The place is nearly 100 years old, but it's still capable of having an effect on a veteran driver who's been there almost a dozen times before. On a recent trip to Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Dale Earnhardt Jr. picked the brain of open-wheeler Dan Wheldon, and even fantasized about a schedule that would allow the NASCAR star to compete in the Indianapolis 500. Down in the basement of the track's museum, he was awed standing next to a Formula One car for the first time.

"If you're a race car driver, that's kind of like being in the same room with a national swimsuit model or something," Earnhardt said with a laugh.

That's Indy. No, its flat, rectangular 2.5-mile oval doesn't always make for the best racing, but what it lacks in action it more than makes up for in atmosphere. Even the most grizzled of drivers feel that familiar spike of adrenaline as they drive through the tunnel into that impossibly wide and green expanse of an infield, see the sunlight glinting off the emerald glass of the scoring pagoda, flip the ignition switch on a frontstretch lined by grandstands on both sides.

The current or former home to IndyCars, NASCAR stock cars, F1 cars and motorcycles, a place conquered by greats like A.J. Foyt and Jeff Gordon and Michael Schumacher and Valentino Rossi, Indianapolis absolutely seeps with history. No other auto racing venue in America, or perhaps the world, can match it in terms of grandeur and presence.

Which is why it seemed such a perfect fit for NASCAR when it broke with tradition and invited stock cars beginning in 1994. The nation's biggest racing series and the nation's most famous race track were made for one another, and the grumbling of purists was quickly drowned out by the shriek of race fans eager to see their favorites compete.

When nine NASCAR team haulers arrived at the speedway for that first compatibility test in June 1992, thousands of people lined 16th Street as if the pope or a presidential motorcade were passing by -- even though it was late at night, and the test hadn't been formally announced. Ryan Newman, in town with his mother to pick up some Hoosier tires, snuck in to try and meet Gordon. Ticket demand for that first Brickyard 400 could have sold out the 250,000-seat venue twice.

Those were glory days, the times when Brickyard tickets sold faster than White Castles on race morning, the years when NASCAR's Indianapolis event solidified itself as the second-most prominent race on the Cup schedule behind the Daytona 500, and even had some folks asking if it deserved to be No. 1. Contrast that to today, as NASCAR returns to Indianapolis this weekend for a pivotal Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, on the heels of a 2008 tire debacle and in the midst of a recession that's hammered the manufacturing centers of the Midwest.

Although NASCAR chairman Brian France said that reports of exceedingly slow ticket sales have been "overstated by far," there are clearly some people too angry or too lacking in disposable income to come back. Everyone will be watching to see if this year's crowd is the smallest of the Brickyard era -- and what that might portend for the future of the race.

"I don't know what attendance will be," France said last month. "We also know that fans are buying tickets much later in the cycle. Our fans are waiting. They're all nervous. I understand that. They're also waiting a little bit to figure out if we can get the track correct, which we will, with the tire issue. Listen, depending on where we are, we're going to have, in the grand scheme of things, some modest attendance dips. We're going to have some. That's to be expected. The whole country is down."

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Indiana is no exception. According to recent analysis by The Associated Press of 3,100 counties nationwide, those in California and Indiana are showing the most economic stress. Like Michigan, Indiana is tied heavily to the automotive industry, which is bleeding jobs due to plant closings and bankruptcy restructuring. Earlier this year, the state's unemployment fund ran out of money. Combine that with lingering dissatisfaction over last year's race, which turned into a series of competition cautions because of tire issues, and it's easy to see why selling tickets for the Brickyard may be more difficult than it's ever been.

"I'm not going to put my feet in every race fans' shoes. It's their choice to attend whatever race they want to attend," France said. "The Brickyard is a spectacular venue for us, has been since 1994. There's been some great racing, great tradition, and that's going to continue. Sometimes some things line up in the reverse of the way you want to see. That's happened ... at Michigan, where it's probably the hardest state hit with unemployment and job loss.

"The idea that NASCAR can cruise around and do business in every state, and not [be affected] by this economy, and have the sponsorship business model, and be tied to the manufacturers in the way we are, and to not feel that, that would be unrealistic to think that would be the case."

Still, when it comes to NASCAR in Indianapolis, is the honeymoon over? Will the big speedway still have use for the Sprint Cup tour if the Brickyard becomes anything less than the cash cow it's always been?

Let's not forget that Brickyard profits have essentially bankrolled the IndyCar Series. Let's not forget that the man responsible for bringing NASCAR to Indianapolis Motor Speedway, former track chairman Tony George, was ousted earlier this month. And let's not forget what will always be the speedway's No. 1 priority. After all, the diamond grinding of the racing surface -- one of the reasons that Goodyear tires turned to dust during last year's NASCAR event -- was done to eliminate bumps and make the track smoother for the higher-speed, open-wheel cars.

A decade ago, it would have been ludicrous to think that there may be a day when NASCAR does not return to the Brickyard. But now, with attendance falling and with the management shakeup at the race track and with a Speedway Motorsports Inc.-owned oval two hours down the road in Sparta, Ky., just begging for a Sprint Cup date, things seem a little more tenuous.

So many people within the NASCAR industry love going to Indianapolis, fully appreciate and comprehend what the place stands for, understand what a privilege it is to compete on that track. But if attendance continues to slip, will the Hulman-George family that owns the facility feel the same way about NASCAR? Or, now that open-wheel unification is a reality and the IndyCar Series is on a more solid footing, is the Brickyard expendable?

You hope the answers to those questions are yes and no, respectively. You hope that the tire situation is figured out and that the racing improves and that the recession ends and that by next year all this is a memory. You hope that the Brickyard once again asserts itself as an event with long-term staying power, and not just a novel stock-car event in open-wheel racing's capital. But right now, you're not certain.

"You never know with the Hulman-George family. This is their baby," said Gordon, a former resident of nearby Pittsboro, Ind. "I think we're all privileged to have been able to race there as long as we have, and if they decode they don't want to have the Brickyard 400 there, that's up to them. I think the fans have responded tremendously throughout the years.

"Has the novelty worn off? Hey, that happens in a lot of different sports and events, so maybe it has. But we still attract a huge crowd there, even if it's dropped a little bit. There's certainly a lot of attention around it. From a competitors' standpoint, it's certainly one of the biggest races we have. Right next to the Daytona 500 is where I would put it. I think it's still a popular event, I think it's one we'd all like to see continue on forever. But we as competitors don't always make that decision."

The opinions expressed are those solely of the writer.