The Indy 500 race is not what it used to be. You can easily show up the day of the race and get your choice of many tickets. You can buy from the official office, or one of the ticket scalpers on the streets. You can probably get a ticket below face value as the scalper will buy cheap extra tickets from people going in who couldn’t use all their tickets.

BTW: Ticket scalping is perfectly legal in Indiana. There is some quirk though that the people are not allowed to advertise as they don’t have a permit to do that. So all the scalpers have signs saying “I need tickets” when really they’re selling. I guess that’s not advertising.

First time to the race? Don’t mind walking a few miles? (The track itself is a 2.5 mile oval.) I’d buy a $20 general admission ticket. You can check out the infield stuff, watch the race from the inside of the different curves and maybe see where you’d like to buy a ticket the next time. In the past after the first half of the race or so security stops closely checking the tickets to the various grand stands. You could probably walk into a few and grab an empty seat. As I said earlier, it’s not what it used to be. They’ll be plenty of empty seats in all but the most prime viewing areas.