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.
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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