Indianapolis Motor Speedway

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) is in Speedway, Indiana (an enclave suburb of Indianapolis) in the United States. It is the home of the Indianapolis 500 race and formerly the home of the Brickyard 400 race.[1] It was built in 1909. It is the original Speedway, the first racing facility to use the word Speedway. IMS has permanent seating for more than 257,000 people. The infield raises capacity to approximately 400,000. It is the largest and highest-capacity sporting facility in the world.[2] The Speedway is considered relatively flat by American standards but high-banked by Europeans. It is a two and a half mile, nearly rectangular oval. Each of the four turns are 1/4 mile. Two 5/8 mile long straight connect turns 2 to 3 and turns 4 to 1. Two 1/8 mile short straights, termed short chutes, connect turns 1 to 2 and turns 3 to 4.

Entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher built the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1909 as a proving ground for the young American auto industry. It was the first track to be called a "speedway," and its 2.5-mile rectangular layout has barely changed since. The surface was paved with 3.2 million bricks late in 1909, which gave the track its nickname, the Brickyard. A strip of brick still marks the start-finish line. The first Indianapolis 500 ran in 1911. NASCAR's Brickyard 400 followed in 1994, and the track hosted Formula One's United States Grand Prix from 2000 to 2007. IMS is a National Historic Landmark and, with more than 250,000 permanent seats, the largest-capacity sports venue in the world.