Indianapolis

Indianapolis is in the state of Indiana and has a population of around 780,000, which makes it the thirteenth largest in the country, just a little smaller than Jacksonville and a little larger than San Francisco. It's an industrial city, but one also famous for its many sports teams and the world famous Indianapolis 500, arguably the greatest motor race in the world. Let's find out some more.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway was built in 1909 which means it's the second oldest motor racing circuit in the world. The oldest is also in America, in Milwaukee. The IMS welcomes 257,000 spectators in the stands, and for the big events an additional 150,000 in the infield area. These 400,000 visitors means that the IMS holds more people than any other sports venue in the world. So, what do all these people come to see? Why, the thrills and spills of high speed racing of course.

Firstly let me describe the track. It is called the Brickyard, referring back to the original surface which was paved with 3.2 million bricks. Now most of the surface is asphalt, with just a small section of bricks remaining at the start line. Imagine a rectangle with rounded rather than angled corners and that is the shape of the track. The long sides are 5\8ths of a mile and the short sides 1\8th, with the rounded corners 1\4 mile each. This gives a total of 2 1\2 miles. The corners are not flat like in Formula One racing, but banked. This means the cars can reach greater speeds in the turns.

So just how fast do these cars go? Well, for the Indy 500, the biggest and most famous race of the year, the cars do 200 laps of the track for a total of 500 miles, hence the name. The record for the fastest single lap belongs to a Dutchman called Arie Luyendyk, who on the 10th May 1996 went round the 2 1\2 mile track in just 37.6 seconds, at an average speed of 239 miles per hour (which is 385 in kilometres).

There are 33 cars which take part in this race. Each car uses approximately 1.3 gallons of fuel per lap, not at all efficient but if you consider that they accelerate from 0 to 100 mph in three seconds you can understand that these cars are incredibly powerful machines. They have to come into the pits to refuel every 30 laps or so. The youngest ever winner of the race was Troy Ruttman in 1952 aged 22, and the oldest Al Unser in 1987 aged 47. The first woman to race was Janet Guthrie in 1978, finishing a respectable 9th.