Get a Perspective

First, I want to take a moment to just say "thanks" to everyone who has commented on my site or contacted me with compliments. It means a lot that First Super Speedway makes your work easier or just satisfies your curiosity. Frankly, I'm a little surprised by the attention. I'm particularly surprised by the number of e-mails from France and the UK, but also I'm pleased there is so much interest in American racing history in those countries. What's more, I'm impressed - maybe blown away - by how many other people find Barney Oldfield to be the fascinating a character I do.
 
But the main thing I wanted to say today concerns the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's centennial. As a kid growing up in Indianapolis, I could not help but fall in love with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I love all racing, but for me, all roads really do lead back to Indy. This has implications for the Speedway's great centennial celebrations. Just about everything I post on this site - even items dating back to as early as 1902 or 1903, for me, has a tie to the Speedway. Certainly the activities of Carl Fisher with all his early track racing have tremendous implications for how the Speedway took shape. Seemingly peripheral events, such as my recent post on the 1903 Packard Gray Wolf (Fisher attended the first Vanderbilt Cup Race in 1904 where this car compteted) are relevant at the very least on a tangential level because these were automotive designs Fisher observed or even competed against and probably believed they could never reach their potential without suitable roads and a world-class racing facility. So, thank God, he gave us one.
 
It was at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway that not only cars were tested, but the foundation of the American sport was defined. Pace cars, 500 mile races, qualifying laps, a giant paved track, grand prizes and a history worth risking everything for came about at the Speedway. The founders gathered up the scattered efforts of pioneers and packaged them in a style that is still copied today. You have to have some pretty darn good ideas for them to not only outlive you, but still provide the template for the cookie cutters 100 years since.
 
Connecting all these dots with heartfelt belief the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is at the center of it all is the inspiration for this site. To me, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was the first super speedway.