As a Briton who has followed Motor Racing pretty much since he started talking I have always been drawn to Indycar racing and in particular to the Indianapolis 500. Very few races in my eyes are able to capture that mix of excitement, unpredictability and most importantly history that makes Motor Racing so compelling for both myself and for many others. Yes American Open Wheel Racing has had its ups and downs over the years, but if anything it has only helped to add to the intriguing nature of the sport and its showpiece event. This year of course the Indianpolis celebrates its 100th running, so as a tribute to the great race I decided to put together this blog commemorating some of the most legendary stories that have helped to make the Memorial Day race what it is today. Welcome ladies and gentlemen to 100 years and 100 moments of the Indianapolis 500.

For the start of this countdown it seems fitting that we begin by looking at how the legendary 500 began its life in the first place, a story defined by technology, opportunism and like most things in the 20th century, corporate pressures.

In 1900 businessman Carl Graham Fisher, who had at the time made his living running a cycling repair shop in his native Indiana, attended a show held in New York’s old Madison Square Garden as part of a team led by cycle racing pioneer Barney Oldfield, the show proving the first ever recording of a motoring exhibition taking place in North America. Convinced that these ‘horseless carriages’ were to be the future of transport, Fisher invested heavily in motoring based businesses at the expense of his cycling empire, opening one of the first ever car dealerships in America as well teaming with the inventor Percy C. Avery to patent the creation of what would later become the world’s first car headlight. As demand for the motor car grew Fisher was the first to benefit, and in the process helped to establish is place as one of the figureheads of the burgeoning trade.

In 1905 Fisher returned from a from a racing event in France where he had been amazed at the advances in motoring design and craftsmanship from these machines in mainland Europe when compared to American creations of the time. At the time test and racing facilities in North America had been restricted to public roads and on old horse tracks, facilities ill-equipped for the vigour of car testing and not satisfying in a racing context to the paying customer. Fisher made the assumption that for the benefit of the motor community that a purpose built facility designed for car testing should be developed, with Fisher’s home town of Indianapolis quickly chosen as the ideal location for the venture.

Construction of the facility would commence on the 20th of March, 1909, five miles North West of Indianapolis city centre on four adjacent eighty acre tracks which had once been previously used for farmland, adjacent to the commuter track of what was to become Georgetown road, with the circuit itself first being used for competition for the first time in August later in the year. Early races however proved to be disastrous, the circuit’s crushed stone and asphalt surface over a clay undercoat made the track conditions treacherous, and following a spate of fatalities in the first few months Fisher and his fellow investors made the expensive decision ($100,00 in 1909 money) to repave the entire circuit with 2.5 million bricks as well as the introduction of concrete walls surrounding the track, earning the circuit the nickname ‘The Brickyard’ in the process.

The newly repaved course was reopened in time for the 1910 racing season, where the speedway and its new surface would play host to nine racing events over the course of the year, it would however be the catalyst for the next trouble to hit the speedway during its short life. Whilst the Memorial Day event at the speedway proved to be a success, generating an attendance of 60,000 people to watch Ray Harroun win the 200 mile Wheeler-Schebler Trophy race from that point on attendances at the speedway grew progressively smaller over the course of the year, culminating in a paltry 18,000 people attending the final day of an event held during Labor Day weekend, the figures prompted Fisher and his associates to make the suggestion that the large number of events that the Speedway was holding per year was working to it’s detriment and in the process diluting the interest in the sport in the local area. On the 5th of September, 1910 Fisher and his partners met up to decide on a future for their speedway, it was there that a pivotal decision, one with major future implications, was made.

Starting with the 1911 racing season the Speedway would instead of hosting multiple events over the course of the year play host to just one large, solitary event on the profitable memorial day weekend with a large cash incentive of $30,000 dollars awarded to the winner. After much discussion over the length of the event, which included the idea of a 24 hour race long before the concept was thought of for Le Mans, a length of 500 miles was decided upon by the four men, this length would be long enough to prove beneficial for car manufacturers to test their machines but still short enough to avoid the fear of paying customers leaving the facility before the event. Within two days of the decision the formal announcement was made, and this new and prestigious event would make its inaugural running on the 30th of May, 1911, and thus the Indianapolis 500 was born.