12 STORY LIBRARY 12 EPIC RACES by Janet Slingerland
1 Cars Race 500 Miles in Historic Indianapolis Race Each Memorial Day weekend race fans gather in Indiana It’s time for the Indy 500 It was first run in 1911 Now the Indy 500 is one of the world’s most famous races Ray Harroun was the winner of the first Indy 500 in 1911 His Marmon Wasp car is on display at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum The Indianapolis Motor Speedway IMS was built in 1909 for car testing Occasional races let rival car makers compete After a few years the owners wanted to draw bigger crowds They decided to have one long race each year They offered a big purse to attract racers They hoped the 500-mile 805-km race would bring fans Forty cars ran in the 4
first race The six-and-a-half-hour event was chaotic but it drew a crowd of about 90,000 From then on the Indy 500 ran almost every year In 1996 it became the premier race for the new IndyCar series These cars have a single seat They have open cockpits and wheels Today the Indy 500 draws 300,000 fans each year The 33 cars race at speeds up to 235 miles per hour 378 km h KISSING THE BRICKS In 1909 workers paved the track with bricks The track became known as the Brickyard Over time the bricks were replaced with asphalt By 1961 only one three-foot section of bricks was left These bricks make up the start finish line In 1996 Dale Jarrett won the NASCAR Brickyard 400 race He and his team celebrated by kissing the bricks Since then every Indy 500 and Brickyard 400 winning team kisses the bricks 74 6 Average speed in miles per hour 120 km h of cars in the first Indy 500 The Indianapolis Motor Speedway was built for testing and racing cars The Indy 500 is a 500 mile 805-km race The Indy 500 is run each year on Memorial Day weekend Drivers race 200 laps around the 2 5 mile 4 0 km oval track 5
