![]() ![]() With the help of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway museum and a few friends, we gathered five Indy 500 cars from various eras. On a sunny fall day in 2015, we took a photographer and a small crew to Indy. And where, if we don't screw things up, it will live on. And if you head to Indianapolis, you can stand on the earth where that race began. This year marks the hundredth running of the 500, a rare and hallowed pastime in a relatively young country. ![]() The Speedway is a font of bravery and pomp, an irreplaceable piece of our culture. Why do we keep going back? Tradition is part of it, but not all. ![]() And as late as 2015, drivers were still crashing, still getting hurt. Speeds climbed, from just above 70 mph in 1911 to over 230 in the mid-Nineties. The bricks were eventually replaced by pavement. In 1911, the track hosted the first Indianapolis 500, a 200-lap event dreamed up as a gimmick to draw crowds. The tar surface was almost immediately replaced by 3.2 million bricks, thought to be safer. Ray Harroun’s winning marmon wasp averaged 74.6 mph. I watched Carl's face grow whiter."Ĭars race through the dust and smoke during the first Indianapolis 500, in 1911. Cars skidded off the buckling macadam and burst into flame. "Every minute," she would later write, "held dramas of tragedy, mutilation, and death. He and his wife, Jane, were at the track that weekend. The Speedway is generally seen as the creation of an Indianapolis businessman named Carl Fisher. Shortly after, a Marmon hit a pedestrian bridge on the track's north end. He crashed his National through trackside fencing, killing his mechanic and two spectators. Two days after that, during a 300-mile race, Charlie Merz blew a tire. Bourque's car hit a ditch in the infield and rolled, killing both him and his riding mechanic. On the 19th, a man named Wilfred "Billy" Bourque was driving in a 250-mile race when he spun in Turn 4. Now neuter the walls, nix the catch fence, and replace the asphalt with crushed rock and tar. Picture the Speedway as it is now: 2.5 miles, four corners banked at just over nine degrees, concrete walls, and catch fencing. Seventy-five days later, on August 19, the place hosted its first car race. THE INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY opened to the public on June 5, 1909. (From the May 2016 Issue of Road & Track ) ![]()
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