Why does the winner kiss the Bricks?
Contrary to popular belief, the tradition of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway winners kneeling to kiss the Yard of Bricks at the start-finish line started during the NASCAR Brickyard 400 in 1996, not the Indianapolis 500. Dale Jarrett and his crew chief walked to the Yard of Bricks and kissed the bricks to celebrate their victory and pay homage to the decades of great drivers who had competed and won at IMS.
Why does the pace car was originally invented at Indy?
With a huge field of 40 cars (later reduced to 33) having met the qualifying requirements for starting the inaugural Indianapolis 500 in 1911, track founder Carl Fischer reasoned that this might be too many for the typical standing starts then in vogue.
He believed it would be safer instead to lead them around on one lap at approximately 40 or 45 mph and then release them to the flagman as he pulled into the pits. It is believed to have been the very first mass rolling start for any automobile race anywhere in the world and quite possibly the first use of a pace car for a major event.
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| 1911 Ray Harroun Marmon Wasp, winner of the Indy 500 in 1911 - Photo: IMS |
What is Carb Day?
It refers to the day on which cars qualified for the starting field are given the opportunity to practice in "Race Day trim," as opposed to the less economical setups required for out-and-out speed during time trials.
A major portion of this used to involve adjustment to the carburetors, but even after the introduction of fuel injection in the late 1940s, the original term "carburetion runs" continued to be used.
For the record, the stock-block Ford-powered Lotus cars of Jim Clark and Dan Gurney in 1963 were the last to actually use carburetors.