Welcome back to POST POSITION, a recurring but not-at-all regular column about Motorsports.1

There’s nothing like May in Indianapolis. The gray of winter breaks, the spring rains run their course, checkered flags sprout from front porches across the city. Calendars get marked with practice sessions, qualifying, Carb Day, and don’t even think about making plans the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend.2

Part of racing’s Triple Crown — along with the 24hrs of Le Mans and the Monaco Grand Prix3 — the Indy 500 is a uniquely American take on racing that still stands out as an international jewel. One way that contrast is highlighted is that Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS), a 2.5-mile monster of a track, is tucked into a small town called Speedway on Indy’s west side

Starting in late April, engines roar to life next to modest houses packed in to city lots. Unlike American stadiums so often surrounded by acres of parking lots, IMS is tangible in everyday life throughout Speedway and Indy. Soccer stadiums around the globe are known for being woven into the urban fabric in this way. Fulham’s Craven Cottage, squeezed in between the Thames and residential London, or Boca Juniors’s La Bombanera, crammed so tightly into Buenos Aires it looks like they forgot to build half of the bowl, are famous examples.

What makes IMS uniquely American, beyond hosting car races instead of soccer matches, is the scale. Rather than a few tens of thousands of fans on a match day, the 500 draws as many as 400,000 in grandstands, boxes, RVs, sprawled out on Turn 3’s grass berm, or even going crazy in the Snake Pit.4 It’s this dual character, the central placement and the impossible scale, that sets IMS apart from countless other arenas around the country yet comfortably alongside global counterparts.

So when you tune in this weekend,5 keep an eye out for those overhead shots. You’ll see that so much of what makes this race special actually sits just outside the track. Indianapolis Motor Speedway is truly of Indianapolis, IN and of Speedway, IN, right at home as The Racing Capital of the World.