Top Gun Racing confirms it will miss Indy 500

The Top Gun Racing team will not make its intended debut with driver RC Enerson (pictured above) at the 104th Indianapolis 500.

The new outfit, co-owned by Gary Trout and Bill Throckmorton, was in negotiations to purchase a car and equipment from a team entered in the field of 33, but negotiations broke down last week as IndyCar announced significant changes to the event and their potential sponsors backed out.

“We really thought we were going to put a car in the race,” Throckmorton told RACER. “We had two nice sponsors we were working on. We had RC sitting in a car when we got a call there would be no fans, and then we learned there would be almost no money. When it got down to the last hour, with no fans and cutting the purse, we’d be in the hole right off the bat.

“Everybody that we’re working with is still in and intact. We haven’t stopped working on it. We were attempting to do a team buyout, because we want to run on our own. Everybody left the table on good terms. We just ran out of time, and Gary and I are very disappointed it didn’t get it done, but we’re still trying to pull some things off.”

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Throckmorton, whose shop near the Speedway restores and runs an incredible array of vintage Indy cars, hopes to put together a post-Indy 500 deal to buy a car and assets in time to run Enerson at the October 2-3 Harvest Grand Prix doubleheader on the IMS road course.

“We’ll have to see after the race and hopefully everyone has cars intact to look at,” he said. “Hopefully we come back and run the two Grand Prix races, and if not, it’s full steam into 2021. That’s the goal, and I’m hard headed, and I think we can put a very nice team together.”