Early history (1874–1938) of
Greensburg, Indiana, an American vehicle parts and highway entrepreneur and the co-founder and first president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, May 1909
Indianapolis businessman
Carl G. Fisher first envisioned building the speedway in 1905 after assisting friends racing in France and seeing that Europe held the upper hand in automobile design and craftsmanship. Fisher began thinking of a better means of testing cars before delivering them to consumers. At the time, racing was just getting started on horse tracks and public roads. Fisher noticed how dangerous and ill-suited the makeshift courses were for racing and testing. He also argued that spectators did not get their money's worth, as they were able to get only a brief glimpse of cars speeding down a linear road. Fisher proposed building a circular track long with smooth surfaces. Such a track would give manufacturers a chance to test cars at sustained speeds and give drivers a chance to learn their limits. Fisher predicted speeds could reach up to on a course. He visited the
Brooklands circuit outside London in 1907, and after viewing the
banked layout, it solidified his determination to build the speedway. Fisher began looking around the Indianapolis area for a site to build his track; he rejected two potential sites before finding level farmland, Pressley Farm, totaling about outside Indianapolis. In December 1908, he convinced
James A. Allison,
Arthur C. Newby, and
Frank H. Wheeler to join him in purchasing the property for $72,000. The group incorporated the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Company on March 20, 1909, with a capitalization of $250,000, with Fisher and James Allison in for $75,000 apiece and Frank Wheeler and Arthur Newby on board for $50,000 each. The event drew a reported 40,000 people. These early events were largely planned by one of the top names in early auto racing promotion,
Ernest Moross, who earned fame for his bold and sometimes outlandish barnstorming events at fairgrounds tracks with racing star
Barney Oldfield. won the first auto race held at the Speedway, a 5-mile, two lap event held on August 19, 1909 On August 19, 1909, fifteen carmakers' teams arrived at the track for practice. The track surface again became a concern with drivers being covered in dirt, oil, and tar and with ruts and chuckholes beginning to form in the turns. Speedway workers oiled and rolled the track prior to the gates opening to the public. Fifteen to twenty thousand spectators showed up, paying at the most $1 for a ticket.
Louis Schwitzer won the first race held, a 5-mile, two lap event. Halfway through the first event, race leader
Louis Chevrolet was temporarily blinded when a stone smashed his goggles.
William Bourque, driving in a Knox, suffered a suspected rear-axle failure resulting in his car flipping end over end on the front stretch before crashing into a fence post. Both he and his mechanic, Harry Halcomb, died at the scene. Today, , or one yard, of original bricks remain exposed at the start-finish line. In December 1909, eleven drivers and a few motorcyclists returned for speed trials. Drivers soon reached speeds of up to on the new surface. In the end,
Johnny Aitken, in a
Peugeot, would win all three events, his final victories at the facility. The Harvest Classic contests were the last races other than the Indianapolis 500 to be held on the grounds for seventy-eight years. Racing was interrupted in 1917–1918 by
World War I when the facility served as a military aviation repair and refueling depot, designated the Speedway Aviation Repair Depot, commanded by Captain Patrick Frissell. When racing resumed, speeds quickly increased. In 1921, speedway co-founder Wheeler committed suicide. At the 1925 event,
Pete DePaolo became the first to average for the race, In July 1926, the neighborhood around the racetrack voted to incorporate itself (along with the track) as the independent town of
Speedway, Indiana. In 1926, Fisher and Allison were offered "a fortune" for the speedway site by a local real estate developer. Rickenbacker built a
golf course in the infield. It was also the first diesel entrant. In 1933, a record 42 cars started the 500. For 1934, a maximum fuel consumption limit was imposed, . Many of the locals expected that the speedway would be sold after the war and become a housing development. With the end of the war in sight, on November 29, 1944, three-time 500 winner
Wilbur Shaw came back to do a tire test approved by the government for Firestone. Shaw was shocked at the dilapidated state of the speedway and contacted owner Eddie Rickenbacker, only to discover that it was for sale. Shaw then sent out letters to the automobile industry to try to find a buyer. All the responses indicated that the speedway would be turned into a private facility for the buyer. Shaw then looked around for someone to buy the speedway who would reopen the racetrack as a public venue. He found
Terre Haute businessman
Tony Hulman. Meetings were set up and the speedway was purchased on November 14, 1945. Though not officially acknowledged, the purchase price for the speedway was reported by the
Indianapolis Star and
News to be $750,000. Major renovations and repairs were made at a quick pace to the frail speedway, in time for the 1946 race. Since the record 42 cars that started the 1933 edition of the 500, the field size has been set at 33 drivers, with only three exceptions to this rule, the first being 1947, when only 30 cars started due to a strike by certain teams affiliated with the ASPAR drivers, owners and sponsors association. 1979 saw the second exception to the 1934 33-driver field rule. By the late 1970s there arose some resistance from certain car owners and drivers as to the direction being taken by
USAC, the auto racing sanctioning body that among other things, governed the Indianapolis 500 event. Some of the dissident teams formed their own racing body,
Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART). USAC responded by barring six of the most famous teams in the sport from qualification (including Roger Penske and Dan Gurney), for "undermining the well-being of USAC". The ruling would sideline former Indy winners Bobby Unser, Al Unser Sr., Gordon Johncock, and Johnny Rutherford. After a court injunction in favor of CART, and a controversy where exhaust pipe rules were clarified after qualifications began and certain teams with an altered exhaust pipe were "locked into" the field, USAC held an additional qualification round on the day before the race, announcing that any driver who could post a faster speed than the slowest qualifier (Roger McCluskey) would be allowed to start the race. Bill Vukovich and George Snider were added to the lineup, bringing the field to 35. A crisis was averted for the moment, but USAC's handling of both issues was seen as bungling by some people, and as outright manipulation by others, and that year spelled the beginning of the end for USAC's governance of the Indy Car series. The 1980s brought a new generation of speedsters, led by four-time race winner
Rick Mears who also broke the speed mark in qualifying (
1989) and won six pole positions. Other stars of the decade included
Danny Sullivan,
Bobby Rahal, and F1 veteran
Emerson Fittipaldi. The 1989 race came down to a final ten-lap, a thrilling duel between Fittipaldi and
Al Unser Jr., culminating in Unser crashing in the third turn of the 199th lap after making contact with Fittpaldi's right front tire.
Buddy Rice became the first American driver since 1998 to win the race in the rain-shortened
2004 Indianapolis 500. At the time, Rice drove for the team co-owned by
1986 Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Rahal and the Indiana native television talk show host and comedian
David Letterman. In 2005,
Danica Patrick became the first female driver to lead the race at Indianapolis, after acquiring it for a lap near the mark while cycling through pit stops.
Dan Wheldon would go on to win the
2005 Indianapolis 500. The
2016 race saw another American race winner when rookie
Alexander Rossi stretched his fuel mileage to record an upset win in a race where he had been off the leaders' pace. The
2017 race saw former Formula One World Champion
Fernando Alonso take off from the
Monaco Grand Prix to take part in a one-off event, being highly competitive up front before his engine blew. The races' polesitter and 2008 winner Scott Dixon escaped a huge airborne crash largely unhurt. In spite of heavy crashes, the speedway had now gone more than 20 years without a fatality as the
SAFER barriers and the enhanced IndyCars absorbed more of the violent impacts. The race was eventually won by
Takuma Sato, who became the first Japanese and Asian winner of the event. In
2018, Australian former series' champions
Will Power won the race after a decade of participation as the first Australian to win the 500, whereas his
Penske teammate
Simon Pagenaud repeated that feat, becoming the first French winner of the race since 1920, in
2019 after a last-lap duel with 2016 winner Rossi.
Start of Penske era (2020s) In 2020, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, as with
IndyCar Series and other related holdings, was sold to Penske Entertainment Corp., a subsidiary of the
Penske Corporation, owned by
Roger Penske. In
2020, because of the
COVID-19 pandemic, the Indianapolis 500 was not held in late May and instead was held in August. 2017 winner Takuma Sato won the race for the second time after taking lead at lap 186. In
2021, Brazilian three-time winner
Hélio Castroneves won the race after a late-race duel with
Álex Palou; he joined
A. J. Foyt,
Al Unser Sr. and
Rick Mears as four-time winners; this race was also the first victory for
Meyer Shank Racing. In May 2022, IMS announced it had become a
Caesars Sportsbook partner beginning with the NTT Indy car series' GMR Grand Prix on May 14. As part of the deal, the gaming operator opened the Caesars Sportsbook Lounge at the track's Pagoda Plaza.
Overview of different track layouts Since 2000, various road course layouts have been used for additional races at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway: ==Other racing events==