Takuma Sato Chases Third Indy 500 Win Ahead of 110th Running — Sting Ray Robb

Takuma Sato said a third Indianapolis 500 victory is the only thing on his mind before the 110th running, and sting ray robb is part of the wider spotlight on the event. The two-time winner said he would not be satisfied until he sips that milk for a third time.

He called the Indianapolis 500 the most special race, a view shaped by years of chasing it and by what happened in 2012, when his last-lap move in turn 1 ended with him in the wall. Sato said that was the turning point of his race career.

Sato and the 110th Running

Sato sat down with select media ahead of the 110th running and made the target plain. He said he knew the race was the biggest racing event in the world, but the scale of it did not fully land until he lived through it, especially after his first Indy 500 left him without a full grasp of what the event meant.

That shift matters because the 500 is not just another stop on a schedule for him. Sato has already won it twice, in 2020 and again in the conversation around his career, and he is still chasing the one result that would move him from two-time winner to three-time winner.

Gasoline Alley and Honda

The feeling around Indianapolis still draws him in. Sato said walking through Gasoline Alley to the pit lane is one of the moments he values most because he can hear the noise of almost 300,000 people, and he compared that atmosphere with races at the Japanese Grand Prix, the Nürburgring, Spa-Francorchamps, and Monte Carlo in Formula 1.

He also traced the pull of the race back to childhood. Born in Tokyo, Sato said that when he was age six or seven he saw a fast car on TBS and thought, “That must be the Indy 500.” A couple of years later, in 1987, he attended his first-ever race, the Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix. He entered Formula 1 in 2002 with Jordan, had stints at BAR and Super Aguri, and later posted his best Formula 1 finish, third at the 2004 US Grand Prix.

What 2012 Changed

The hardest lesson came in his third Indianapolis 500 in 2012, when he and his team were challenging for the win but could not finish it. Sato said, “We were there very competitively, we were challenging for the win, but we couldn’t win this race. [With] how difficult this race is, you need everything.”

He described his 2020 win as “It was kind of sad. Lonely. Quiet,” a striking contrast to the crowd he hears on the way to pit lane. That is the friction inside his pursuit now: the race has already given him victory, but not the third one he says he wants most. For Sato, the 110th running is another chance to turn that long chase into one more sip of the milk bottle.