2020 Indy 500 to Run With No Fans in Stands
IndyCar president Roger Penske has finally changed his mind: the 2020 edition of the Indianapolis 500 will take place without any attendance.
Earlier this year, the race was postponed until August 23 due to the coronavirus pandemic. It will mark the first time in 109 years that fans are not allowed in the stands.
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Penske had previously said the Indy 500 would not happen in an empty Indianapolis Motor Speedway. However, positive cases in Marion County have tripled since June 26, while the positivity rate has doubled, leaving organizers with no other solution.
“What I hope people recognize is that we’ve done everything possible to be able to do it with fans,” Penske Entertainment Corp. president and CEO Mark Mark Miles told IndyStar Tuesday. “This plan will go down as the model for how to do a mass gathering under these circumstances if it were possible.
“We’ve said all along that we had to hang in there and see if the public health situation would allow us to do it, and we’re at least as disappointed as all the fans that we can’t have them there this year.”
There will be roughly 1,500 essential personnel on the grounds of the track on race day.
The Indy 500 has been cancelled just six times in the past including the final two years of World War I and the final four years of World War II.