Indy is a phenomenal place. I covered the 1995 Indy 500 for Wired Magazine, and here's how I described the speedway:
"The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a veritable temple of speed - an unimaginably huge, two-and-a-half-mile rectangular oval comprised of four quarter-mile turns, two long straightaways five-eighths of a mile each, and two one-eighth mile "short chutes" that bridge the turns. On a hot day, the far ends of the track dissolve into shimmering ponds of heat that disappear somewhere just over the horizon. And yet, despite those incredible speeds, the straights are only 50 feet wide and the turns are banked at a paltry 9 degrees. Put it all together, line both sides of the track with canyons of grandstands, and you end up with a facility that resembles a cross between a Roman amphitheater and an asphalt-paved particle accelerator."
