Nascar races on sorts of tracks, from short to long, oval to road course, concrete to asphalt. Here’s a bi-weekly look at all the tracks of Nascar’s National Touring Series.
INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY ROAD COURSE
2.439 mile asphalt oval/road course hybrid
Debuted 2021 (road course built in 2000)
Lights? Not yet
Series: Cup, Xfinity
Nicknames: The Brickyard, The Bad Fit
THREE FUN FACTS:
1. While the Indianapolis Motor Speedway opened in 1909, and Nascar has raced at the Brickyard since 1994, the road course has only been used for Nascar since 2021. This has annoyed some fans, pundits, and even drivers for removing a “crown jewel” event, the Brickyard 400, although it seemed to really just be the crown jewel of boring racing, along with Pocono and any road course before double-file restarts were instituted.
2. The road course was built in 2000 to lure Formula 1 to the track, returning “World Championship” status to the Brickyard for the first time since 1960, the last of an eleven year period that the Indianapolis 500 was included on the Grand Prix calendar. Since most F1 regulars skipped the Indy 500, that means that IMS was ruining Formula 1 WELL before 2005.
3. AJ Allmendinger and Kurt Busch are currently the only two drivers to have raced in the Indy 500, Brickyard 400, and Verizon 200. So I guess we need to get Juan Pablo Montoya a one-off ASAP.
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