INDYCAR MEDIA CONFERENCE

May 28, 2021

Doug Boles

Joel Wittman

Press Conference

DOUG BOLES: Right now we want to unveil the logo for the 106th running of the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge, May 29th next year, in 2022.

A few images help us lead into this logo. This year obviously is an anniversary year for three of our four-time winners: A.J. Foyt, 60 years ago, Al Unser 50 years ago, and 30 years ago Rick Mears with his fourth year, obviously last year with Takuma Sato.

Something that is familiar among those four drivers, started in 1960 with Jim Rathmann, is the wreath that the driver gets when they were in Victory Lane. That wreath was designed by a guy named Bill Cronin who did some work with the Rose Parade and helped us design ours.

For the last 29 years Julie Harman Vance has done it for us. The one for this year was completed yesterday. This is not it. It's ready for the winner on Sunday. This one is one she created for us out of silk flowers.

Over the last three years we've had a logo that really features the Indy 500. We can take that Indy 500 out of the logo, plug it in by itself, use it in a logo lockup year after year. We started out with our bricks. We used the checkered flag. This year the logo is inside of the pagoda. Those are some of our iconic images.

Joel Wittman on our creative team, Joel come up. This is your work, so I'm going to let you do this. It's actually been interesting. This was the first logo we created with the input of Roger Penske. Normally Joel creates things, we like it because of what Joel does. Roger liked it. He helped you 5% smaller here. It was an interesting process to watch the two of you work. A couple color changes that you're really pleased with what you and Roger came up with.

You're going to see a golden here, which is a gold that you expect when you win something, the champion's gold. A really robust red that gives it a regal feel that I think we're really pleased with.

Joel, if you can go ahead and pull this off, this will be the logo for the 106th running of the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge. The lockup that you can see, standalone, sit inside that lockup. We're pretty pleased with these containers, if you will, that hold the Indy 500. This year it's the pagoda. Next year it will be the wreath. Really excited about moving forward.

A couple of things related to this. The checkered flag at the Indy 500 will fall on Sunday, weather looks really good. I feel good about saying that. Then beginning on Monday the 500 hours to renew. You'll start seeing this logo reminding people to renew their tickets under the 500 hours. Basically gets you to June 21st. Pretty excited about it.

I'm going to put Joel on the spot and give him the microphone, which I know he doesn't want. As you've been thinking about these iconic images, walk through why this is a special logo?

JOEL WITTMAN: I do not like being on the mic, so bear with me. As you touched on, Doug, in 2019 we started this logo system. We really thought about sort of the icons of the track. In 2019 you saw the bricks, which the Yard of Bricks is an icon of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. We did the checkered flag in 2020. Then this year is the iconic pagoda. The wreath seemed like a natural progression after that.

There's a few more icons left. We'll explore more in the future.

DOUG BOLES: With that I will let everybody go back to work. We're excited. I can't wait for 366 days from now when we get to run the 106th running of the Indy 500.