Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Motorsport track in Indianapolis, IN, USA

The Brickyard's Two Formula 1 Lives

The great American oval counted toward the World Championship through the Indianapolis 500 in the 1950s, then hosted Formula 1 on an infield road course from 2000 to 2007.

A yard of bricks still shows at the start and finish line, a visible reminder of the 3.2 million that once paved the track. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway, in the town of Speedway six miles west of downtown Indianapolis, was the idea of the entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, who wanted a proving ground for the young car industry, and it was built on farmland in 1909. Its first races ran on crushed stone and tar; after fatal crashes the track was paved in brick, and the nickname the Brickyard followed. The oval itself, 2.5 miles of long straights, short chutes and four gently banked turns, has barely changed since.

From 1950 to 1960 the Indianapolis 500 counted toward the World Championship for Drivers, though the two worlds seldom met. Alberto Ascari, in 1952, was the only regular Grand Prix driver of the era to take part in the 500. Johnnie Parsons won the first of those championship races in 1950, and Bill Vukovich was the only driver to win twice in that period.

Formula 1 proper arrived in 2000. Tony George brought the United States Grand Prix back after nine years away, and a two year building program created a 2.605 mile infield road course that borrowed part of the oval, the main straight and one banked turn among it, along with new pit garages and the Pagoda tower. More than 200,000 people saw Michael Schumacher win the first race, a result central to his 2000 title. Controversy soon followed. In 2002 Schumacher appeared to try for a dead heat and Rubens Barrichello was given the win by 0.011 seconds, and in 2005 the Michelin teams pulled out after the formation lap over tire safety on the banking, leaving six cars to race, a field small enough to count on two hands.

Indianapolis held 19 championship rounds in all, eleven Indianapolis 500s from 1950 to 1960 and eight Grands Prix from 2000 to 2007. Schumacher won five of those Grands Prix, and Lewis Hamilton won the last of them in 2007. The Grand Prix later moved to the Circuit of the Americas, and the Brickyard went back to being, first and last, the home of the Indianapolis 500.

Every Grand Prix here

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