Indianapolis, Indiana · US
The Racing Capital of the World. The legendary 2.5-mile oval hosts the Indianapolis 500, the Brickyard 400, and the Indianapolis Grand Prix on its 2.439-mile road course.
The Speedway is a 2.5-mile rectangle of four nearly identical left-hand corners joined by two long straights, and its simplicity is deceptive — the margins are tiny, the corners are taken flat in modern IndyCars, and the racing is decided by slipstreaming and track position. A yard of bricks remains at the start-finish line, the last of the surface that gave the place its nickname. Capacity runs to a scale nothing else in motorsport matches.
Race day at the Indy 500 is as much an American institution as a motor race, with traditions — the milk, the yard of bricks, the crowd on the morning of the race — that matter as much to regulars as the result. The infield is a venue in itself. Paid shuttles run from the airport and downtown and sell out well in advance, so book transport at the same time as tickets.
The Speedway held its first automobile race on 19 August 1909, drawing over twelve thousand spectators to a two-lap event. The original surface of crushed stone and tar broke up badly and the meeting was marred by crashes and deaths. The response was drastic: that autumn the entire track was repaved with 3.2 million bricks laid in sand and set with mortar, earning it the name that stuck — the Brickyard.
The first 500-mile race followed on 30 May 1911 in front of a crowd of around eighty thousand. Ray Haroun won in six hours and forty-two minutes at an average of 74.59 mph, taking a purse of $14,250. The Indianapolis 500 has been run at the Speedway ever since and remains among the largest single-day sporting events in the world.
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