New Scoring Pylon Ready For New Home at IMS

The second generation scoring pylon on the main straightaway of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was taken down this afternoon to make way for a new and improved version of one of the “Racing Capital of the World’s” most iconic symbols.

The scoring pylon that was removed today, located just south of the entrance to Gasoline Alley, was erected in 1994. It replaced the original IMS scoring pylon built in the spring of 1959.

The new scoring pylon will feature full LED panels on all four sides providing improved messaging capabilities to fans that will include animation and video.

“The pylon is part of the tradition of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and that’s why we want the new one to look pretty similar,” said J. Douglas Boles, Indianapolis Motor Speedway president. “It’s going to be basically the same width and height, so what we’re used to seeing here will be there in the middle. It’s time to upgrade to a pylon that folks can see from further away and will give us video capabilities that we haven’t seen in the past. It’ll still feel like the old one, just a tick taller and about three inches wider, so it’s really going to look pretty similar to this one, but it’ll have video capability.

“We’re trying to take all the information that we can gather and send it to our fans in the seats. We think this is a lot better way to deliver information to our fans and we can actually make the numbers a little bit bigger so that they can be seen from Turn 1 and Turn 4. The top will be able to really show the drivers when we go yellow. Right now, if you think about the old pylon, it just had those two rotating yellow lights, so this will have a yellow ribbon at the top that’ll flash, allowing drivers to see from a long distance away when the track goes yellow as well.”

Construction on the third version of the IMS scoring pylon is scheduled to begin early next week and is expected to be completed in time for the Kroger Super Weekend.