Track Trivia: Indianapolis Motor Speedway

I've been lucky enough to be at three Sprint Cup races, in Las Vegas, Phoenix and Michigan. But again partly because of the history of the place, besides Daytona another race I'd really like to go to is the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, held since 1994. The track itself celebrates its centennial this year, and of course the most famous race ever is the Indianapolis 500 in May. The Brickyard NASCAR race is on July 26th this year, which is my biggest impediment to actually going (most people can't find a place to stay, but my sister would let me crash.) It is meltingly hot in Indianapolis in late July and my skin fries like an egg after a while in that kind of heat, no matter what I cover it with. 

The track itself is a quad-oval, with squared-off corners and 9 degrees of banking in the turns. The stands hold over 250,000 (sweating) fans, and the track says it is the world's largest in seating capacity. Jimmie Johnson won here last year, and Indiana native Tony Stewart finally won at his "home track" in 2005 and again in 2007. The track surface has been ground down to make it smoother--but last year all that did was wear down the tires so fast they only lasted 10 laps, making the race just a series of sprints and very frustrating for drivers and fans. I still want to go and see the place--it's got a golf course, it's so big, and you can actually drive your own car around on the track if there's no testing going on--but I hope for everyone's sake this year Goodyear gets the tires right so we can see some 200 m.p.h. action!