The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is the world’s largest spectator sporting facility, with more than 250,000 permanent seats.
If you add the population of people in seats with the infield population it raises the head count to an unparalleled 400,000 (roughly the population of Cleveland).
You can fit Yankee Stadium, the Rose Bowl, Churchill Downs, the Colosseum in Rome and Vatican City all can fit inside the Indy oval (253 acres).
The winner of the Indy 500 is awarded the sterling silver Borg-Warner Trophy, built in 1935 for $10,000. The trophy today is valued at more than $1 million.
Winners of the Indy 500 don’t just get their name inscribed on the race’s historic Borg-Warner Trophy—they also get their likeness permanently sculpted onto its sterling-silver base.
Louis Meyer started the tradition of winners drinking milk in the winner’s circle when he asked for a bottle of buttermilk after he became the first three-time winner in 1936.
Four golf course holes are actually located inside the track’s infield.
The track is a 2.5-mile circuit and the race runs for 200 laps.
The first Indy 500 (originally called the “International Sweepstakes’’) was won by Ray Harroun at an average speed of 74.602 mph. It took him 6 hours, 42 minutes to finish the race, back in 1911.
Ray Harroun was the first to use the rear-view mirror in racing. Many drivers in those days brought a “riding mechanic” with them to help with the race, but Ray didn’t and opted to use a rear-view mirror instead.
The closest margin of victory was in 1992 when Al Unser Jr. edged Scott Goodyear by .043 of a second.
The race doesn’t actually take place in Indianapolis but rather in the tiny town of Speedway, a municipality built to house workers for both the track and local auto factories.
These days the track is surfaced with high-performance asphalt, but back in the day it was covered by 3.2 million hand-laid bricks and there is still a strip of bricks that lines the track.
Race fans will consume 24,000 pounds of track fries on the day of the race.
Before 1914 there weren’t any laws against racing and drinking.
If all of the Indy hot dogs and bratwurst sold on race day were laid end-to-end, they would circle the oval more than three times.
On June 5th, 1909, two months before the track’s official completion, it served as a launch pad for a balloon race. It was the first race held at the track.
