Someone You Know Is Going To The Races This Weekend

Memorial Day weekend is always an important one here in the U.S. as it plays home to both the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race and NASCAR's vaunted Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Traditionally, this has also been the weekend that the Formula 1 circus convenes in Monte Carlo for the Monaco Grand Prix, but this year the sport decided to shift its calendar to push the Canadian Grand Prix to its new spot in late May. That means that the three largest racing series in the world are all running major events within a two hour flight of each other in the eastern half of North America. 

Over a week before each of these events, they all announced that every single one of the grandstand seats had sold out. This will be second sell-out crowd the Indy 500 has seen in a row, and third time in the last decade. The Coca-Cola 600 is on its fourth consecutive year of sell-out crowds. I was concerned that the Canadian Grand Prix would have a tough time selling out considering the new earlier date on the calendar, and while there are still some general admission tickets available, any ticket with a seat assigned has been claimed. 

Speedway, Indiana will have, by far, the largest crowd of the three events. There are roughly 257,000 permanent grandstand seats at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and the event draws some 350,000 total spectators. I saw a statistic that said one in every 1,000 Americans will be on their feet cheering as polesitter Álex Palou takes the green flag on Sunday. At least three Jalopnik writers will be among them. 

What if we went a step further and looked at what percentage of North Americans will be at one of these three massive international motorsports feats this weekend? Let's get into it. 

A study from the statistics and sociology department of the University of Washington suggests the average American knows just over 600 people. These are people you interact with on a regular basis, interpersonally. It's a number that, likely, grows every year with the increased persistence of the social internet into our daily lives. It would be hard to name them all, of course, but we all have quite large spheres of influence these days. So, how do we know that at least one person on your list of known entities is going to be either in Speedway, Indiana, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, or Charlotte, North Carolina this weekend? Statistics! 

Exact numbers are impossible to know, but if we go by previous sell-out crowd estimates, we can come to a few conclusions. Let's say the Indy 500 will draw a 350,000-deep crowd, and Charlotte will get its maxed out 95,000 number. The Canadian Grand Prix numbers are a little tougher to estimate, as Formula One counts its attendance as "weekend attendance numbers" meaning the three-day event sold 360,000 individual day tickets, though just under half of those will be for Sunday's race day. For the sake of ease, let's say it's an even 180,000. That puts 625,000 race-day attendees in seats or standing room for the three major series events. 

Based on current U.S. population estimates of 342.5 million people, and Canadian population estimates at 41.5 million hosers, about 0.16% of two of the three countries in North America will be sitting at a track watching professional racers go fast. To put that in numbers you might better understand, one in every 615 North American residents will be in one of these three crowds. If you don't think that's fascinating, you need to get your head checked!