Why NASCAR needs to race at famed Brickyard

INDIANAPOLIS -- It appears so basic and straightforward, a race track as flat as the agricultural plains that surround it, a rectangular oval in a city where streets are set out on a grid. Everything about Indianapolis Motor Speedway, from the museum to the golf holes in the infield to the double-decker grandstands on either side of the frontstretch, seems so grand, so opulent, so larger than life. And then there's that almost pedestrian ribbon of asphalt, which to the uninitiated appears to present all the challenges of an interstate highway.

Passing the test

Any remaining fears over a potential repeat of last year's tire debacle seemed to be assuaged after teams reported no tire problems Friday, the opening day of practice for Sunday's Allstate 400.

• Complete story, click here
• An 'unprecedented' effort

But don't let the Brickyard fool you. No, the racing surface itself doesn't include an attribute as visually imposing as the high banks of Talladega, the serpentine twists of Infineon, or the tight confines of Bristol. But what it does have is an immense degree of difficulty almost indiscernible to the naked eye, a mixture of 200 mph speed and tight, sharp corners that squeeze cars toward one another like river water rushing toward a sluice. It's not dramatic. It's not fancy. It's just the hardest race track to master on the Sprint Cup Series, likely one reason that seven of the last 11 winners here have also gone on to claim the championship.

"As a driver, assuming your car is great and that's not an issue, you're still driving in these corners over 200 mph, and they look really sharp," Carl Edwards said. "It does not look like it's going to work out when you enter, and you have to hit your marks perfectly here to put a good lap in. They talk about Turn 2 at Pocono, the tunnel turn. Well, we've got four of those here, and they're all tough."

They're also slightly different in variation, requiring a setup and a driver able to manage all of them. The narrow racing groove and the high speeds make it difficult to find a place to pass, and even harder to overtake. Cars are buffeted in the turbulence of vehicles running in front of them. "Each of the corners, you have to do something different as far as getting the car set to run flat through there," said Sam Hornish Jr., who won the Indianapolis 500 before moving to NASCAR. "It's basically like a road course with superspeedway straightaways. It's definitely a fast place, and definitely different from anywhere else we run."

The hardest part? Turn 1, according to John Andretti, who has competed at Indy both in stock cars and open-wheel cars. Forget the spectacle of that dramatic canyon carved by grandstands rising on both sides. For drivers looking only straight ahead, the pavement changes slightly. The groove narrows. And you can't see the apex of the corner until you're right on top of it. "It's like going into an alleyway after coming off an interstate," Andretti said, "and having to make a hard left." (Continued)