Indianapolis 500 Winner Average Speed by Year, 1911–2026

Speeds Rose About 1.6 mph a Year Until 1968, Then 0.2 a Year Since

One straight line through all 110 winning speeds rises 0.79 mph a year and explains 0.83 of the variation, but the climb was not steady. We treat the 29 pre-war editions (1911 to 1941) as their own era: a line through them rises 1.27 mph a year (r² 0.94) from a mean of 97.5 mph. Through the 81 post-war editions we fitted a single bent line, two straight pieces that join at a break year, and placed the break where the fit's error is smallest: 1969. From 1946 to 1968 (23 editions) that line rises 1.60 mph a year; from 1969 to 2026 (58 editions) it rises 0.24 mph a year around a mean of 160.0 mph. The bent line explains 0.66 of the post-war variation against 0.53 for one straight line.

The first winner to average over 100 mph was Pete DePaolo in 1925 (101.127 mph); the first over 150 was Jim Clark in 1965 (150.686 mph). Since 1969 the year-to-year spread is far larger than the trend: the record 190.690 mph of 2021 sits among seasons as low as 134.477 mph (1992), because the average includes laps run under caution and any race stopped early. 8 held editions ran fewer than 200 laps (1916 (120 laps), 1926 (160 laps), 1950 (138 laps), 1973 (133 laps), 1975 (174 laps), 1976 (102 laps), 2004 (180 laps), 2007 (166 laps)); the rain-shortened ones are flagged in the note column, and all are kept in every figure.

The 2026 row (Felix Rosenqvist, 162.021 mph) is taken from an unofficial lap report cited by the source and may be revised.

Winner's Average Speed by Year

One point per edition; the line skips the 6 years not run. Dashed segments are the pre-war fit and the two pieces of the post-war bent-line fit, labelled with their slope. Hover a point for the year's speed.

Every Indianapolis 500 Winner, 1911–2026

— marks a year the race was not run. 2026 figures are provisional.

Download the full table (CSV) · 116 rows

How the Numbers Were Made

The table is adapted from the winners-by-year table in the Wikipedia article List of Indianapolis 500 winners, retrieved 2026-09-13, whose entries cite Indianapolis Motor Speedway's official race results and race summaries and, for recent years, IndyCar's results. The Wikipedia table is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; this table and its CSV are shared under the same licence with that attribution. The source's cancelled-year ranges were expanded to one row per year with held set to 0, so every year from 1911 to 2026 has exactly one row; the single shared winning drive (1924) is one row with both names.

Speeds, distances and times are as the source reports them: the average is the whole race including laps under caution, so it is not a measure of outright pace, and a race stopped early by rain is averaged over the distance actually run. Winning time in seconds is a straight conversion of the printed time; km values are as printed. The 2026 winner is cited by the source to an unofficial lap report and is provisional.

The pre-war trend is an ordinary least-squares fit of average speed on year over the editions before 1946. The post-war trend is a continuous two-piece line (a straight line that changes slope once, at the break year) fitted by least squares to every edition from 1946 on; the break was chosen by refitting for every candidate year with at least ten editions on each side and keeping the one with the smallest squared error. Rain-shortened editions are included in the fits.

Sources

1. List of Indianapolis 500 winnerssecondaryWikipedia · secondary · retrieved 2026-09-13 · CC BY-SA 4.0 — Winners-by-year table used as printed; its entries cite the Speedway's official results
2. Indianapolis 500 historical race resultsprimaryIndianapolis Motor Speedway · primary · Official results; no stated data licence — Underlying results cited by the article
3. Indianapolis 500 race summariesprimaryIndianapolis Motor Speedway · primary · Official summaries; no stated data licence — Underlying race summaries cited by the article