The Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Wow, this is cool:  The Indianapolis Motor Speedway!  That photo above?  I snapped it as the Indy car was entering Turn 3 at about 200 mph, panning the camera with the car to blur the background and get the car as sharp as possible (which is a bit of a challenge when your subject is doing 200).  There were a lot of photo ops at Indy, and I sized most of the photos at 900 pixels to show off a bit.  We were having a good time.

We didn’t see the race (it’s today, and it starts about three hours from when this blog was posted).  We were in Indianapolis a couple of weeks ago to visit with good buddy Jeff, whom you’ve seen in other recent blogs.  Jeff took us all over Indianapolis and the surrounding areas, and our itinerary included the legendary Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

We walked the huge infield area.  The track is a 2.5-mile oval and that gives it plenty of room on the infield (there’s even a golf course in the infield).  One of the best parts is the museum, which houses historic cars and winners of past Indy 500 races.

After spending some time in the museum, we went up into the stands to watch the cars practicing.  The Indy 500 is, as the name states, a 500-mile race, and with the cars running over 200 mph, it takes about 2 hours.  I can see it producing more than a few headaches, sitting out in the sun and listening to the high-pitched and loud whine of the cars whizzing by.   Our day was perfect…we took in what we wanted to see and I shot a lot of photos.

There is a very cool photo of Mario Andretti in the Indy 500 Museum.  The story behind it is that the photographer asked Mario Andretti if he could grab of photo of his rings, and Mr. Andretti posed as you him in the photo above.

There was also an Indy 500 simulator in the museum.  It let you “race” for about a minute, but I didn’t last that long.  The simulator included motion in the steering wheel and in the seat, I felt woozy as soon as I started, and I  had to stop shortly after I started.  I guess that makes me an official Indy 500 DNF (did not finish).

My favorite photo of the day is this selfie I grabbed of yours truly and good buddy Jeff reflected in the radiator cover of a vintage Miller race car.

So there you have it…our day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  I’ll be watching the race today.

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