Top Gun at Indy

The burning question heading into this year's running of the Brickyard400 is, who can stop Jeff Gordon? Gordon is the defending champion ofthe race and, with four wins in the first 11 Brickyard 400 events, hisNo. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet has been and will again beconsidered the car to beat.

In all, the former Pittsboro, Indiana, resident has led 433 of the 1,761laps contested in the 11 races and has a finishing average of 8.82 atIndy--and that includes a Thirty-Seventh in the '96 race and aThirty-Third-Place effort in 2000. Throw out those two races, the onlytwo times Gordon has finished out of the Top-10 in the 11 Brickyard 400events, and his finishing average drops to an incredible 3.0 in theother nine races.

While there is plenty of excitement leading up to the 2005 Brickyard 400classic, it's hard to imagine the race having the impact of theinaugural '94 event. To appreciate the historical significance andeffect of NASCAR's first visit to Indy, you have to look back to thestart of the 1900s and the beginnings of auto racing.

As a former early race driver, Indianapolis businessman Carl G. Fischerwanted to build a major motorsports track and research facility locally.Along with financial partners James Allison, Frank Wheeler, and ArthurNewby, Fischer identified the site of the new speedway and purchased 320acres (known as the Pressley Farm) on the outskirts of Indianapolis for$72,000 on February 8, 1909.

The track Fischer created later that year is basically the same today asit was then--2.5 miles in length with the corners banked 9 degrees, 12minutes. Each of the turns, which measured 60-feet wide and 1/4-milelong, was connected by 50-foot wide straights measuring 5/8-mile long.Between the four corners, "short chutes" totaling 1/8-mile eachcompleted the oval's layout.

Ironically, the first event at the track was not a car race, but a hotair balloon race as part of the opening day ceremonies on June 5, 1909.On August 14 of that year, the first races at the track featuredmotorcycles, not race cars.

The first car race at IMS took place on August 19, 1909. The racingsurface, made of tar and crushed stone, broke down under the pressuresof high-speed racing. With a crowd of more than 15,000 looking on, threecompetitors and two spectators died during the event.

Despite the less than successful debut, Fischer pushed on resurfacingthe track with 3.2 million paving bricks in late 1909. A trio ofthree-day holiday events followed in 1910 without much fanfare ortragedy before the speedway decided to run just one race a year--TheIndianapolis 500 on Memorial Day weekend.

Ray Haroun, riding alone and using the first-ever rearview mirror on hisHarmon Wasp, took the lion's share of the $27,550 purse by winning theinaugural Indianapolis 500 on May 30, 1911.

By the 1913 event, the Indianapolis 500 had grown to internationalproportions with entries coming from England, France, Italy, Germany,and the United States. Jules Goux and his Peugeot won the race thanks inlarge part to the two bottles of French wine he reportedly drank duringthe race.

Now boasting international fame, the Indianapolis Motor Speedwaycontinued to grow in the early years under the guidance of Fischer. In1927, Fischer and his partners sold the track to World War I flying aceEddie Rickenbacher, who had also previously driven in the 500.

Rickenbacher continued to nurture and expand the speedway. One of hisfirst improvements was to add the Brickyard Crossing 18-hole golf coursein the infield of the track in 1929. Rickenbacher stayed at the controlsof the track through the Great Depression and into the '40s beforeracing was suspended during World War II.

Dilapidated and grown over, it appeared the glory days of theIndianapolis Motor Speedway were over only to have Terre Haute, Indiana,businessman Anton "Tony" Hulman Jr. purchase the track in 1945.

Under Hulman's direction, the track was updated and again took its placeas one of the crown jewels in all of world motorsports. Crowds grew tomore than an estimated 400,000 each Memorial Day, making the Indy 500the world's largest sporting event every year.

Hulman passed away in October 1977 and left the speedway to his family.They continue to run the facility, which now covers 559 acres.

While the speedway had seen epic changes over nearly 85 years, one thingstayed constant--beginning with Haroun's victory in the inaugural 1911race right up to Al Unser Jr.'s win in the 78th edition of the event inthe 1994 Indy 500, only open-wheel cars raced on the famed Indianapolistrack.

That all changed with the 1994 Brickyard 400.