[LarryIII]

And the Wiener Is...? Oscar Mayer to Race All Six of Its Wienermobiles at the Indy 500
The first-ever Wienermobile “meat-up” will be part of the big race's pre-show.


WienermobileRaceIndy5002025

What separates a gearhead from a normal human being? A normal human being sees the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile and says “I’d like to drive that.” A gearhead sees the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile and says “I’d like to race that.” Looks like the gearheads can chalk up a victory of sorts: As part of this year’s Indy 500—at which, Oscar Mayer notes gleefully, fans will consume some 30,000 hot dogs—all six Wienermobiles currently in service will race against each other in what the company is calling their first-ever “meat up”.




To prepare for the race, which will take place on Friday, May 23 at 2:00 pm Eastern, as part of the pre-show event, each of the frankwheelers has been painted in a unique scheme representing different regional dogs: New York Dog (East), Slaw Dog (Southeast), Chili Dog (South), Chi Dog (Midwest), Sonoran Dog (Southwest), and Seattle Dog (Northwest).

How thrilling a race will this be? The Wienermobiles ride on an Isuzu NPR truck chassis, powered by a gas-fed 330-hp 6.0-liter General Motors V-8. Not exactly the stuff of which nine-second quarter miles are made, but when you’re foot-to-the-floor in closely matched vehicles, any race will get the ketchup-tinged mist descending—even 27-foot-long rolling hot dogs.

Oscar Mayer Wienermobile front side view

Unfortunately, they won’t let us drive. The rolling franks will be piloted by the company’s drivers, called Hotdoggers. But fans can still get into the action: There’s a free-to-enter pool, and point winners will split a $10,000 cash prize. (When they ask what condiment the winning truck will be sprayed with, remember, the press release says it’ll be mustard.) You can get in on the action at draftkings.com/wienie500 (remember, i before e).

Now, you’re probably expecting us to pelt you with a pile of hot-dog-related puns, as we’ve done in earlier Wienermobile stories, but in our editorial meating we decided to sit our buns down and just be frank. Too many hot dog jokes would simply not cut the mustard. Better to boil down the facts so our readers can ketchup on the details and not fry the story with too much filler. Sorry, folks, but this is how the sausage is made. If you have a beef with us, email motortrend@motortrend.com. We always appreciate your feed-back.

Now that that’s out of our system—hey, Oscar Mayer, how about letting us drive at Indy ’26? We relish the idea!