Indy 500's $2.4m champion on driving sponsorships
It's called "The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.” The Indianapolis 500 is one of the largest sporting events in the whole world and this year’s champion drank the victor’s milk twice.
The 2015 winner, Juan Pablo Montoya’s first win was as a rookie back in 2000. The 15-year gap between the victories was long but awarded Montoya’s team owner Roger Penske a record 16 wins for the Indy 500. The driver also feels the momentous accomplishment, “racing for Penske..and to be a part of a list of drivers that has won for him, that’s pretty cool.”
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Race car driving is an expensive sport, where partners and sponsorships are essential to success. Montoya said he is fortunate to have a team that backs him financially, “I race for great people, I race for Roger Penske, and they got great partners like Verizon, they have a lot more partners as well like Shell.”
But it’s just Montoya that gets to take home $2,449,055 from an overall purse of $13,397,315 for winning the race. The driver said being familiar with the race gave him a winning edge “I’ve only done the Indy 500 three times and the more you race, you learn more about the culture and you learn more about what it means.”
0.1046 seconds is all it took to come out in first place, but when it comes to spending his winnings, the Colombian racer joked he was at the New York Stock Exchange (ICE) not just to do interviews but to consider investing his money.
Companies like Google (GOOG) and Tesla (TSLA) are in hot pursuit of developing self-driving cars. But as for ever seeing the two-time Indy 500 winner inside a driverless car, Montoya laughed, “I don’t know…we’ll see.”
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