve been for almost three decades now –”
“Isn’t that crazy?” he laughed.
“What’s your role on race day?”
“On race day? Listen to the race, sitting in a tree,” Letterman replied. “That’s what they want me to do.”
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There are now 17 race days every year, at tracks from coast to coast, and the sport is promoting a new crop of heroes, like Team Penske driver Josef Newgarden. He’s won the Indy 500 (still considered the granddaddy of the Indy series) back-to-back, in 2023 and 2024. By tradition, the winning driver celebrates with a big swig of milk, and in 2024, Newgarden’s wife and son joined him in another Indy tradition: kissing the speedway track.
We caught up with Newgarden a few weeks ago before the Long Beach Grand Prix. I asked him, “Do you have a mantra that you say? Anything you tell yourself?”
“I don’t know that I have a specific mantra, but I try not to be superstitious,” he replied. “I just try to be positive more than anything. If that’s my mantra, it’s positivity.”
Team McLaren driver Pato O’Ward has just about everything a race car driver needs; the only thing he’s missing is an Indy 500 win. He’s come agonizingly close, and in 2024 O’Ward just about had it won, but Newgarden passed him in the final lap. “I know I’m going to get my Indy 500 win, because I’ve been damn good there every single year,” O’Ward said. “So, I know the more I put myself in that position, I’m going to get at least one.”
What is it like to win one of these races? According to Letterman, “It’s a jolt of adrenaline I have never experienced in my life. There was a crush of people around me. And suddenly I’m not just Dumbbell Dave, the talk show host. I’m the owner of the Indianapolis 500 winner. And that euphoria stays with you, well, you may be able to tell, I still have a touch of that in me.”
For more than a century, speed demons have been chasing Indy Car trophies. The first Indianapolis 500 dates back to 1911, and it quickly became one of the premier sporting spectacles of the year, drawing huge crowds attracted by the sound and the speed. In 1926, racers sped better than 90 miles an hour!
In the last century, Indy Car racing has changed: it’s much faster, and recently more popular. The Indy Car brand withered for a few years under an internal re-organization, but now the crowds are coming back. This year’s Indy 500 grandstand was sold out for the first time in nearly a decade, and the place is starting to look like it did back in 1969, when Mario Andretti took the checkered flag.
Asked how sweet that milk tastes, Andretti said, “Honey cannot compare!”
At 85, Andretti’s still in the game as a team owner. “I think the ability of the drivers that you have in place [today], the talent is unprecedented,” he said. “It’s unbelievable, yeah.”
I asked, “Are you saying those guys are more talented than you were?”
Well, he didn’t go that far.
Race car safety has come a long way since Andretti’s day; the track walls are now padded, the drivers are more protected. But while it’s safer, it not safe, and the worst can still happen, says AP motorsports reporter Jenna Fryer. “It’ll never be safe; you can never call racing safe,” she said. “They can be idiots. And if they get upset with each other and one wants to retaliate against the other, you know, people do stupid stuff. They see red, they kind of forget what they’re doing for a second. There’s no way to ever say, ‘Racing is safe.'”
But for drivers, it really is just part of the game. Asked if he ever thinks of the danger while driving, O’Ward replied, “No. You think of winning. You think of winning when you’re in that car. At least I do. That’s all I think of.”
This year’s Indy 500 winner wasn’t O’Ward or Newgarden, or anyone from Letterman’s team. It was Spanish driver Alex Palou.
But there are nine more races this season, and on an oval track, you never know what’s around the bend.
Letterman said, “What I love about it is the romance of it. And the sound is unlike anything you’ve ever heard. The sound is something humans were not meant to hear.”
I asked, “What does that sound do to you?”
“This is a good measure for my heart; if it doesn’t accelerate my heart beyond what human’s hearts should be accelerated, then there’s something wrong,” he said.
When asked what he would say to someone who has never seen an Indy Car race, Letterman said, “Oh, for God sakes, it doesn’t even pertain to motor sports fans, just go. I mean, one day. It’s unimaginable. And you may not go back, but you’ll talk about it the rest of your life.”
WEB EXCLUSIVE: Extended interview with David Letterman
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Story produced by John D’Amelio. Editor: Steven Tyler.