0545 Indianapolis Indiana

21^st June 2016

A day at the Brickyard

While I am not a big fan of Indy cars, the Indianapolis 500 is as much of a global motor racing icon as Brooklands, Bathurst, or the Nurburgring, and as such deserves ones attention. More particularly, Colin Chapman and Jim Clark came here in 1964 in a Lotus 34, the first rear engined car ever to race at Indianapolis, and won pole position, and very nearly the race (were it not for tyre failure).  They returned in 1965 and won the race, and since then, no front engine car has ever won the Indianapolis 500.   Its amazing where Lotus pops up, and wherever it does, it seems to have been a “first”.  I set off to “The Brickyard” (as it is known) really looking forward to my day.

As you drive into the city, everything is about the Race Track.  Even more so today because the 100^th Anniversary Indy 500 was only held a couple of weeks ago.  Bridges decorated, roundabouts with racing memorabilia in the middle, and of course street names named after drivers or other racing related themes.  I drove past the track (its hard to miss !) but didn’t see any signs to the Museum or similar, so I went round again, and noticed people driving in the

main entrance underneath some grandstands – So I followed them in, and sure enough, once one is under the kind of tunnel, you see a big building and a free car park. It turns out that this building is the museum, and I am in the right place, so I park Troopie and enter.

Knowing little of what to expect, I quickly learn that there is a 90 minute tour  of the facility which includes a la round the track, stopping at the start finish line to inspect the line of original bricks, and a tour of the “Pagoda”, the main hospitality, scoring, and media centre for the track.  Cost of $30, and that includes entry to the museum which is $10 anyway, so I thought that was quite reasonable, especially after the somewhat extortionate pricing in Niagara ($22 just to park your car !).  I had time for a quick look at part of the museum before my 11.15 tour

bus left on our excursion round the track.  First thing you see in the museum is a new Aston Martin something – All carbon fibre and very swish in what I thought was black. Fancy rear lights as well – Just a stunning looking car.  But no one could tell me what it was and why it was there !  I also had time to check out a few of the CanAm cars from the 1970’s – Now THAT is a race series I remember, with their thundering V8’s, and also where the McLaren name first became a consistent winner when Bruce was still involved.

Then it was off on the bus with Bob our driver and Brian our guide – Both volunteers who live locally, and are very knowledgeable about everything to do with the history of Indianapolis Speedway. First impression ?  There are grandstands on BOTH sides of the track, especially on the main straight, and this gives it the feeling of being in a tunnel when you stand on the track – What it must be like when the stands are packed, I can only begin to imagine.  Certainly a very different feeling from any other track I have been on.  And the bricks are those that originally formed the entire track – over 3 million of them I believe.  85% of them are still there, underneath the modern tarmac, but across the start / finish line are just 9 rows of original bricks.  Apparently recently some modern race car with ground effects actually sucked one of the bricks right out of the ground, and the meeting had to be halted while there fixed the problem !

A custom is to “kiss the bricks”, so I did so, and we then just soaked up the atmosphere for about 20 minutes while Brian told us more details of the history of the track.  After that, we drove round the track itself, and then ended up in the pit area behind the Pagoda which we entered.  We saw the conference area where they do the driver interviews,  and then went up to the 4^th floor where there is an enormous media area – Named the Chris Economaki room after the famous US journalist and commentator,  who also used to come out to Bathurst, I believe.  Looking down on the main straight is quite something.

A row of clocks in the room has one labeled “Speedway” – Indianapolis Motor Speedway is apparently classed as a city in its own right, with a number of people living inside its environs.  Just to give you an idea, inside the speedway there is part of a golf  course (4 holes inside, 14 outside), and it is actually big enough area wise to locate the entire Vatican City, Yankee Stadium, The entire White House, The Roman Colosseum, Liberty Island, The Rose Bowl Stadium, the Taj Mahal, and Churchill Downs horse racing circuit  ALL in the infield !! Then you have all the car parks outside the circuit as well !  So it is quite large !

We went out to the Winner’s Rostrum, which features all Winner’s Names for all categories on the back of the stands.  After that we went down for a tour of Gasoline Alley and the back of the pit area – Amazingly the 9 wide line of bricks that mark the start / finish line continue unbroken through the ground floor of the Pagoda centre, and also right across the pit area, so that every race fan has the opportunity to “kiss the bricks” even if he can’t get out onto the actual track.

From Gasoline Alley it was back to the main building where I then spent a couple more hours exploring the quite extensive museum.  Interestingly (for me), that “black” Aston Martin I mentioned before was now bather in sunshine through the roof, and it turned out to be this deep purple kind of colour – Absolutely stunning.

I won’t go into detail on many of the cars, but one thing really stunned me.  Jim Clark won the race in 1965 in a Lotus that was state of the art.  But the 1964 winning US car is there, and it is SO backward in terms of its engineering compared to the Lotus – Apart from double shocks on the front, it also has a big exposed chrome hinge strip running up the centre of the front so that mechanics could lift up either side of the bonnet to get to the engine – Compared to Chapman’s lightweight removable fiberglass body !  The Lotus really did change the face and design of American race cars overnight after it won.

I finally felt I had seen everything, and after a quick phone call to make sure they were there, went over to see Houston friends Ron and Caroline who coincidentally were in Indianapolis visiting their daughter for a couple of days.  It was good to catch up with them briefly, and then I headed out of town in a roughly westerly direction, aiming for a camp site down the road.  I finally found a place called Hickory Hills, somewhere down near Terre Haute.  I got there after their office was closed at 6 pm, and you would have thought I had arrived to rob their till !  They said I should have booked ahead on

the internet etc etc, and if I hadn’t been so tired at the end of a long day, I would have left, especially since it was one of the more expensive camp sites.  But the facilities were good, and the bathroom included tin drums for the hand basins and the shower heads protruded from watering cans – Very novel.  Luckily I put the fly sheet up over the pop top before I went to bed because it looked like rain – And in the morning, I was right !  But it didn’t stop me sleeping !!

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