The Everywhere blog

Hellloooooooooooo Race Fans!

if you're a fan of motorsports, you probably know that the 92nd running of the Indy 500 will take place this weekend at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indiana, USA. If you're not a fan of motorsports, you may be wondering, What's the big deal?

The Indy 500 is one of those spectacles that really must be seen, as words hardly do it justice. By all means, I encourage you to add it to you "Things to See Before You Die" list. I've already checked it off mine, because way back in 1995, Wired Magazine sent me to Indy to cover the race. Here's how I described it:

Each year, some 400,000 race fans and revelers descend upon the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the last Sunday in May like swarms of Middle American pilgrims completing the hajj to the mecca of motorsports. The fans come from all over the country - selling out hotels and motels all over town, parking their RVs bumper-to-bumper in the American Legion field just down the street from George Seymour's house, and creating long lines that zigzag out the front doors of liquor stores for hours on end. Ask a group of them why they've come to Indy and you're likely to hear the same answer shouted back at you time after time: "It's the need for speed!" - as if the answer to the question is so self-evident that you might as well have asked why bears sh*t in the woods.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a veritable temple of speed - an unimaginably huge, two-and-a-half-mile rectangular oval comprised of four quarter-mile turns, two long straightaways five-eighths of a mile each, and two one-eighth mile "short chutes" that bridge the turns. On a hot day, the far ends of the track dissolve into shimmering ponds of heat that disappear somewhere just over the horizon. And yet, despite those incredible speeds, the straights are only 50 feet wide and the turns are banked at a paltry 9 degrees. Put it all together, line both sides of the track with canyons of grandstands, and you end up with a facility that resembles a cross between a Roman amphitheater and an asphalt-paved particle accelerator.

Alas, I won't be attending this year. But if you go, please take a few photos, and submit them to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on the Everywheremag website. We'll see you at the finish line!

(Thank you, Lizzie Morrison, for contributing the most excellent photo shown above!)