It was Indianapolis Motor Speedway founder Carl Fisher who came up with the idea of ditching the standing start for the more spectacular – and in Fisher’s mind, safer – rolling start. He would lead the field – at that time, 40 cars arranged in eight rows of five! – driving a Stoddard-Dayton at 45mph.
Every Indy 500 has used a pace car ever since. Fisher paced the first five and then it became the duty and honor of various automotive industry figures or retired racers, and a great marketing tool for car manufacturers to supply the cars. That had the potential to raise some interesting juxtapositions – Louis Chevrolet piloting a Chrysler in 1926, for instance – and cause some issues after the race, too. From 1936 it became traditional for the 500 winner to be awarded the pace car, but in ’65, the Ford Motor Company, fundamental to Team Lotus’s assault on the Indy 500, did not let its winner Jimmy Clark accept the keys to the Plymouth Sport Fury pace car.
