The Autosportradio.com 2020 Show for October 9th…

       

   Doug Boles

Doug , who was named president of Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Tuesday, July 9 2013, has another key date in Speedway history to link to his personal life.

In being named IMS president on the day Turbo — a new Dreamworks animated feature about a garden snail who competes in the Indianapolis 500 — premiered, the lifelong IndyCar fan called Tuesday “a little unbelievable.”

“Everything in my life has some connection to the Indianapolis 500 and this place,” he said of IMS.

His father, Hendricks County (Ind.) Circuit Court Judge Jeff Boles, has been a member of the Indy 500’s observer staff dating to the 1960s, joining the IndyCar Series when it was founded in 1996.

Boles grew up in Danville, Ind., making 3×5 index cards of 500 qualifiers at the kitchen table, moving them to the dining room table for second-round qualifying as he longed to attend the race. He couldn’t, his father said, until he was 10 years old.

That birthday allowed him to see A.J. Foyt’s fourth 500 victory in 1977. That race also was the last for IMS owner Tony Hulman.

“I went to Butler (University) as much as anything so I could be close to the Speedway,” said Boles, 46.

Boles remembers studying in the parking lot during spring tire tests. He once sneaked under an IMS fence to get closer to the action.