The 1929 Indianapolis 500 (the 17th running of the International 500-Mile Sweepstakes) was held on Thursday, May 30, 1929, at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway before an estimated crowd of 160,000. Ray Keech, driving the #2 Simplex Piston Ring Special for owner Maude A. Yagle — the first and only female car owner to win the Indy 500 — took the victory in dramatic fashion. Starting from the sixth position, Keech assumed the lead for good on lap 158 after defending champion Louis Meyer (who had led a race-high 65 laps) suffered a lengthy stall in the pits on lap 157 due to oil-pressure problems, losing nearly seven minutes. Keech completed the 200 laps in 5 hours, 7 minutes, and 25.42 seconds at an average speed of 97.585 mph, finishing ahead of Meyer in second and Jimmy Gleason in third.
The race marked the final year of the supercharged 91½-cubic-inch engine formula, with front-wheel-drive Miller entries dominating qualifying led by Cliff Woodbury at 120.599 mph but suffering high attrition. Tragedy struck early when rookie Bill Spence was killed in a lap-10 crash in Turn 2 — the first fatality at the Speedway in a decade — and Woodbury himself crashed on lap 4. Keech’s triumph was bittersweet: just 16 days later, on June 15, he was fatally injured in a board-track crash at Altoona, Pennsylvania. The event closed out the glamorous “Roaring Twenties” era at Indianapolis, coming just months before the stock-market crash and the onset of the Great Depression.
May 30, 1929
May 31, 1929