The Double: All the drivers who have attempted the Indy 500/Coke 600 in the same year

Katherine Legge is the latest driver to attempt to run 1,100 miles in one glorious Memorial Day Weekend blitz. The fortunes of those who have attempted “The Double” before her have been hugely varied, and are regularly influenced by bad weather…

1967: NASCAR legend Cale Yarborough was the first driver to run what was then called the World 600 at Charlotte and the Indianapolis 500 in the same year, but the races were held on separate days. On May 28, Yarborough’s Wood Brothers Ford Fairlane started from pole at Charlotte but failed to finish due to a broken steering arm. On May 30, he started a very creditable 20th – barely slower than future three-time Indy winner Johnny Rutherford, and ahead of Formula 1 champions Jackie Stewart and Denny Hulme. However, in the race that started on May 30 but got interrupted by rain on lap 19 and was postponed until the next day, Cale crashed his Vollstedt-Ford on lap 176.

1968: This year, the two races were four days apart, and it was Jerry Grant who went for the double. In the World 600, he qualified 13th in his Tom Friedkin-owned Plymouth Road Runner and briefly led, but eventually finished 12th. At Indy, he started 15th but had to retire at quarter distance with an oil leak in his Eagle.

1969: The World 600 was held on May 25, while the Indy 500 was, as always in those days, held on the penultimate day of May. Lee Roy Yarbrough pulled double duty, and converted a front row start into victory in Charlotte in his Mercury Cyclone. Over in Indy, he had no luck, after qualifying his Vollstedt in a brilliant eighth spot. Its Ford V8 initially wouldn’t fire on the grid, and although he started passing cars on the pace laps to resume his start position, he was nowhere near the third row when the green flag waved. His efforts were ultimately for nothing as the engine failed on lap 66.

1970: Yarbrough would attempt redemption, his task made easier by a six-day gap between the events, but he was out of luck – a DNF at Charlotte was followed by a turbo failure just past half-distance of the 500. However, Donnie Allison (main image) also did the double and fared better than anyone has done, before or since. He raced his Ford Torino to victory in the World 600, and from 23rd on the Indy 500 grid, drove his Eagle-Ford to a fourth-place finish.

Allison's 1970 effort at the Double remains the benchmark.

1971: Despite the races only being a day apart – with Memorial Day moved to the Monday, the Indy 500 was held on Saturday, May 28th, and the World 600 held on Sunday – Allison went for the double again, and shone again. At Indy, he raced one of AJ Foyt’s Coyote Fords from 20th on the grid to take sixth, then the next day finished second behind brother Bobby, despite wheeling a two-year-old Mercury.

1976: Janet Guthrie tried but failed to qualify for the Indy 500 although she did pass her Rookie test, in between numerous mechanical issues in her tired Offy engine. But she did then go down to Charlotte and finished 15th in her first NASCAR Cup Series start, piloting a Ralph Moody-run Ford.

1994: John Andretti became the first driver to compete in both “marathons” on the same day. After qualifying 10th in his AJ Foyt Racing-run Lola-Cosworth, he finished in the same place, albeit four laps down. He then went straight to a waiting helicopter, which hopped him over to Indianapolis Airport from where he flew down to Charlotte to compete in NASCAR’s 600-miler, which since 1986 had been renamed the Coke 600. Although he had qualified ninth in his Hagan Racing-run Chevrolet Lumina, he had missed the pre-race driver briefing so was forced to start from the back. Just past half-distance, the Chevy expired with a broken crankshaft.

1997: Robby Gordon and Felix Sabates’s Team SABCO made similar plans after Gordon switched from Indy cars to become a NASCAR full-timer. But with the Indy 500 rained out on Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend, Robby headed to Charlotte first but crashed out on lap 186 of the Coke 600. He then flew back to Indy, where he had qualified his G-Force-Oldsmobile in 12th. He gained eight places in two laps, but the rain returned and pushed the 500 back to Tuesday. On the race’s resumption, Gordon was up to third when he suddenly pulled off with his engine on fire. All that effort for nought.

1999: Tony Stewart, as versatile a driver there has been since the days of Foyt and Mario Andretti, first attempted the double in ’99. In a Tri-Star Motorsports Dallara-Oldsmobile, he drove from 24th to finish ninth in the 500, before rejoining his Joe Gibbs Racing NASCAR team in Charlotte and finishing fourth in the Coke 600 in his Pontiac.

2000: Robby Gordon tried The Double once more, but again, bad weather at Indy presented logistical difficulties. With the rain delaying the 500 by three hours, he started fourth and finished sixth in his Team Menard Dallara-Oldsmobile, before rushing to Charlotte where P.J. Jones, son of ’63 Indy winner Parnelli Jones, had started his Menard Ford Taurus. The entry was classified 35th.

2001: Iron Man honors go to Tony Stewart’s efforts on this occasions, for he is the only driver to have completed all 1,100 miles in a single day. And he was highly competitive in both. Driving a Chip Ganassi Racing G-Force-Oldsmobile, he started the Indy 500 from seventh and finished sixth, having led a total of 13 laps. Down in Charlotte, he had qualified his JGR Pontiac 12th but again was sent to the back of the grid for missing the drivers’ meeting. But Stewart knew he had a fast car and a fast crew, and he carved his way through to finish in an impressive third place.

Stewart became the first - and so far only - person to hit the '1,100 miles in a single day' mark in 2001. Robert Laberge/Getty Images

2002: Robby Gordon went for it again, qualifying his Menard Dallara-Chevrolet in 11th in Indy and a Richard Childress Racing Chevy Monte Carlo in 12th around Charlotte’s 1.5-mile oval. Finishing eighth and on the lead lap in Indy, he headed to Charlotte and while he was able to salvage 16th, his run was hampered by leg cramps and he finished a lap down.

2003: Gordon’s hopes were understandably high on this occasion, because a motorcycle accident for Dario Franchitti had ruled him out of the 500, leaving Robby one of the prime rides – an Andretti Green Racing Dallara-Honda. He took full advantage in qualifying and landed on the front row, but unfortunately, this largely bullet-proof package wilted on race day with a broken gearbox on lap 172. In Charlotte, he would be thwarted by weather, having reached 17th when torrential rain halted the race permanently after 276 of 400 laps.

2004: The weather gods once more messed with Gordon, making his plans more convoluted. Having started the rain-delayed Indy 500 in his self-entered Dallara-Chevy, Gordon pitted on lap 27 to hand off to Jaques Lazier, while he went down to Charlotte to race a Richard Childress Chevy, in which he finished 20th. Meanwhile, 400 miles northwest, Lazier had been forced to retire Robby’s Indy car before half-distance with a mechanical failure.

2014: After a few years of the two races’ start times moving too close to each other to allow for a feasible shot at the Memorial Day Weekend double, they diverged enough in 2011 to make it a possibility. And the driver who stepped forward to have a crack at it, unlike Stewart and Gordon, wasn’t a former Indy car winner who had switched to stock cars, but instead a stock car ace with hardly any open-wheel experience. That man was 2004 NASCAR Cup Series champion – and 2010 Coke 600 winner – Kurt Busch, then 34 years old. In May 2013 he passed his Indy 500 rookie test in an Andretti Autosport Dallara-Honda, and on returning the following year, he qualified AA’s extra entry a superb 12th. Although he crashed at Turn 2 in practice the following Monday, he was uninjured and in the backup car, he was 15th fastest on Carb Day. On race day, he performed almost flawlessly, to finish sixth. Sadly, it was the other half of his mission that cost him a chance to at least match his team boss’s achievement from 2001, as his Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet kept dropping cylinders in the Coke 600 and eventually blew on lap 274.

Busch nailed the Indy 500 part of the puzzle in 2014, but was brought undone by engine problems in the Coke 600. Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

2025: A year earlier, Kyle Larson had been aiming to pull double-duty and was assuredly the right man for the job: he drove the Hendrick-backed Arrow McLaren-Chevrolet to a brilliant fifth on the grid. However, a four-hour rain delay for the 500 ruined his chances of getting to Charlotte in time for the Coke 600, and a pitlane speeding penalty deleted his hopes of a strong finish in the 500, where he wound up 18th. For 2025, Larson was back to Indy, again in a car backed by Hendrick. But after starting from 19th, he crashed out just before half-distance, and so was able to head to Charlotte with time to spare. He started from second, but a spin and later a shunt into a spun car ruined his day completely.