Indy 500 preview: Will experience or youth be victorious?

A quarter of the drivers racing in the 105th edition of the Indianapolis 500 are former winners - but are they the favourites? The veteran drivers largely impressed in qualifying - but there's also a plethora of young guns looking to secure victory at IndyCar's flagship race...

David Malsher-Lopez May 25, 2021, 10:57 AM

Upd: May 30, 2021, 4:40 PM

Much has been made of the fact that there are nine former winners in the 33 cars qualified for this weekend’s 105th running of the Indianapolis 500. They are Juan Pablo Montoya, Helio Castroneves, Scott Dixon, Tony Kanaan, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Alexander Rossi, Takuma Sato, Will Power and Simon Pagenaud, who between them have 13 victories at the iconic 2.5-mile superspeedway.

That’s the most winners to start the race since 10 took the green in the 1992 edition, so yes, it’s a big deal. And it looked like an even bigger deal after the first day of practice last week, when seven of those nine managed to occupy the top 11 slots. After the excitement of three new winners in the first five races of the 2021 IndyCar season, was the world’s oldest venue now playing into the hands of the veterans?

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Author David Malsher-Lopez

David Malsher-Lopez is Motorsport.com’s U.S. editor, covering the NTT IndyCar Series and IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. Since completing journalism college in 1994, he has worked for Autosport, TRMG, Motor Sport, Autosport (again) and Racer, before joining Motorsport.com in 2015… where he has found himself enjoying a third spell writing for Autosport. Over the course of those 27 years, he has served as a journalist, sub-editor, features editor, deputy editor and editor. In 2015, he also wrote Will Power’s biography. David lives with his wife Sophia in California and when not writing about racing, he will be found reading about planes and classic cars, attending airshows, listening to a wide variety of music or watching cop shows from the ’70s. He intends to one day own a grand piano, an Airedale terrier and a vintage Pontiac. He doesn’t do Facebook and doesn’t understand Instagram but can be found @DavidMalsher on Twitter.