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The Indianapolis Motor
Speedway was built on 328 acres of farmland five miles
northwest of Indiana's capital city in the spring of 1909.
Financed by four local businessmen, Carl Fisher, James
Allison, Frank Wheeler and Arthur Newby, it was planned as a
year-round testing facility for the fast-growing automobile
industry in Indiana. Occasional race meets would be
presented at the track, featuring those very same
manufacturers racing their products against each other.
Spectators, it was reasoned, would be sufficiently impressed
as to want to head downtown quickly to the showrooms for a
closer look at one of these new-fangled contraptions.
Four turns, each
banked at nine degrees and 12 minutes and measuring exactly
440 yards from entrance to exit, were linked together by a
pair of long straights and, at the north and south ends of
the property, by a pair of short straights to form a
rectangular-shaped 2 ½ mile track as dictated by the
confines of the available land. |
