We’re going to talk about a car race today. This is the weekend when we take a break from pithy political observations or discussions of historical events to talk about The Race.
Memorial Day Weekend, the unofficial beginning of Summer for many of us—–
And I’m not going to be where I love to be on Memorial Day Weekend. COVID and “Cabbages” are keeping me in my living room, in front of a television set, instead of being part of the sounds and sights and spectacle that will be unfolding in Indianapolis.
At the Speedway, the Brickyard, down on the starting grid, headed to my usual observation post as Jim Cornelison sings “Back Home Again in Indiana,” moments before the engines start. For thousands of people NOT from Indiana, that song in that place is magic in itself.
Every year when I go to the Indianapolis 500, I look for a story with a Missouri connection. I’m holding a couple in reserve—about the only Missouri native to win the Greatest Spectacle in Racing—and about a Texan whose road to the Speedway went through Missouri and one of its legendary race tracks.
Today, we have a story that turns out not to be a story but it’s a story anyway—about why they call the Speedway “The Brickyard.”
The first 500 was run in 1911 on a brick-paved 2 ½ mile track, a huge race track in its day, at a time when the mere thought of going 500 miles in an automobile in a day, let alone in seven hours and change, was beyond the imagination of most people.
But before there was the 500, there was the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the first race track to use that descriptive name.
And before there were cars racing at the track there were hot-air balloons and then motorcycles.
Charles Leerhsen, the author of Blood and Smoke: a True Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and the Birth of the Indy 500¸ recounts that the first racing surface at the track was “two inches of large gray gravel laid upon the natural red-clay soil…followed by two inches of limestone covered with taroid, followed by two more inches of slightly smaller, taroid-drenched gravel, stopped off with another wo inches of dry white stones…each layer being steamrollered repeatedly to pack it down hard.” (Taroid was a mixture of tar and oil.) The result was supposed to be a smooth, dustless racing surface. Several competitors refused to run because of the track’s condition and those that did run didn’t come close to running at record speeds. The meet was a disaster.
The first automobile races were held in August, 1909. The first practices showed the track surface was hardly solid, that the tires of the speeding (70-80 mph) were picking up rocks and throwing them back at trailing cars, which had no windshields and whose drivers were protected only by glass goggles. Sometimes, entire chunks of the taroid surface were flung back. Leerhsen recounts that the pavement “eroded into a ditch two and a half feet deep and eight to ten inches across that led to one car to flip end over end twice, throwing the driver and the riding mechanic to their deaths. The next day, a car crashed through the fence, killing two spectators and a riding mechanic.
Clearly, a better racing surface was needed. Concrete was considered although its track record, so to speak, was inconsistent. There were brief thoughts of using creosote-soaked wood, or a new gravel-tar compound.
And this is where we thought we had a great Missouri story to go with the Indianapolis 500. Leerhsen records Speedway President Carl Fischer was contacted by “a St. Louis man named Will P. Blair…the secretary of the National Paving Brick Manufacturers Association,” who convinced Fisher the track should be paved with bricks, 3.2 million of them.
I started looking for references in St. Louis to Blair or the National Paving Brick Manufacturers Association, but I couldn’t find anything. Leerhsen later told me at the Speedway he could not recall where he found that information about the St. Louis connection.
Now, many years later, along comes Mark Dill, who has written The Legend of the First Super Speedway; the Battle for the Soul of American Auto Racing. He identifies William P. Blair as an “Indianapolis-based representative of the manufacturers’ group, drawing the description from a September 8, 1909 article in the Indianapolis Star.
So there went a great possible story about a Missouri connection to the Indianapolis 500. But I still have a couple left in the bank.
It took a little more than two months to put down all of those 9 ½ pound bricks. The final brick laid was a gold-plated one, put down by the governor of Indiana. Although the brick was supposed to be guarded, it later disappeared and has never been found. As car speeds increased, the need for a smoother racing surface became obvious, especially on the turns. Asphalt was added here and there, particularly in 1936 when some of the rougher turns were smoothed out. All of the bricks on the turns went under asphalt a year later and in 1938 all of the track was asphalted except for the middle part of the main straightaway.
That’s the way I first saw the track in 1954. The entire front stretch was covered in 1961, the fiftieth anniversary of the first 500 (and the year young A. J. Foyt won the race for the first time) except for one three-foot wide stretch of the original bricks that marks the start-finish line. A special gold-plated brick was put in that yard of bricks to honor the fiftieth anniversary of Ray Harroun’s win in the first 500. That brick still exists although not as part of the track.
The yard of bricks remains of the original Brickyard. That yard of bricks has become one of the great ceremonial gathering places in all of racing worldwide.
The winning driver and his crew gather right after the race to “kiss the bricks” as Takuma Sato did when he won his first 500 in 2017. (He got to repeat the ceremony last year with a late-race pass of Scott Dixon and a crash by another competitor that led to a finish under a yellow flag that kept Dixon from a late attempt to regain the lead.)
And as Will Power did when he won his only 500 (so far) three years ago.
One of the bricks is not a brick-brick but one of the bronze bricks honoring a four-time winner of the 500. The first such brick was put down to honor Foyt. Others have been added to honor the other two four-time winners, Rick Mears and Al Unser, Sr.
The 500 is rich in traditions but “kissing the bricks” did not begin in May. In 1994, the Speedway decided to allow a second race to be held each year. It was called the Brickyard 400—the 500-mile race is reserved for open-wheel racing in May. The winner of the third Brickyard 400, Dale Jarret in 1996, decided with crew chief Todd Parrott to pay tribute to the track’s long history by going out to the start-finish line and kissing the bricks. Their entire crew joined them, creating a tradition that somebody will continue on Sunday.
A lot of fans can kiss the bricks, too. The Speedway has extended the yard of bricks into the plaza behind the pagoda and on days leading up to the race and on race day itself, it’s not uncommon to see dozens of fans turn their caps around, put down their coolers, and kneel down for their own ceremony.
This year is the 105th running of the Indianapolis 500 (it was not run in 1918 because of the war, and not run 1942-1945, again because of a war). The race is never a “given” for anyone. Unlike golf, for example, where a tournament winner gains some exemption privileges, all 33 drivers have to earn their way onto the starting grid—by being faster than all other competitors. Past wins at the Speedway and past INDYCAR championships earn a driver no favors. Last year’s winner, Takuma Sato, starts on the outside of the fifth row Sunday, 15th. And Will Power, just three years after his victory, had to push his car so hard that it brushed the second turn wall on his final qualifying attempt, starts 32nd, buried in the middle of the last row.
This is the first race in which the average qualifying speed of the 33 drivers is more than 230 mph (230.294), breaking a seven-year old record. Just saying it in no way conveys what a person sees or the incredible skill and courage that is on display when a car roars past at almost 240 mph—-
—and turns left with the car’s accelerator on the floor. You have to witness it to appreciate it.
It’s hard to describe how fast those cars go. But here’s an example: By the time the race is about twenty laps along, the cars are strung out pretty well. If you’re sitting in the front straightaway grandstand behind the pits and you watch the entire field go past you and you follow the last car as it disappears into the first turn, you suddenly realize the leader already is back in front of you. Only forty seconds have passed. It can be breathtaking.
Unlike last year, this year will have fans in the stands and in the infield—135,000 of them, all masked. That’s a lot of people but it will seem like only a few. In 2011, wen the centennial 500 was run, the crowd was so large that about one in every 100 people in the United States was at the track.
The generations are changing in this country’s biggest open-wheel racing series.
Scott Dixon, who turns 41 years old in July, starts first, his four lap (10 mile) qualifying speed only .04 miles an hour faster than Colton Herta, who was eight years old when Dixon won the 500 in 2008.
On the outside of the front row is Rinus Veekay, who won’t be 21 until September. He is the youngest driver ever to start from the front row. There are similar stories back in the pack of young drivers yet to reach their mid-20s, who will be competing with former winners and other mainstays of the race who are in their 40s. In a few years, names such as Dixon, Castroneves, Kanaan, Hunter-Reay, Power, Carpenter, Montoya, and even Sato will be history, their winning cars cold and static in the Speedway Museum.
And the Brickyard will be the realm of today’s young lions. And “Back Home Again in Indiana’ will still be magic.
(photo credit: Bob Priddy)
