Brickyard 400

I have been in the Indianapolis area for all but 3 of the 21 Brickyard 400's. The first in 1994 we did not live here yet and two others were missed when we were in Arizona.

I think of myself as a NASCAR fan. I have been to numerous races starting in 1989 at Sears Point, Phoenix, Dallas etc. and in 1995 when we did move to Indy I went to the IROC race and the Brickyard 400 practice. I was not terribly impressed with the visibility on the track or the racing action during either. Because the "Craftsman Super Truck" series was brand new and literally 3-4 miles from my house I chose to go see it instead of the Brickyard. IRP was/is a great place to see a race, there is not a bad seat in the house. It would take less than an hour to get in our out of the place and I think I ended up going 6 or 7 years as well as a couple of Nationwide races. All those years I never went to the Brickyard 400.

This year I was offered a couple of tickets, what looked like it might be good seats. As we sat down directly across from us at the exit of pit lane was a line of all of the previous 20 Brickyard 400 pace cars. This shot shows the most recent pace car corvettes and lone camaro.

Unfortunately the visibility of the track was as bad as I remembered from 20 years ago. The race itself was a snooze fest with virtually no passing, the only real drama coming from pit stops.

The tickets we had ($99.00 face value) were in turn one which made me think we would be able to see turn two and four as well. In reality we were at the beginning of turn one, the stands we were sitting in blocked visibility to turn four, the infield stands directly across from us blocked turn two. We could see the half of the front stretch, 75% of turn one and half of the short shoot to turn two.

This pick was literally the best view from where we were sitting, we had beams blocking three TV screens and the infield stands blocking pretty much anything else. I do plan to go to the Grand Prix race next year the visibility to the road course is much better and the racing is much better.