Tributes pour in after the passing of Forrest Lucas

INDIANAPOLIS — Forrest Lucas, the Hoosier farm boy who perfected lubrication products for the trucking industry and grew Lucas Oil Products into a $500 million fortune, is being remembered for his commitment to Indiana sports promotion and ownership.

Lucas died this past weekend at his Missouri home. He was 83.

Lucas literally stamped his name on Indianapolis with the 2007 20-year $122 million sponsorship deal for the naming rights to Lucas Oil Stadium.

That sponsorship provided a secure funding source as the Indianapolis Colts sought to build on the team’s 2007 Super Bowl win.

”Lucas became the bedrock and our premier corporate partner both in size but also meaning with us as the relationship between the Lucas family and the Irsay family was very strong,” said Roger VanDerSlick, the chief commercial officer for the Colts, “and is strong, so being able to use them, if you will, from partnership standpoint to anchor our sponsorship portfolio but then importantly work with us to promote football to give back to the community to do to all the wonderful things that they care about here in central Indiana and for us to work together on that, it gave us another company that thinks about fans, thinks about consumers but also thinks about the community in very similar ways.”

Tributes for Lucas poured in from throughout the Indiana sports community.

“We are saddened by the passing of Forrest Lucas, a visionary entrepreneur and long-time friend of Pacers Sports & Entertainment,” read a statement from the city’s WNBA and NBA franchises.

“He was a long-time fan of motorsport and a friend of our team,” read a statement from the Arrow/McLaren IndyCar team. “We race for him and the Lucas family this weekend.”

The NHRA U.S. Nationals will take the green light at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park in Clermont this weekend, where Lucas was honored with the NHRA Lifetime Achievement Award.

“Forrest Lucas was more than a businessman; he was a visionary who believed in motorsports from the grassroots up,” said NHRA President Glen Cromwell when Lucas received his honor. “The NHRA and countless racers are better because of his passion and generosity.”

The passing of Lucas marks the loss of the third Indiana sports community leader since the summer of 2024.

Jim Morris, longtime executive of the Indiana Pacers, died in July of last year, and Colts Owner Jim Irsay passed in May.

”If you look at the facilities that have arisen because of their involvement,” said VanDerSlick, “the ability and successful experiences in being able to draw and host more big events, to build the infrastructure not only the hardware but the infrastructure in the community to help support all those, we all come together, and we all come together to attract these wonderful events for Indianapolis, and those three were enormously important and at the head of the leadership chairs.”