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Description 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.
With the original surface of crushed rock and tar proving to be disastrous at the opening motorcycle and automobile racing events in August of 1909, 3,200,000 paving bricks were imported by rail from the western part of the state in the fall, laid on their sides in a bed of sand and fixed with mortar, this inspiring the nickname "The Brickyard".
The Hulman-George family continues to own and operate the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with Mari Hulman George serving as Chairman of the Board and Anton "Tony" George serving as President and Chief Executive Officer.