Crowd at Indy

[Napoleon]

Well it looked like there were some pretty significant gaps in the crowd, and thats after years of removing seats from the facility. Anyone who was there have pictures of head ons of any stands, or know of links to any pictures on the web that may give us a better idea of the crowd?

[cartmanoz]

I heard that there are only 240,000 grandstand seats TOTAL now.

So much for 400,000 as there were not many in the infield.:rolleyes:

[pchall]

Only 240,000 reserved seats?

The last numbers I heard bandied about by Speedway savvy folks were 275,000 grandstand and the capability of 100,000 general admission infield. And more seats and infield have been disappearing since then.

I doubt that decent photographs of the crowd yesterday will ever be made available. The best you'll do is the ABC video where the camermen actually followed the racing closely in a turn instead of leaving it a wide shot to blur the crowd.

[Ziggy]

To tell the truth, it was hard to tell. Lets put it this way, there were more people there than I had seen at any other race in a long time. By far. We had empty seats around us, six right in front of us. Four up a row and to the left etc. This was pretty common for as far as I could see. Down low on pit road looked very spotty, as did some of the suites, which I found odd... With this many people, its really hard to judge. Indicators of trash and traffic were a split, with trash being heavy and traffic being light. Maybe less people are throwing more stuff on the ground.....

Ziggy

PS - Sold two extra tickets for face value and gave two tickets away

[bullet]

Aerial shot of Dan Weldon's crash showed a lot of empty seats.

[Railbird]

It was a soft crowd for Indy but a huge crowd by any other comparison. The "pressure" is down a bit but the majority of the seats were filled.

The "pressure" returns in August and that kind of sickens me.

[cart7]

Serious empty aluminum in the NE vista starting at the entrance of 3 to nearly mid-turn. Empties in the North chute like last year. Couldn't tell about anywhere else. Kind of a snoozer of a race. I also enjoyed Carnegie reminding us how reliable the new equipment was which contradicted the race which had engines and transmissions letting go at a fast pace.

[RTKar]

I didn't feel squeezed in my seat like I did from 90-95. There must have been scattered seats throughout the stands, allowing people more room to spread out. During the race I noticed several areas with a metallic shine in turn 3 and between 3 and 4. Saturday morning before we left for Indy I checked the IMS website for tickets just for kicks. Most of the choice stands were sold out but I could have gotten 25 seats together in a couple of locations. One indication to me of an events profile is what scalpers or people selling extras are getting for tickets. After attending many, many events from concerts to sporting events, (including playoff and All-Star games) over the years, is that the Indy 500 is dropping from the general publics radar. I was offered two $75 tickets for $25 each...It really doesn't give me great joy to see the 500 whithering, despite my dislike for the irl. To me, the cancer is deeper. It's indicative of the fall open wheel racing in North America.