THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 1, 1994 TAG: 9408010231
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C4 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: Road to Indy: Brickyard 400, part 1
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 111 lines
The inaugural Brickyard 400 is scheduled for Saturday in Indianapolis. This is the first of a three-part historical perspective.
There were no engines to be started in the first race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
It was a balloon race held in June 1909, shortly after the track was built. And one of the pilots was Carl Fisher, who with three partners had built the track.
Two months later, men began racing cars at Indy. And in 1910, the speedway's first full year of operation, there were more than 120 races.
Attendance sagged, so Fisher changed plans. He decreed that in 1911 there would be only one event - a 500-mile race on Memorial Day.
``We're going to have the biggest damn crowd anyone in the country has ever seen,'' he said.
Some 80,000 came. Men who had fought at Gettysburg watched Ray Harroun circle the track in his Marmon Wasp for almost seven hours to win the first 500.
A tradition had started. And for 82 years, the only race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has been the Indianapolis 500.
This Saturday, the Brickyard 400 for NASCAR Winston Cup cars begins a new tradition at Indy - a second race. And the fact that it is guaranteed to be a success even before the green flag falls tells a lot about the powerful aura of Indy, the oldest and largest speedway in the world.
Racing at Indy, with its old-fashioned double-deck grandstand flush to the narrow front straight, is like playing ball at Fenway Park or riding at Churchill Downs.
The man who had the vision to build the speedway made headlights for a living. Fisher was co-owner of Prest-O-Lite, an Indianapolis headlight manufacturer.
The opening decade of the 20th century was the first golden age of the automobile, but the Europeans were far ahead in car development and racing. Fisher wanted a proving ground where American car companies - and there were hundreds of them - could test and race their products.
He spent a small fortune in 1908 and 1909 - $200,000 - to build the 2.5-mile track on 300 acres of farmland just west of the city.
In the first series of races, in August 1909, Fisher was confronted by a problem that has plagued NASCAR speedways throughout the summer of 1994: The track, made of crushed stone and tar, broke up. A driver, two riding mechanics and two spectators were killed, and the final race had to be stopped early.
Fisher regrouped. Within days, bricklayers were at the speedway resurfacing the entire track with 10-pound bricks - the best paving material known to man in 1909. In 63 days, they literally paved the track by hand, laying 3,200,000 bricks. ``The Brickyard'' was born.
From the very beginning, the Indy 500 has been the most important automobile race in America.
Much of the first race, including one of the first crashes, was captured for eternity by a new invention called the motion picture camera. In 1912, when the purse was raised to $50,000, the 500 became the highest-paying sporting event in the world. In 1920, it was first broadcast on radio.
And it was always more than a race.
``That first race was a success and the thing just kept growing,'' said Donald Davidson, historian for the United States Auto Club, which sanctions the Indy 500. ``Even in the mid- to late 1920s, it was very much a thing for celebrities to go to. It was very much a social event.''
Some Indianapolis traditions have been around since the beginning. The name ``World's Greatest Race Course,'' a registered trademark of the speedway, was first used by Fisher in 1908. And Indy's famous flying-wheel logo goes back to 1911.
But the name ``Indianapolis 500'' took many years to catch on, at least as an official term. In 1919, for instance, the official program called the race the ``Liberty Sweepstakes.'' Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, it was called the ``International Sweepstakes.'' Even as late at 1973, when people had been calling it the Indianapolis 500 for years, the tickets read: ``57th 500-mile International Sweepstakes.''
In 1952, forty-one years after winning the first 500, an aging Ray Harroun marveled as cars raced through the turns at almost 100 mph.
``It's the same corners we went through, and I don't see how they get through them at those speeds,'' he said. Today's Indy cars fly through the same turns at almost 200 mph.
But speeds are relative. Harroun averaged 74.5 mph to win the 1911 race. Eighty years later, Harry Gant won the Goody's 500 at Martinsville Speedway at an average speed of 74.5 mph.
One of the participants in the first 500 was Eddie Rickenbacker. He raced in five 500s, with a best finish of 10th in 1914. In World War I, Rickenbacker was the first American with the right stuff. He became America's top war ace, shooting down 22 German planes.
In 1927, Rickenbacker bought the speedway from Fisher for $700,000. And he ran it through the 1930s and the Great Depression, never missing a race, always running just the 500, and adding new layers of tradition.
Today, cursory histories of the track paint Indiana businessman Tony Hulman as the savior of the speedway and the 500.
World War II kept the track closed from 1942 through 1945. And when Hulman bought the track from Rickenbacker in 1946, the facility had become run down. Weeds sprouted in the cracks between the bricks.
But while the facility had deteriorated, the race was always strong. When the 500 resumed in 1946, more than 150,000 race-starved fans caused one of the biggest traffic jams ever outside the speedway on race day. Any fears of the demise of the 500 ended that morning in that crush of cars.
``And it has been a sellout every year since World War II,'' Davidson said. MEMO: Tuesday: NASCAR and Indy - The chill, and the thaw. ILLUSTRATION: AP FILE PHOTO
Henry Ford took this photo from the judge's stand of drivers lined
up for first Indianapolis 500 in 1911. The car at right was used by
photographers. The race took nearly seven hours.
by CNB