One of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's most visible pieces of history
returned to its rightful place March 9 as crews began reinstalling the famous
"Yard of Bricks" at the start/finish line
source:
gp2005.com
The Speedway's "Yard of Bricks" serves as a tribute to the 2.5-mile oval's most
famous surface - 3.2 million paving bricks that were laid down in autumn 1909,
just months after the track opened with a tar and crushed stone surface. Most of
the bricks, except the middle portion of the main straightaway, were paved over
with asphalt by 1939.
In 1961, the main straightaway was finally paved with asphalt, and the "Yard of
Bricks" tribute was established.
Installing the new "Yard of Bricks," which consists of more than 570 of the
1909-vintage bricks that were most recently in storage, signals the ceremonial
end to a massive repaving project that saw 19,000 tons of asphalt laid to repave
the Speedway's 2.5-mile oval, pit lane and warm-up lanes. Crews began the
project by milling 2.5 inches of the old surface in August 2004 and completed
the paving process in early November.
The irony of anchoring the Speedway's brand-new asphalt surface with paving
bricks that were the "state of the art" 96 years ago was not lost on Kevin
Forbes, IMS director of engineering and construction and supervisor for the
repaving project.
"I think there is a wonderful dichotomy there in that we have the most modern
racetrack surface that science can help us develop, (and) the 'Yard of Bricks'
simply represents where this racetrack came from," Forbes said. "When people
think of roots, they always think of something that goes underground and is
hidden. This 'Yard of Bricks' allows the roots of the Speedway to always be
visible."