IndyCar with 249 driver autographs sells for $900,000 at auction

Tomas Enge signs the Stinger

John Andretti's five-year project will find a home at Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame Museum.

The Stinger, an IndyCar on which Andretti got the autographs of 249 living participants in the Indianapolis 500, was auctioned off Wednesday night for $900,000 to The Century Club, a group of 10 investors chaired by Indiana-based trucking magnate Jeff Stoops.

After the winning bid, the group announced that the car will go to the museum in the speedway's infield.

"We always hoped that whoever got it would be a premier car collector who would put it on display," Stoops told USA TODAY Sports. "Bottom line is it's going to be in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum. That's where it belongs."

Painted in honor of the Marmon Wasp, which Ray Harroun drove to victory in the first Indy 500 in 1911, the Stinger is covered with autographs of all but 20 of the living participants in the Indianapolis 500. The project was started in 2011 by Andretti and Window World, his longtime sponsor when Andretti drove in the Indy 500.

"I've got a lot of good friends in the business — people in the racing community and people outside it — that have really jumped in, especially in these last days leading up to it," Andretti told USA TODAY Sports. "They've helped make it become a reality and made it all work."

Andretti, a nephew of Mario Andretti and cousin of Michael Andretti and Marco Andretti, traveled tens of thousands of miles with the Stinger to find autographs. Most of the missing signatures belong to retired racers who live overseas, and Andretti wasn't willing to send parts of the car abroad for signatures.

"Anybody can sign a piece of bodywork and ship it back, but this had to be something where you had to be in the presence of it while signing it," Andretti explained. "This had to be something where you signed it the way we wanted you to sign it. It was a real procedure for everyone who signed it. It wasn't a ceremony, but a procedure. We didn't break that rule."

All of the proceeds from the auction, held at the Dallara IndyCar factory, went to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. Among the items auctioned was a helmet worn by the late Dan Wheldon while testing the Dallara chassis named the DW12 in his honor. It sold for $16,000.

In all, the auction raised $1.034 million for the hospital. The event drew many of the sport's biggest names, including team owners Roger Penske, Chip Ganassi and A.J. Foyt and drivers Tony Kanaan, Scott Dixon and Ryan Hunter-Reay. Jeff Olsen/USA Today