Last edited Sun May 30, 2021, 09:54 PM - Edit history (1)
And you’re right, for years it was inside turn 4.
I don’t profess to be a a Speedway historian by any means, but inside Turn 4 has as much history as almost any other place on the property!
It was inside that turn back in the 60’s where the infamous scaffold towers were constructed and one of them collapsed, killing two and injuring scores more, leading to them being outlawed. Nothing higher than a lawn chair on top of a van, basically.
Pics herein are of the accident in progress;
http://indymotorspeedway.com/scaffold.html
People would drive into the infield with all the materials needed to construct temporary towers. These were commonplace for years;
Open prostitution happened. Illicit liquor and drug sales. Nudity, public sex acts and all manner of good fun! Bonfires that would require several Indy Fire Department pumpers to put out after the race. Ahh yes, the good ol’ days!
A lot of that moved to inside turn 1 in the 90’s because of crackdowns, and as things moved forward and the speedway management changed hands from grandmother to son, they really put the kibosh on a lot of that.
I was a participant in the years before, during and after the refurbishment of the infield portion of the golf course. After they redid the holes on the infield, they really clamped down on where people were allowed to go and what they were allowed to do during the month of May. After all, the Speedway spent millions in an effort to attract a PGA event (which they ultimately did) and did not want their investment trashed by race fans! I played golf on the old course during practice one day. I remember specifically teeing up my ball and watching Emerson Fittipaldi doing 220 down the back stretch, not 50 yards away from my left!
Once they constructed the F1 style infield road course, they cut back on the number of people allowed inside the track by a dramatic amount. The general count is around 330,000 seats around the outside of the track. They used to get another 150.000 at least inside. No longer.
Edit history
= new reply since forum marked as read
