The 81st Indianapolis 500 was held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana, on May 25–27, 1997. The race was scheduled for Sunday May 25, but was postponed until Monday May 26 due to rain. Rain then halted the race after only fifteen laps had been completed. On Tuesday, May 27, the race was resumed and run to completion. Arie Luyendyk won the race from the pole position, his second of two Indy victories (1990, 1997). Treadway Racing, in only their second season of competition, finished 1st–2nd with Luyendyk and Scott Goodyear, the first team to sweep the top two finishing positions at Indianapolis since Leader Cards in 1962. Luyendyk became the first driver since A. J. Foyt to win the race with both a turbocharged and a normally aspirated engine, while Goodyear posted his second runner-up finish (1992). It marked the third time he narrowly lost the "500" in the closing stages.
It was the second Indianapolis 500 held as part of the USAC-sanctioned Indy Racing League, and was part of the 1996–97 Indy Racing League season. It marked the introduction of a production-based, normally aspirated engine formula that reduced speeds from the previous year, and of a new chassis design that was noticeably different mechanically and visually.
A controversy during qualifying saw two bumped cars re-added to the starting field after the time trials. The starting grid consisted of 35 cars, up from the traditional 33. It was the first time 1979, and only the second time since 1933 that more than 33 cars made up the field. However, only 29 cars took the green flag after two failed to start due to mechanical problems, and three others were eliminated in a crash during the pace lap.
With two laps to go in the race, Luyendyk led with Goodyear running second. A caution came out on the 199th lap after Tony Stewart brushed the turn four wall. The pace car did not come out to pack up the field. Drivers and crews expected the race would finish under the caution. Without warning, the green and white flags were displayed at the starter's stand on the final lap, signifying the track was back to racing conditions. None of the drivers in the field were prepared for the restart, and yellow lights around the course remained illuminated for many seconds afterwards. Luyendyk held on to win, but the officials' handling of the situation drew sharp criticism. This incident, followed by a scoring snafu two weeks later at Texas, led the IRL to oust USAC as sanctioning body in favor of in-house officiating.
The win marked the milestone 50th Indianapolis 500 victory for Firestone tires. It was their second in a row, and second since returning to Indy car racing in 1995. Starting in 2000, Firestone would become the lone tire supplier of the series.
Race schedule The 1997 race was the last to use the three-week/four-weekend, month-of-May schedule (23 days) established in the mid-1970s. Practice started on Saturday, twenty-two days before the race. It was also the last to use the traditional four days of time trials, a format that dated back to 1952.
A few days before the race, a fire swept through the storage hangar housing the floats for the 500 Festival Parade, slated for May 24 in downtown Indianapolis. Only four floats were spared; Buddy Lazier's 1996 winning car escaped the fire only because the museum had decided to wait a few days before delivering it to the float staging area. The parade went on as scheduled, but in a slightly retooled format.
Race schedule — May 1997SunMonTueWedThuFriSat 1 2 3ROP 4ROP 5ROP 6Practice 7Practice 8Practice 9Practice10Pole Day11Time Trials12Practice13Practice14Practice15Practice16Practice17Time Trials18Bump Day19 20 21 22Carb Day23 24Testing25Indy 50026Indy 50027Indy 50028 29 30 31 Color Notes Green Practice Dark Blue Time trials Silver Race day Red Rained out* Blank No track activity * Includes days where trackactivity was significantlylimited due to rain
ROP — denotes RookieOrientation Program
Background
New engine and chassis package The 1997 race featured new engines and new cars under changes to Indy Racing League rules intended to cut costs, lower speeds, and bring the racing cars closer together.
The rules required a switch to a normally aspirated production-based formula with 4.0 L, 32-valve production-based engines from two manufacturers: Oldsmobile Aurora (L47) and Nissan Infiniti (VH).
New chassis rules required parts from Dallara and G-Force. (Riley & Scott also was selected as a chassis manufacturer, but they were not yet ready for competition.) Visible differences from older cars included the airbox above the engine cowling, larger wings, taller sidepods, and an overall bulkier appearance. The new cars produced more downforce than the previous machines, changing the driving characteristics.
Arie Luyendyk, who had set a track record of over 237 mph in 1996, managed just 217 mph in his best 1997 qualifying lap.
With turbochargers legislated out of the series, the 1997 race was the first since the early 1960s to feature a full field of piston-powered, normally aspirated powerplants. The new crossplane crankshaft engines were also much louder than their turbocharged, flat-plane crank counterparts, leading some fans and media to compare them to the sound of NASCAR engines.
Track changes The track was repaved in the fall of 1995. After the 1996 Brickyard 400, the apexes of the four turns were breaking up. During the offseason, track crews repaved the apexes with a different compound of asphalt. The result was a better surface, but a visibly darker area in the apexes.
Continuing split from CART The ongoing IRL/CART split continued into its second year, and no teams from the CART ranks entered at Indianapolis. With the new IRL chassis and engine rules for 1997, the two series now had substantially different and incompatible equipment. CART-based teams that wished to enter the Indy 500 would henceforth be required to purchase all new cars and engines, and few if any had the interest or the budget to do so. The alternative U.S. 500, however, was cancelled after only one running. Instead of running another race the same day as the Indy 500, CART teams participated in the Motorola 300 at the newly opened Gateway International Raceway on Saturday, May 24, the day before the Indy 500 was scheduled.
The only CART-based team from 1996 that raced at Indy was Galles Racing, which had switched full-time to the IRL during the winter. Robby Gordon, a CART regular from 1992 to 1996, moved to NASCAR in 1997 to drive for Team SABCO, and owner Felix Sabates arranged for Gordon to attempt the "Double Duty", planning to race at Indy and the Coca-Cola 600 in the same day. The effort was well-funded and received considerable media attention. Gordon and Scott Goodyear, who had switched to full-time IRL competition with newcomers Panther Racing, became the first drivers to come back to the Speedway among the 22 starters from 1995 that had not entered the 1996 event; only ten of those 22 would eventually race again at Indy.
On April 11, during a public meeting, Indy Racing League's executive director Leo Mehl stated that CART had pressured in previous years to reduce the Indianapolis 500 to a three-day race, and emphasized that "is a myth that the other side has all the top drivers and you don't have to look very far back into recent history to see a demonstration of that myth. IRL has plenty of top stars to showcase once the press ends its infatuation with propagating opinion instead of facts". Mehl also quoted the creation of the IRL as "necessary", because of stagnant television ratings, NASCAR's rise and the increasing flux of grassroots open wheel drivers into stock car racing.
1996–97 IRL season
The IRL made the Indianapolis 500 its final race of its first season, so the IRL champion would be crowned after the race, which might even determine the champion. The second season of the IRL, referred to as the 1996–97 season, was originally to begin at Loudon in August 1996, and conclude with the 1997 Indy 500 in May 1997.
But in October 1996, league officials announced that the series would revert to a traditional calendar-based season. To aid the transition, the 1996–97 season would include the two races run in late 1996 and all races run in the calendar year of 1997. The Indianapolis 500 would no longer serve as the season finale.
25/8 Rule and locked-in entries
For the second year in a row, 25 of the 33 starting grid positions for the Indianapolis 500 were set aside for the top 25 cars in the 1996-97 season IRL points standings. Known as the "25/8 Rule", the controversial arrangement was introduced during the 1996 IRL season and had been a key reason that CART teams boycotted the 1996 race. IRL officials argued that the rule had already served its purpose of guaranteeing a starting field for other races on the IRL schedule, leaving the door open for its demise in 1998. This was eventually confirmed during the month.
The format, which would be mimicked years later by NASCAR's Top 35 rule, guaranteed a "locked-in" starting position for the top 25 entries in owner points (not drivers), as long as they completed a four-lap qualifying run over a minimum prescribed speed: 203 mph. The grid would still be arranged by speed rank. The remaining eight positions would be filled by non-top 25 entries, and bumping could only occur among those eight positions and the non-top 25 participants.
The #15 and the #74 entries, both raced at the first two races of the 1996-97 season, never appeared during the month of May. Della Penna Motorsports had left the Indy Racing League at the end of calendar year 1996 to compete in CART, while Tempero-Giuffre Racing stayed away from the track despite entering an Infiniti-powered G-Force. Therefore, only 23 of the 25 eligible "locked-in" entries were present to accept their berth, and ten at-large starting positions were up for grabs at the onset of qualifying.
Entry list The entry list was published on April 21. The 22 cars that had run the first two rounds of the 1997 year were entered, including the #17 Chitwood Motorsports entry, with Affonso Giaffone having been confirmed for the rest of the season, and the #30 McCormack Motorsports car, initially unassigned as Jeret Schroeder hadn't yet struck a financial deal with the team. Out of those 22 cars, only the #16 (Blueprint Racing) and the #50 (EuroInternational) were at-large entries.
Apart from Robby Gordon's entry, eight further driver/car combinations were registered: Eliseo Salazar, back in his full-time ride with Team Scandia, and Lyn St. James were making comeback bids from their injuries, as well as Alessandro Zampedri, who was confirmed back in December and would also stay on Scandia afterwards. Jeff Ward, who failed to qualify for the 1995 race, was signed to drive for Team Cheever's second entry on April 10, while the release of the entry list confirmed the participation of two Indy car debutants: Vincenzo Sospiri, the 1995 Formula 3000 champion and brief Formula 1 driver for the failed MasterCard Lola team, and Greg Ray, third in the 1994 Atlantic Championship and 12th in the previous Indy Lights season. Ray was run by Knapp Motorsports, a spin-off team of the Genoa Racing outfit that was competing in Indy Lights.
Besides, Tyce Carlson was entered by PDM Racing in their second car, and Gary Bettenhausen was announced as the driver of the #81 car, an at-large entry fielded by newcomers Terhune-Barnets Racing and run by LP Racing, in an attempt to make his 22nd Indy 500 start. However, on April 25 he was replaced on the entry list by Mark Dismore, backed by Kelley Automotive Group, who had placed orders on the yet-to-be-delivered chassis from Riley & Scott the previous year.