2001 Indianapolis 500
85th running of the Indianapolis 500 motor race
The 85th Indianapolis 500 was held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana on Sunday, May 27, 2001. Race rookie Hélio Castroneves, a three-year veteran of the CART series, led the final 52 laps and won his first of four Indy 500 victories. Team Penske swept first and second with Gil de Ferran finishing as the runner-up. Winning car owner Roger Penske scored his record-extending eleventh victory at the Indianapolis 500, and notched his first-ever 1–2 finish in the race. It was a redemption from the team's previous attempt at Indy (1995) in which both of his cars failed to qualify. Team Penske did not compete at Indianapolis from 1996 to 2000 due to the ongoing open wheel "Split".
The race was sanctioned by the Indy Racing League, and was part of the 2001 Indy Racing Northern Lights Series season. The 2001 race was notable in that several top CART teams returned to Indy for the first time since 1995. IRL-based teams excelled in time trials, taking the front row, and the top four starting positions overall. However, the CART-based teams swept the top six finishing positions on race day.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “2001 Indianapolis 500” is 85th running of the Indianapolis 500 motor race. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Indianapolis, 85th and running, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “2001 Indianapolis 500” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.