Things to Do at Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Complete Guide to Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis
About Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Stand at the edge of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's oval and the scale settles into your bones. The place sprawls across roughly 253 acres in Speedway, Indiana, a small enclave just west of downtown Indianapolis. The grandstands seat over 250,000 spectators. Highest capacity on the planet. On race day the air thrums with a low, teeth-rattling frequency you feel in your sternum before you see a car.
The smell of burnt rubber and high-octane fuel hangs in a haze above the asphalt. Even on a quiet Tuesday in autumn, the track has this eerie, cathedral-like stillness. The emptiness feels intentional. The place holds its breath between Mays.
The Speedway opened in 1909. Walking the grounds you get a palpable sense of accumulated history pressed into the brickwork and concrete. The original 3.2-million-brick surface is mostly paved over now. A narrow strip of those original bricks remains at the start-finish line, worn smooth and warm underfoot on a summer afternoon.
Winners still kneel to kiss that yard of brick. The tradition dates back decades. You can see the faint lip marks and scuff patterns if you crouch down close. For anyone visiting Indianapolis, this is one of the few places where you can feel a century of ambition radiating off the ground itself.
What to See & Do
The Yard of Bricks
A 36-inch strip of the original 3.2 million bricks laid in 1909 sits exposed at the start-finish line. Everything else is asphalt now. Crouch down and you can feel the smoothness worn into them by more than a century of tires and footsteps. On a warm day the bricks hold heat like a griddle. The contrast between rough asphalt and that polished strip is oddly moving. Race winners have kissed these bricks since the tradition caught on in the 1990s. You might notice faint smudges of celebratory champagne staining the mortar.
Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum
Tucked inside the oval, the museum houses roughly 75 vehicles at any given time. They rotate from a larger collection spanning over a century of motorsport. The gleaming bodywork reflects overhead lights with an almost liquid quality. Lean close enough to see the scratches and dents that separate these from showroom replicas. Many cars still carry a faint mechanical scent. Oil and old leather. No amount of polish quite removes it. A collection of Borg-Warner Trophy replicas sits here too. Each face on the original trophy is a different era of racing. The hairstyles and expressions shift decade by decade.
Gasoline Alley and the Garage Area
On certain tour days you can walk through Gasoline Alley, the corridor where race teams set up shop each May. Even without a car in sight the space has a purposeful, industrial quality. Concrete floors are stained with decades of fluid spills. Your footsteps echo off the metal bay doors. The air carries a permanent whiff of solvent and tire compound. It clings to your clothes afterward. During the month of May, this area transforms into a frenetic, loud, crowded workspace. You can hear pneumatic wrenches. You can feel the vibration of engines being tested through the soles of your shoes.
The Pagoda and Scoring Pylon
The Pagoda is the nine-story control tower overlooking the start-finish line. It is a steel-and-glass structure that replaced the original pagoda in 2000. From the grandstands opposite, it catches the afternoon light and glows against the Indiana sky. The scoring pylon beside it is the tallest structure on the grounds. It displays race positions in real time during events. Its LED panels are visible from nearly anywhere in the facility. Outside of race weekends the pylon stands dark. This somehow makes the empty grandstands around it feel even more enormous.
Track Tours and the Racing Experience
For a fee you can ride in a two-seat IndyCar or pace car around the actual 2.5-mile oval. The sensation of banking into Turn 1 at speed is disorienting. G-force presses you sideways into the harness while the grandstands blur into a grey smear. The wind noise is ferocious. Even the slower pace-car laps give you a sense of the track's deceptive flatness. What looks level from the stands reveals subtle elevation changes when you are down on the surface. The track surface itself has a coarse, almost sandpaper-like texture designed to grip rubber. You can hear it hissing under the tires.
Practical Information
Opening Hours
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum is generally open daily from about 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Hours shift during race month in May and around major events. The grounds themselves are accessible on non-event days for tours. Check ahead. Private testing days and special events can close sections without much warning. On race weekends the gates open early. The whole schedule revolves around the event calendar.
Tickets & Pricing
Museum admission is quite affordable. One of the cheaper major-attraction tickets in Indianapolis. Track tours and ride-along experiences cost more but tend to sell out during peak months. Book ahead online. This is smart for anything beyond basic museum entry. Groups and families with kids sometimes find bundled options. The ride-along experiences are a splurge. They are difficult to replicate anywhere else. On race days, grandstand seating varies widely. Turn 1 and the main straight generally command the highest demand. Infield general admission tends to be the most budget-friendly way in.
Best Time to Visit
May is the obvious draw. The entire month builds toward the Indianapolis 500, and the energy around the Speedway and the town of Speedway itself is electric. Bars and restaurants pack out. Practice sessions echo across the neighborhood. That said, May also means enormous crowds. The museum and track tours are calmer and more contemplative during the off-season months from September through March. You might have a tour group of four instead of forty. Summer weekends around other race events like the Brickyard are lively without quite the May-level intensity. Winter visits are quiet but the museum stays open. The empty track under grey Indiana skies has a moody, almost cinematic quality.
Suggested Duration
A museum visit alone takes about an hour to ninety minutes if you linger over the cars and memorabilia. Add a track tour and you are looking at two to three hours total. Book a ride-along experience and set aside a half day. There is paperwork, a safety briefing, and inevitable waiting. On race days, most people arrive early and stay the full day. It is the kind of place where time tends to compress. You look up and five hours have gone.
Getting There
The Speedway sits in the town of Speedway, roughly six miles west of downtown Indianapolis. Driving is the most straightforward option since parking lots surround the facility and are plentiful on non-event days. On race days the traffic situation changes dramatically. Arriving early or using one of the shuttle services from downtown is a far better bet than fighting the post-race exodus.
IndyGo, the city's public bus system, runs routes that reach the Speedway area. During major events there are usually supplemental transit options. Rideshare drop-offs work well on normal days. Increase pricing during the 500 or Brickyard events can push costs toward the unreasonable. From the Indianapolis airport, the drive is about fifteen minutes heading east.
It is one of the more conveniently located major sporting venues relative to its city's airport. Cycling is possible along some of the greenway trails that thread through the west side. There is no dedicated bike infrastructure at the Speedway itself.
Things to Do Nearby
Just a short walk from the Speedway in the town of Speedway itself, this factory and interactive exhibit lets you see where IndyCar chassis are built. The two pair naturally. One explains the engineering behind what the other puts on display at 220 miles per hour.
About fifteen minutes east toward downtown Indianapolis, this urban park strings together the Indiana State Museum, the zoo, and the Eiteljorg Museum along a canal walk lined with sycamores. It is a good palate cleanser after a morning of engine noise and asphalt. Quieter paths run along the water. Green space lets you stretch out.
North of downtown, the museum campus includes a sizable outdoor sculpture park where you can wander past installations set among old-growth trees. The grounds have a different kind of scale than the Speedway. More vertical. More green. The combination of art and gardens makes for a strong counterpoint to a day spent around machinery.
The small-town commercial strip in Speedway has leaned into its racing identity with murals, local breweries, and restaurants that fill up during race month. It is walkable. It is low-key. It gives you a sense of how the track has shaped the community around it. This is the kind of neighborhood where the coffee shop has framed checkered flags on the wall and nobody thinks twice about it.
One of the largest municipal parks in the country, Eagle Creek sits northwest of the Speedway. It offers hiking trails, a reservoir for kayaking, and thick hardwood forest that feels surprisingly remote for being inside city limits. It pairs well if you want to balance an industrial morning with an afternoon outdoors.
Tips & Advice
Tours & Activities at Indianapolis Motor Speedway
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