Beneath all that tradition, Indy is one tough track

INDIANAPOLIS -- From the outside, surrounded by grubby liquor stores and auto-repair shops, its modest low-rise grandstands outlined against an overcast sky, it hardly looks like a cathedral of the sport. Then the yellow-shirted security official directs you through the tunnel, underneath a tangle of overhead piping and seating supports. And once you emerge on the other side, Indianapolis Motor Speedway becomes everything you expect it to be.

The squat, old-school scoreboards that display the time and date when no cars are on the track; the shimmering aquamarine-glass pagoda tower, standing like a sentinel over the most famous frontstretch in the world; the skyline of downtown Indianapolis looming beyond Turn 2. And all that green -- seating mounds, acres of trees, and four holes of the Brickyard Crossing golf course. It's like racing through a city park.

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If you come in with an open mind, not limiting yourself to only the 13 previous seasons NASCAR has competed here, it's easy to appreciate the significance of the place, as important to motorsports as Cameron Indoor Stadium is to college basketball or Augusta National is to golf. Visiting the fabulous museum, featuring 30 cars that have won the Indianapolis 500, it's easy to get wrapped up in all that history and legend. And it's easy to overlook one thing that makes Indianapolis stand out, even on a Nextel Cup circuit where it's been a staple for just a little more than a decade.

The place is hard, quite possibly the most difficult track in all of NASCAR. The corners are a vicious 90 degrees, the straightaways are a mere 46 feet wide, the transition areas are tricky and the cars are always buffeted by wind. This narrow, single-groove, infamously temperature-sensitive track doesn't always make for the best stock-car action, but it provides teams and drivers with perhaps their greatest challenge of the season, a place so tough that only the best can win.

"I think this is one of the most challenging tracks that we have," said four-time Brickyard winner Jeff Gordon, who can tie the track record held by former Formula One great Michael Schumacher with another victory Sunday. "You've got a 2.5-mile racetrack with four flat corners and long straightaways. It takes power to get down the straightaway, but when you get to the corner, you'd better be handling really good. The transitions are tricky. The car's just not stuck like glue, so you've got to drive through those corners, and every corner is different."

There's no playbook for Indy, no consistent way to enter or exit every corner, no way to brake the same way going into a turn or carry the same amount of speed coming out of it. For all the comparisons to Pocono, nothing learned here can be used at any other track. Notes from other venues don't really apply. Road courses, as Dale Earnhardt Jr. points out, are the only other places where teams are confronted with 90-degree corners. In more ways than one, Indianapolis stands on its own.

"These corners are like nowhere else we go," Jeff Burton said. "If you look at the entry of the corner, and how close the entry of the corner is to the exit of the corner, we don't have any racetrack like this. The only thing that's similar is maybe the straightaways at Pocono. It's very unique. It's like nowhere else we go, and I think comparing it to other places is crazy. If you built this racetrack today, you'd be ridiculed."

No wonder the winners here have always come from that top tier of drivers, those best positioned to contend for the series title. In 13 previous runnings, the winner at the Brickyard has gone on to win the championship six times, including Jimmie Johnson and Tony Stewart the past two seasons. Rick Mast may have won the first NASCAR pole here, but no dark horse has ever won the race. That's partly because the best teams have their stuff together in late summer, when the stretch run to the championship begins in earnest. That's partly because great drivers often excel on their sport's greatest stages. And that's partly because this place is just so damn hard.

"I think it's relative to the fact of how difficult this track is, and the teams that are performing well that year and have figured out what it takes to win here, and it carries over," Johnson said. "It's obvious there's no other track that's shaped like this, that presents the challenge of this one, especially in the Chase. But I think the top teams really shine here because it is such a difficult track."

It promises to be even more difficult Sunday, given there was no test at Indianapolis this season, and rain washed out all but one rescheduled three-hour practice session. Teams have learned over the years how vital track position is at Indy, so it's not impossible to think that a second-tier organization might gamble on pit strategy and attempt to steal a win. But in all likelihood, this sprawling, 98-year-old beast of a racetrack will once again beat down everyone but the best.

"I think this is one of the most challenging racetracks that we come to," Gordon said, "and I think that is definitely why you see the best teams and drivers excel here, because of just how difficult it is."