Wrapping up the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix with winning driver Kyle Kirkwood and Penske Corporation President Bud Denker. Also, 109th Indianapolis 500 winning driver Alex Palou

Roger Penske:
This is Roger Penske and you're listening to Pit Pass Indie, sponsored by Penske Truck Rental.

Bruce Martin: IndyCar fans, it's time to start your engines. Welcome to Pit Pass Indy, a production of Evergreen Podcast. I'm your host, Bruce Martin, a journalist who regularly covers the NTT IndyCar Series. Our goal at Pit Pass Indy is to give racing fans an insider's view of the exciting world of the NTT IndyCar Series in a fast-paced podcast featuring interviews with the biggest names in the sport. I bring nearly 40 years of experience covering IndyCar and NASCAR, working for such media brands as NBCSports.com, SI.com, ESPN SportsTicker, Sports Illustrated, AutoWeek and SpeedSport. So let's drop the green flag on this episode of Pit Pass Indy. Welcome to this special bonus edition of Pit Pass Indy presented by Penske Truck Rental as we continue our fifth season of giving IndyCar fans an inside look at the most exciting form of racing on the planet, the NTT IndyCar Series. And a big thanks to Penske Truck Rental for helping bring you the inside stories of IndyCar from the paddock to the racetrack to the highways and streets of America. With the 109th Indianapolis 500 completed, the NTT IndyCar Series headed to Detroit for the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix on June 1st. It was another action-packed and physical race on the bumpy streets of Detroit, but in the end, it was Kyle Kirkwood who crossed the finish line first and took the checkered flag. It was the Andretti Global Driver's fourth career IndyCar victory and his second win this season. The only other driver that has won this season is Alex Pillow, who won five of the first six races, including the 109th Indianapolis 500. At Detroit, however, Pillow had his first DNF of the season when he was hit from behind by AJ Foyt Racing driver David Maloukas and crashed into the turn one tire barrier on lap 72 of the 100 lap race. He finished 25th after starting fifth in the 27 car field. Before hitting the streets of Detroit, Palou was taken on a media tour to New York as the Indianapolis 500 winning driver. Here's my exclusive interview with Palou for Pit Pass Indy before the Detroit race weekend, as he recaps his experiences as an Indy 500 winning driver. Hail the conquering hero. It's 109th Indianapolis 500 winning driver, Alex Palou. It's been just a few days since you won the Indianapolis 500. The world wants to know, do you have your voice back?

Alex Palou: It's there. It's almost there. It's almost there. I lost a little bit on, well, I lost like 80% of it on Sunday. Then I lost like 10 more percent on Monday. And on Tuesday, I was like almost done. in the morning, but yeah, just had tons of honey. Everything that I read that it was helping my throat and my voice, I was just like trying to get it. So yeah, I'm happy that I'm able to speak right now.

Bruce Martin: When you win the Indianapolis 500, they require you to do a lot of talking, which couldn't be good for the voice that you had to do all those interviews and everything. It was good because you were the Indy 500 winner, but I bet you wish your voice had been back to 100%.

Alex Palou: Yeah, and especially I felt bad on Tuesday in New York because we flew to New York to do a lot of interviews and there was a lot of moments where I just couldn't really talk much or it was tough to understand, but anyway. I mean, it's a good stuff that that happened. That happened just because of the emotion of screaming with the team. So yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad it's almost back.

Bruce Martin: So after you were honored at the Indianapolis 500 Victory Awards celebration, you got your big check, you posed with the team, you celebrated. What happened from that point forward?

Alex Palou: Oh, I don't think we have enough time for that. But we went to New York that night, got there very late, started very early in the morning on Tuesday, went to very different TV shows and different interviews on radios. podcast, like we did a ton, a ton of stuff. I did some really fun stuff, um, like with Empire State Building, like that was probably one of the highlights, um, as well as being in Times Square and just seeing my, uh, my face up there for a couple of, uh, of minutes. So it was just a ton of fun, a ton of work. But, um, although I'm, I'm tired and exhausted, um, it's been the best moments of my entire career.

Bruce Martin: What did you think of the Empire State Building? That's one of the most iconic buildings on earth.

Alex Palou: So I had the opportunity to visit before COVID, but that was before they did the remodeling or all the museum part, I don't know how you say it, inside of it. Renovation. The renovation, yeah. So after the renovation, it looks amazing. It looked amazing before, but with the renovation, it looks insane. And I got to experience the top, the very, very, very top. And it was awesome. Probably, as I said, one of my favorite moments.

Bruce Martin: So the top was where King Kong was in the movie, King Kong, way back when. But in a lot of ways, you're King Kong of IndyCar. After the Indianapolis 500, that was your fifth win in six races, so that's pretty strong. Hey, gotta ask you though, did you throw out the first pitch at the Mets game?

Alex Palou: Yes, and I don't know if you saw the video, but I did terrible at the first pitch. It was a really bad execution by my side. I didn't throw it hard enough. Yeah, I'm a bit ashamed of that because we were practicing, I was doing great, and then when I went to do the first pitch, I did terrible.

Bruce Martin: How were you treated by the fans? Because this was only a few days after you showed up at the next Pacers NBA Eastern Conference Finals.

Alex Palou: There was a couple of them that knew that. There was a couple of them that knew that I was at the Pacers game and didn't like it, but I was supporting the Pacers. that night as well that we won. On the bus we were just watching that game and tonight as well. We have another opportunity I believe in New York and hopefully it's going to be a good one.

Bruce Martin: And wrapping up here with Alex Pillow, after Detroit, it's now on to the rest of the season. You get an off weekend. I'm sure you're really looking forward to that.

Alex Palou: Oh yeah, I am. Although I'm super excited to be here in New York, I wish that there was like an off weekend just to kind of relax, recover, let that wind and that day at the 500 sink in. But yeah. Next week is going to be a really good one and hopefully not a very busy week.

Bruce Martin: What do you think of that, being exposed on prime time on a major network?

Alex Palou: Yeah, it's going to be huge and also it's on Father's Day, right? So it's going to be nice. It's going to be during nighttime. I'm excited for that. I've never run really well there. I think my best finish has been a top five last year there. So I'm excited to go back there and see what we can do.

Bruce Martin: And then Toronto, America, one of your favorite tracks. How do you like that track?

Alex Palou: I love it. And how do you think you'll do? Hopefully very well. I mean, we had really strong cars there. It's a place I love. Every single lap that we do out there, it's always tough competition there. Like, although it's a very long track, like the field is very, very close, especially since we renovated that track surface. But I'm excited. I'm excited for that. And hopefully we can fight for the win out there.

Bruce Martin: Well, you do very well everywhere you go. Good luck the rest of the season. But let's all remember, you're now the Indianapolis 500 winning driver. You're going to be introduced that way for the rest of your life. Alex Pillow, Chip Ganassi Racing. Congratulations on the big win. Good luck the rest of the season. And thank you for joining us on Pit Pass Indy.

Alex Palou: Thank you, Bruce.

Bruce Martin: Our next guest had a wild weekend in Detroit, which began with a third-place start before racing his way to the lead on lap 39. From there, Kyle Kirkwood would battle it out for the win, leading 48 laps, the most in the 100-lap race. Let's hear from the winning driver of this year's Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix with this exclusive Pit Pass Indy interview. Broken front wing and all, our race winner is Kyle Kirkwood, winner of the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix, presented by Lear. Kyle, it seemed like a lot of people in IndyCar think when you have a broken front wing, that's going to prevent your car from going fast. Looks like you went even faster. You said in the post-race interview you really didn't notice any change. What was it about that that really didn't seem to matter here on the streets of Detroit?

Kyle Kirkwood: Well, I mean, it's just the nature of the circuit. Everywhere is so slow in the middle of the corners that your front wing doesn't really play that much effect. You know, I don't even know how much downforce that I actually lost from that situation. I'll have to look at it to really know, but it really didn't feel like much of a difference. I was more just like, backing off just a little bit, not as much or not as fast as I was previously to that incident. Man, I was upset when it broke though. I was like, man, probably just ruined our chances of winning this race, but nothing happened. And you look back at two years ago, our first race here, Colton ripped off the whole left front portion or right front portion. It was the right front portion of his wing, which is actually more of an issue at a place like here. And he's still finished, I think in the top 10 or something. And we still had one that was still intact. So fortunately it didn't cost us anything.

Bruce Martin: a lot of people seem to think after alex below had his crash that we're going to get a new winner in indycar in twenty twenty five not so fast you've already won a race this year you won your second race here in detroit you're having a really good year if it wasn't for alex we'd be writing about how great kyle kirkwood season which alex below is in the series because then we'd be having an in epic season so far uh… but

Kyle Kirkwood: We have to look at him and how he's doing it and the success that he's had. That's how we're basing our performance here today, or all season long, I should say. This is a step in the right direction. It's not everything for us, though. We want to come out here and win a championship. We have championship-capable cars. We'll do everything in our power to keep clawing back at them. We're getting close to 100 points now. And, you know, that's that's still in the hunt with, I think, nine races to go. Nine races to go. So, yeah, still second half of the season waiting for us a couple of races away.

Bruce Martin: You're back up to second in points. How important is that as we get a weekend off and head to Gateway?

Kyle Kirkwood: Yeah, super important. Glad to be back.

Bruce Martin: Actually, you're third in points.

Kyle Kirkwood: Pato Ward is still second. I'm third in points. Whatever, that's fine. It was a good day. Where did Pato finish? He must have had a pretty good day then. But yeah, we're calling back at it. 102 points is a doable thing. We got nine races to get it done, so look at it this way, 12 points a race and we can win this thing.

Bruce Martin: It seems that you're in stage of your career now where once you got the first victory, then you start clicking them off. You're now fourth career victory, so you have to feel like my career now is just starting to kick in the high gear a little bit.

Kyle Kirkwood: Yeah, getting there. That's for sure. Still not to the absolute level that I want to be at. Still making more mistakes than I would like. But hopefully with time, those will start going away. Like, for instance, like the qualifying thing yesterday, I beat myself up over things like that. And I need to have no mistakes to be able to win a championship here.

Bruce Martin: You've got to feel like you've had quite a week. A week ago, crossed the finish line six at the Indy 500. Next day, you're a lunch. They find out that you've been penalized. It's sent back to 32nd. Now you come back and win at Detroit. So in some ways, do you feel redeemed?

Kyle Kirkwood: You know, I still look at what we did at the 500 as an epic race. You know, we found ourselves in the back of that race, and we drove back through and got ourselves in a sixth-place position. And look at Marcus, right? Could have won the race, and that's due to efforts from the team. Then we roll into a weekend like this where obviously there was drama during the week, but we had our full focus on what we needed to do here this weekend. That was win the race, get the pole, and move on from there. And that's exactly what we did.

Bruce Martin: How big is this victory? Because it comes on a race course that is really demanding, really bumpy, really fierce, really hard to drive around. So you have to really feel like this is a fantastic accomplishment for you.

Kyle Kirkwood: It truly is. And it goes back to the team and all the hard work and dedication that they put into. these cars and and how good they are at street courses and we need to capitalize on weekends like this where we are performing at the highest level. So in every way shape or form this is an amazing weekend and it couldn't have came at a better time.

Bruce Martin: Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix race winner Alex Kyle Kirkwood of Andretti Autosport. Congratulations on the big victory.

Kyle Kirkwood: Getting so used to saying Alex Pillow over here.

Bruce Martin: Don't worry, I can edit that out.

Kyle Kirkwood: Yeah.

Bruce Martin: Anyway, go catch a big wave when you get back to Jupiter, Florida on your off weekend. We're not going to have many of those the rest of the summer. Exactly. So enjoy it. But hey, good luck the rest of the year. Thank you for joining us on Pit Pass Indy. Thank you. We'll be right back to Pit Pass Indy after this short break.

Will Power: This is Will Power of Team Penske. And you're listening to Pit Pass Indy presented by Penske Truck Rental.

Bruce Martin: Welcome back to Pit Pass Indy. We wrap up today's special bonus edition of Pit Pass Indy with the president of the Penske Corporation, Bud Denker. Last weekend's Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix is a major project for the Penske Corporation, which owns and promotes the race. This was the third Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix held in downtown Detroit after a three-decade run at Belle Isle Park, just north of the heart of Detroit. The racing on the bumpy street course was much better than the previous two street races at Detroit, as the drivers in IndyCar have learned to adapt to the unique demands of the track surface and layout. It was also a sellout, with fans filling the grandstands and corporate support from 93 sponsors and partners of the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix. Penske Corporation President Bud Denker fills us in on more in this exclusive Pit Pass Indie interview. We're wrapping up the 2025 Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix with the president of the Penske Corporation, Bud Denker. Bud, it was your third year here on the streets of downtown Detroit. Looked like it was better than ever. Looked like the race was the best one so far. How do you assess the 2025 Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix?

Bud Denker: Well, you gotta look at two things, I think, Bruce. You have to look at what's happening off track, but also what's happening on track. And if you look at what's happening off track, You know, we had 93 sponsors that helped us put this event on. We had unbelievable execution outside the racetrack in terms of displays and activations, small businesses that came down to display their wares. The rooftops are now not a secret anymore around the pit lane for them because everyone had people Leaning over them on every single one of their floors up the nine, up the nine stories high. And as a result of that, it kind of gave you an arena feel surrounding you. You're in a little coliseum around Pitt Lane. So, and I'm on track. I moved on track now. Over 260 passes, I understand. Highest ever for the Grand Prix. So, obviously less cautions than last year, but an amazing, amazing amount of action on the racetrack both Saturday and Sunday.

Bruce Martin: But it also comes at the end of a very demanding month for a lot of people in the Penske Corporation, senior management, because you also run the biggest sporting event, biggest single day sporting event on earth, the Indianapolis 500. This year was a sellout. Got a huge rating on Fox Sports, 7.01 million viewers. That's the highest in 17 years. But the month also had a lot of other distractions, controversies, things that you want to call that, that you had to attend to and address. So just how challenging was it this year for you and your staff?

Bud Denker: Well, it's never easy to put on back-to-back events like we do, especially when you have the Annapolis 500 being the largest sporting event, as you said, in the world. But you know what? It's made easier because we have a great team at IMS that allows us to do what we do there, and IndyCar as well as IMSP. And we have separate organizations here in Detroit. We lean on each other. Obviously, senior management, myself and Roger, Jonathan Gibson, we're tied to both. But Michael and myself are the common thread, I think, What we do in Indy, but also what we do here, you know We're the ones that are are in charge of this event as chairman and president and we responsibilities for ensuring that this event Is properly planned while everything in Indy is going on so our planning starts the day after this will end for next year, but the execution is getting better and better and better and And I'm hoping we see it in the numbers from Fox. It's coming off as strong as you mentioned the numbers for Indy. And that's the one thing we don't know yet. But when you see the on-track action here, the overhead views of our beautiful track and our beautiful city, it's pretty compelling.

Bruce Martin: What was your reaction when you saw how many viewers watched the Indianapolis 500? 7.01 million, larger than this year's Daytona 500. That's only happened three times in the last 30 years. Also, it peaked at 8.5 million for the final 15 minutes of the race. I know that you had to just be absolutely ecstatic.

Bud Denker: Yeah, well, I think we had an internal bet with myself and some people at Fox. Jonathan Gibson, myself, and some people at Fox. And the bet was we would have whoever won. would host us at a golf event somewhere. And Jordan Bazant from Fox, guess what? He won. He had the most accurate number, but it wasn't 7 million. So the number exceeded all of our expectations. And frankly, that number, when we got it, Eric Shanks called me directly, like a little kid, to tell me the number. He called Roger directly to tell Roger, like a little kid, And we were ecstatic. And frankly, that took away some of the sting. Some of the sting that happened the previous week. So I'm hoping now that the momentum, the people that watched that racing saw something they'd liked. Now they're going to watch our race this week here in Detroit.

Bruce Martin: Speaking of some of that sting, I do have to ask you that because we all knew three of the employees that worked at Team Penske. They were people we admired, we respected, and I would even call friends of ours, Tim Sendrick, Ron Rzewski, Kyle Moyer. But Mr. Penske had to make a decision, what's the best interest of the corporation? I believe you told me it was one of the worst weeks of your life. How difficult was it?

Bud Denker: No, I was. I mean, these are people not only we like, these are people we love and have done so much for our company with wins and championships and for our brand. But, you know, the decision was made, and it was made, and we moved forward. And now we're still moving forward. And I think the fact is that here we were in Detroit, and we're going to be in the next races in road America. We're moving forward. So, tough decisions were made. They were made, and now we're thinking ahead.

Bruce Martin: Zach Brown, the McLaren Racing CEO, said after meeting with you and Mr. Penske and Jonathan Gibson and Doug Bowles on Saturday at Detroit that IndyCar is determined to move forward with a completely independent officiating and sanctioning operation. What can you tell us about what the plans may be on that?

Bud Denker: Yeah, well, we've been discussing those for some time. We've talked about them last week also. with a number of people and we're still working with the teams. We're working with the people that are stakeholders in our sport to get the right structure of that. But I think the goal continues to be to have that independent organization going into 2026 season.

Bruce Martin: Do you believe another sanctioning group such as the FIA may be involved?

Bud Denker: I don't think that's the case. We've got our models not like that in terms of their having the FIA do it. We think we'll have an independent body here of the right type of people to make it truly be independent of anything to do with Penske Corporation, Team Penske, or Penske Entertainment. That's important, obviously, but more work to be done there.

Bruce Martin: The team owners want complete independence and oversight. So do you think that some of them should help pay for the completely independent sanctuary?

Bud Denker: Well, I'm not sure that's what we're going to have. But again, we're not prepared to announce anything yet. And we're still working with the stakeholders to do that.

Bruce Martin: But from a positive standpoint, you sold out every seat in the grandstands for the Indianapolis 500. The blackout was lifted. As we said before, huge TV rating. It was for the 109th Indianapolis 500. It wasn't for the 100th. It wasn't for the 125th. It was for the 109th. So this goes to show that young people and a lot of people in the United States are discovering The Indy 500 is cool again, and they want to be there, and they want to be a part of it, and they want to capture all the excitement and thrill of it. Just how gratified are you to see that?

Bud Denker: Yeah. Well, you know, it's our fifth year that we've owned the series, and we own the Speedway, so you don't turn things around overnight, right? You don't. And plus, we had COVID, right? The effect of COVID put a stall on a number of things. But look at the momentum they had now, and the trajectory we have now. I think it's a very good point that you brought up in terms of we had record numbers. We also had a sellout that was not the 100th anniversary of our event. So that momentum, we've already seen really good numbers of our, you know, remember we have, people have 500 hours to buy their tickets or upgrade after the event. And we're not going to announce any numbers here today, but I can tell you it's very positive the momentum we're seeing also by renewals. for those that bought tickets this year. And that's gonna carry over right into Detroit. We sold out our grandstands for Sunday faster than we ever had. That was last week. And we went above our revenue number from last year on Friday of this week. So that's all the momentum we're carrying over from a great event last week.

Bruce Martin: And of course, there's no rest for anybody in the Penske Corporation because it's off to Iowa. This year, it's the Sukup, Iowa IndyCar Race Weekend at Iowa Speedway. You have a new Iowa-based sponsor involved. Although Hy-Vee will still be involved, they won't be having the signage or the suites or necessarily the entertainment that we all enjoyed and was very impressed by. But yet they remain in some capacity. So what can you tell us now about what we should expect at Iowa in July?

Bud Denker: Well, you're going to see the core racing fans back, right? These are fans that were there possibly that saw entertainment and decided that's pretty cool. And maybe I wouldn't have gone if it wasn't for entertainment. But now we're going to get back to what we saw from our core fans, you know, a couple of years ago when we went back there in, what, 2020? And so it's focused on the core racing of two races. And, you know, ticket sales are going. Obviously, they're not what they were when they had all these other people that were with the entertainers, but I expect we'll have a good proud turnout there with our core racing fans back in Iowa.

Bruce Martin: What are some of the things that you plan on doing to help assure them a great spectator experience?

Bud Denker: Yeah, well, I think you've got to have still some, we're looking at still some entertainment on the outsides of our track, that we have a stage out there for that. We'll be hyping up our advertising and our media and our awareness out there with social media between now and the race. Remember, people don't make decisions here until late moments. We saw it here as well. So you'll be seeing us pipe it up there and hopefully look like a good audience we'll have there on site in Iowa.

Bruce Martin: And from the team standpoint, well, power put on a pretty good show here today at Detroit, but across the board, the team probably needs a little bit of a guidance and direction now that three key members are no longer there. There's some key people, David Faustino. Ben Bressman and those people are taking on additional responsibilities. But how long do you think it'll be before that starts to get maybe some oversight direction of maybe bringing people in to fill those roles?

Bud Denker: Well, I think the, you know, in any of our businesses, when a situation unfolds where an opportunity exists, we are traditionally focused on bringing up people within the organization. You see it in our businesses, you see it in our race teams. There's no focus right now on bringing anybody else from the outside as we're talking about this. We're still looking at the organization and how we're going to look at this going forward. But we're confident who we have right now on the on our teams to guide us.

Bruce Martin: And also, you're already planning a major tentpole event in 2026, the Grand Prix of Arlington. How much are you determined to make that thing a blockbuster?

Bud Denker: Yeah, well, we had the Arlington Police Department here, Fire Department here. We had the Arlington, some of the Arlington Management here as well, too, that are from the organizations surrounding us. Some sponsors were here. I wanted them to see what a dual pit lane looked like, which they're going to have. So we are going to be working on the roads here in the next probably 30 days to ensure they're ready to go for us next year. Because remember, you need to have a lot of that stuff done before Cowboys preseason, which is starting just a couple of months from now. So the plans are all going well there. We're starting to build our walls. The barrier walls are going to be starting here too. So it's going to be an amazing event. We've got a number of sponsors that we haven't announced yet that have already. signed up and signed contracts already for that event. So we're excited.

Bruce Martin: And final question about Detroit. It's here downtown. The race course goes by a lot of restaurants, a lot of businesses, a lot of things of that nature. How much have they gotten to the point now where they really embrace it and make it one of their biggest business weekends to have people come into their restaurant, look out the window and see a race going on?

Bud Denker: Yeah, I think if you ask the restaurants along Woodward Avenue, our key road in Detroit, those businesses will tell you they had better revenue from our event. They had the NFL draft, which had 700,000 people. Why? because many of those restaurants were blocked off and you couldn't get access to it directly. So we don't do that. We're wide open for all, we're inclusive of all. Hotels were full, the restaurants were full. So I think the business dynamics of this thing are one big reason we went from Bella Isle to downtown Detroit.

Bruce Martin: Well, Bud Danker, president of the Penske Corporation, you've been a great supporter of Pit Pass Indy presented by Penske Truck Rental. Huge admiration for what you guys do for IndyCar, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix, the Iowa Race Weekend Doubleheader. Keep on naming it, the Nashville Race, all of those things. Congratulations on another great weekend in Detroit.

Bud Denker: Thank you, Bruce.

Bruce Martin: We enjoy working with you and look forward to working with you well into the future. And thank you for joining us on Pit Pass Indy presented by Penske Truck Realm.

Bud Denker: Thank you, Bruce. I've always enjoyed talking to you.

Bruce Martin: We'll be right back to Pit Pass Indy after this short break.

Will Power: Hi, I'm Scott McLaughlin, driver of the number three team Penske Chevy, and you're listening to Pit Pass Indy, presented by Penske Truck Rental.

Bruce Martin: And that puts checkered flag on this bonus edition of Pit Pass Indy, presented by Penske Truck Rental. We want to thank our guest, 109th Indianapolis 500 winning driver Alex Below of Chip Ganassi Racing, Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix winner Kyle Kirkwood of Andretti Global, and Penske Corporation president Bud Denker for joining us on today's podcast. Along with loyal listeners like you, our guests help make Pit Pass Indy presented by Penske Truck Rental your path to victory lane in IndyCar. On the highways, the raceways, and every pit stop in between, Penske Truck Rental keeps you moving forward. Gain ground with Penske. For more IndyCar coverage, follow me at X, previously known as Twitter, at BruceMartin, one word, uppercase B, uppercase M, underscore 500. This has been a production of Evergreen Podcast. A special thanks to our production team, executive producers are Bridget Poyn and Gerardo Orlando. Recordings and edits were done by me, Bruce Martin, and final mixing was done by Dave Douglas. Learn more at evergreenpodcast.com. Until next time, be sure to keep it out of the wall.

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