Editor’s note: This story was originally published in 2022. We are republishing it as part of our coverage of the 2026 Indy 500.
INDIANAPOLIS – From the day he was 19, standing nervously in front of one of those roll-top wooden desks in his father’s office in northwest Indiana, Jigger Sirois was going to be a racecar driver. Yessir, that’s what he’d told his dad after high school graduation in 1954, he wanted to race cars. You sure about this, Jigger? That’s what his old man had asked him. Jigger just nodded.
Earl Sirois tried to talk his son out of it, and who knows where we’d be today if he’d succeeded? Who knows where Jigger would be? Definitely not in Williamsburg, Virginia, living in a condo less than a mile from the U.S. colonial town’s visiting center and driving a 2004 Buick LeSabre and getting calls even now about the events of 1969.
As for the rest of us, well, without Jigger Sirois the history of the Indianapolis 500 would be slightly less colorful, slightly less interesting, slightly less … human.
Weird thing is, before the name “Jigger Sirois” became synonymous with bad luck at the Indianapolis 500, before his name was put on that gold-colored metal trophy shaped like a shot glass, Jigger was born to do this. It’s not just that conversation with his dad in 1954, or the first race he ever saw at age 11, at a dirt track in Crown Point in 1947, watching cars slide and smelling the castor oil in those engines. It’s not even that old gas pump in his grandfather’s yard in Shelby, Indiana, little Jigger swinging from the pump until someone chased him away because stop that Jigger! You can get hurt that way!
Give him time, Grandpa. Jigger would learn plenty about getting hurt.
He was born into this sport, and that’s almost literal. Go back to April 16, 1935, to his parents’ house in Shelby, in the Region. That’s where a doctor showed up with his little black bag, the kind doctors carried, and delivered Leon Duray Sirois into the world.
Leon’s older sister, a child herself, took one look at the peanut-shaped baby and blurted, “He sure is a little jigger!”
A nickname was born. It didn’t hurt that his father, a racecar mechanic himself, was friends with riding mechanic Jigger Johnson, a two-time Indy 500 winner. Just like that, a baby boy in the Region is given a name that will live forever on an award nobody wanted to win.
The 1969 Indianapolis 500 of Mario Andretti – and Jigger Sirois
“This is Jigger Sirois, and now I will pause 10 minutes to allow you to admonish me for being so slow.”
Seriously, that’s how you’re meeting Jigger. He’s in Virginia, in that condo, returning a phone call left weeks earlier. His voice sounds exactly like he looks at age 87, and he looks adorable, 135 pounds on a good day, bald head shaped like a lightbulb, eyes big and glowing.
He knows what you want. It’s what everybody wants when they call from some faraway place, about a faraway time, before “Jigger Sirois” was a name on a trophy, back when he was a racecar driver at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Back before the rain started to fall.
To understand Jigger’s story, you need to understand Indianapolis 500 qualifying rules. Well, one rule in particular, back in 1969.
It starts on May 17, 1969, with each Indy 500 team pulling a number from a hat, which is how they determined qualifying position back then – no, that’s not the rule you need to know – and Jigger’s team fishing out the No. 1. After 12 years in midget cars this is Jigger’s first appearance at the Indy 500, and now he’s first on the track, and after three laps of qualifying he’s cruising along at about 162 mph.
Here comes the fourth and final lap. And here comes the rain. Jigger’s on the back straightaway, speeding into history and not knowing it, because team owner Myron Caves, an auto dealer from Fresno, California, is near the finish line and he’s waving a yellow flag.
Calling off the qualifying run.
Now it’s raining and it’s not stopping. There will be no more qualifying on this day, and here’s the 1969 rule to know: Only qualifying attempts made on the official Pole Day would be eligible for the 1969 Indy 500 pole, assuming there were any attempts. There was, but just one. Had Jigger been allowed to complete that qualifying run, he’d have ended the day with the fastest time – and only time – posted.
Qualifying was going to continue the next week, but Jigger’s time would’ve earned the pole as long as he wasn’t bumped entirely from the field. History shows he would not have been bumped. His time of 161.486 mph would’ve been 31st overall, fast enough to stay in the field, which means fast enough for the pole. Without Myron Caves’ yellow flag, Jigger Sirois would’ve started the 1969 Indianapolis 500 on the first row, with A.J. Foyt (170.568 mph) in the middle and eventual winner Mario Andretti on the outside.
Instead, this happened: Sirois had to go back onto the track the following Saturday, starting from scratch like everyone else. On his first attempt he posted another time in the low 162 mph range, which would’ve stood up as the 26th fastest in the field – and a spot in Row 9, next to Bill Vukovich II – but his crew thought he could go faster. They waved off that time and sent Jigger back onto the track to improve it.
On the first lap of his final qualifying attempt, his engine blew up.
And that’s how Leon Sirois, who became Jigger Sirois on the day of his birth, became a legend in 1969.
Check out these Jigger Award winners
They called it The Jigger Award. The wise guys of the American Auto Racing Writers & Broadcasters Association, I mean. It was the idea of Indianapolis News sportswriter Dick Mittman, and the AARWBA created the trophy out of a gold-colored metal jigger – a jigger of whiskey is one of those two-headed shot glasses, with ¾ of an ounce on one side, 1½ ounces on the other – and awarded it each May, the day before the race. The driver didn’t always show up to collect, because it’s like I’ve been telling you: This is the award nobody wanted on their mantle.
Some winners:
1970, Tony Adamowicz: The yellow light flashed accidentally on his first qualifying run, causing Adamowicz to slow down – thinking the attempt had been called off – but officials waved him onward. He sped up, but with Lap 1 registering 6 mph slower than the rest of his laps, he was bumped from the field.
2002, Billy Roe: He had one of the 33 fastest qualifying times until he was bumped late in the day by George Mack. When Michael Andretti waved off his time to try for more speed, Roe was back in the field until Andretti qualified again, bumping Roe for the second time in a matter of hours.
1981, Bob Frey: Rookie driver was sitting at the starting line, about to start his first qualifying run, when it began raining. He returned later in the day, just before the session ended at 6 p.m., but never got off the line again; this time his engine stalled … twice. He became a mortician.
1983 and ’89, Johnny Rutherford: One of six three-time winners of the Indianapolis 500, Rutherford is the only two-time winner of The Jigger Award. Two crashes in practice kept him out in 1983, and in ’89 he failed to make the field after being bumped late in the day by Rich Vogler, hurrying back out for another try and blowing his engine.
1975, AARWBA: The association lost the award, though it later turned up behind a door in the IMS Museum.
It was last awarded in 2018 to James Hinchcliffe, the fan favorite who lost his spot on Bump Day. Jigger was there in 2018 to hand out the award. He’s not sure why The Jigger Award ended after 48 years, but he has a suspicion.
“I think they took a good look at me,” he says, “and decided they better drop it.”
‘We’re friends now’
Jigger’s not bitter. Not even close. He never raced in the Indy 500 – failing to qualify from 1970-75 as well – but says he was “so honored” to be inducted into the National Midget Auto Racing Hall of Fame in 1983.
“Without the experience at the Speedway,” he says, referring to 1969, “there wouldn’t be any sports writers calling me when I was 87. Honestly, I was just another guy that didn’t qualify fast enough if you want to look at it realistically. It hurts, but that’s racing.”
It’s the life he wanted, the life his father tried to discourage even though Earl Sirois knew the thrill of victory, having worked as a crew member for three Indianapolis 500 champions (Lee Wallard in 1951, Sam Hanks in ’57, Jimmy Bryan in ’58). But Earl knew the difficulty of the racing game, which is why he soon devoted his time to the family business in Shelby, a hardware store in farming country that sold International Harvester equipment.
Jigger wasn’t going to be talked out of it, and knowing what he knows now, doesn’t regret his career choice even a little. He retired from racing in 1977 and became a welder at the Standard Oil refinery in Whiting, Indiana, and in those days he’d walk to work. He remembers the day it was 27 degrees below zero, the wind punishing him as it came off Lake Michigan. Hourly workers like Jigger were ineligible for company transfers, but he was begging prayerfully:
“Father God,” he prayed, “please help me not live out my life in this area.”
Wasn’t much later that Standard Oil had a new plant manager, a man walking through the shop and seeing that unusual name on Jigger’s hard hat – Sirois, it said – and saying he was an IndyCar fan. Are you by chance related to the racecar driver?
“Sir,” Jigger said, “I am the racecar driver!”
Jigger got his transfer to Virginia, where he retired in 1996. He spends his time with his wife, Juanita, walking daily and logging his distance – he recently passed 27,000 miles – and raising money for children who stutter. That’s another part of the Jigger Sirois story that demands being told, his lifelong battle with stuttering, achieving what is called “fluency” in his 60s and now using his modest fame and enormous enthusiasm to raise money for the cause. That’s a story for another day, a promise I made to Jigger, a promise between friends.
“We’re friends now,” Jigger tells me after two conversations totaling 90 minutes, and he’s right. To know Jigger Sirois is to like him so very much, because he’ll say things like:
“I was not an A.J. Foyt or a Mario Andretti, but I tried hard. I gave it 100% effort and it just didn’t work out. I weigh 135 pounds, I’m skinny as a rail, and people see me pull up in my LeSabre and they wouldn’t believe I once passed A.J. Foyt in the Astrodome in a midget car.”
And things like:
“My overall balance these days is low. I’m just shaky. My hamstrings are like my brain, they’ve shrunk up. I just started therapy this morning and I can tell if I stick with it, I’ll be fine.”
At the end of one of our conversations, Jigger signs off by saying he’s going out for a half-hour walk – “You get a natural high from walking,” he says – before hanging up. You wonder what a man like this thinks about on his walks, 87 years into a life that started as Leon Duray Sirois but will end as Jigger Sirois, whose bad luck lives forever on a handful of gold-covered shot glasses.
No, you don’t wonder. You remember what Jigger had said earlier in the conversation:
“No complaints,” he’d said. “I’m overjoyed. I’m eager to be 88, I’ll put it that way.”
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel onThreads, or onBlueSky and Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar, or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar. Subscribe to the free weekly Doyel on Demand newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Doyel: Jigger Sirois lost 1969 Indy 500 pole and never made it into the field
Reporting by Gregg Doyel, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
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