INDIANAPOLIS – Several NASCAR legends lined up Sunday on the Yard of Bricks, an illustrious collection of living links to the inaugural running of stock cars at the world’s greatest racetrack.
With the massive Brickyard 400 trophy sandwiched between them, 11 retired drivers who raced Aug. 6, 1994 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway had returned for this memorable photo opp. There were five NASCAR Hall of Famers (Rusty Wallace, Dale Jarrett, Jeff Gordon, Bobby Labonte and Ricky Rudd) – four of whom had kissed the hallowed strip of pavement at their feet in celebrating their combined nine Brickyard 400 victories.
Several hours later, another Cup driver would be joining them, and for the first time in four years, it would be more than just in spirit.
The return of NASCAR’s premier series to the fabled 2.5-mile oval would constitute an elevation of prestige over the infield road course that played host to Cup from 2021-23.
For defending series champion Ryan Blaney, who drives for Roger Penske (the same man who happens to hold the deed to Indianapolis Motor Speedway), the resurrection of a NASCAR “major” that had been sorely missed – and whose presence will mean that much more this year.
“I always say the road course, we’re racing at Indianapolis, but when you win on the big track, it’s the Brickyard,” Blaney said. “I feel like everybody’s mindset is that way because that’s how the Indy 500 has been run for over 100 years. It’s how (NASCAR) started here in ’94. It’s just the way it is. I feel that is a little extra added element of making it special to drivers and teams and owners.”
Blaney, who grew up watching the Indy 500 and has a vivid memory of listening to Sam Hornish Jr.’s 2006 victory while riding to a quarter-midget race, has gained a new perspective from a decade-plus of driving for Team Penske and picking the brain of the brains behind its IndyCar powerhouse. After the team’s 19th victory last year (since extended to 20 in May), Roger Penske sent Blaney a coffee table book with a voluminous history of the team’s half-century of speed, success and heartbreak.
It’s motivated Blaney to join the narrative with an oval victory while inspiring him to put a twist on the kissing the bricks tradition started by Jarrett and crew chief Todd Parrott after winning the third Brickyard 400 in 1996.
“I’m going to lick the bricks if I win,” Blaney said. “That’s for sure. It’s going to be nasty, but it’s going to happen. I think that’s just what everybody wants to do. They’ve seen it growing up on TV for however long they’ve been watching racing and Indy cars in general.
“To be able to kiss the bricks with RP, that would be like the coolest moment in my life.”
It would surely be a memorable moment for Penske, who has reinvested $60 million while sprucing up the property with immaculate landscaping, eye-catching videoscreens and untold gallons of paint since buying IMS in 2020.
“This race is on the way back up, and I think the sport, the speedway and what we’ve been able to do has made a big difference,” Penske said at a news conference in the IMS media center as a thousands of fans milled outside in the track’s pavilion and souvenir midways.
At least 60,000 were expected to attend the 30th anniversary of the Brickyard 400, which will have its largest crowd since at least 2017.
Though far short of the 1994-2005 era (in which the track’s 235,000-seat grandstands regularly were filled), it’s been a reversal of fortunes for a race once caught in a spiral of diminishing attendance (with a particularly precipitous decline after a tire debacle in 2008 resulted in nonstop yellow flags).
IMS’ NASCAR ticket sales for 2024 have been tracking more than 10 percent over last year, and Penske proudly pointed to a new infield camping section for fans as another sign of renewed interest. The track estimates the return of the Brickyard 400 will bring a nine-figure economic impact to central Indiana.
But even if the race were run without any fans (as it was in July 2020 during the pandemic, the last oval race before moving to the road course), the enthusiasm among drivers has been unmistakable with Indy being restored to the top of the Cup pecking order alongside the Daytona 500, the Southern 500 and Coca-Cola 600.
“It’s a return of a crown jewel race, which is great,” said Brad Keselowski, one of three active winners (with Kyle Busch and Jimmie Johnson) in this year’s field. “I don’t think anyone really considered the road course a crown jewel race, so it kind of returns back to that status. I think that’s huge for our sport and it means a lot to me as a driver and I’m assuming it does for the other drivers as well. So, a welcome return.
“It’s not going to be an easy race. I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of drama on pit road and with respect to how the cars will draft and how they’ll run nose to tail around the track and all those pieces, and we’re still going to go back to some of those headaches, but I think we kind of learned that that’s not necessarily a bad thing. That’s part of what made Indy, right?”
During the Penske Era at IMS, there has been a redoubling of saluting the history with photo ops such as Sunday. Before its Cup race two years ago, the track gathered as many Indy 500 and Brickyard 400 winners as possible, and the significance of his 2018 win (the first in Cup at the track for Penske) sunk in for Keselowski.
“For me, having your name on that crown jewel list, it’s a really special feeling,” he said. “It’s kind of a dream come true. When we took the picture with all the drivers that have won here, and you just think about how there’s no slouches on that list. It’s a lot of champions and the track just has a history for that of the people that win here with very few exceptions are our champions and it feels good to be on that list.”
In its absence, the IMS oval seems to have gained an even greater appreciation among Cup stars who wondered if they’d have a chance again to fly through its short chutes for 160 laps.
Kyle Larson’s view permanently changed when he made his Indy 500 before more than 300,000 fans in May.
“I think I’ve always understood how massive the Indianapolis 500 is, but living through it and really getting to experience it every single day for the first time was amazing to see how big it is from start to the finish,” the 2021 Cup champion said. “Every practice day was a big deal and Carb Day. And then, too, I just appreciate the facility. Every time I go there, I just appreciate it more and more.
“It’s just the most beautiful facility that we go to on the schedule. And I think Roger Penske and his staff and (IMS president) Doug Boles, it’s just taken it from being already the greatest facility and like just stretching away from the competition so it’s just a phenomenal place, and it’s just a privilege no matter what you get to race there whether it be a midget on the dirt track or a stock car on the road course or the oval.
“I really enjoy the road course, but at least for me, when I think of Indy, I want to win on the oval. If I could pick, winning on the road course or the oval, I would take the oval. So I feel like now we have a crown jewel event back. I didn’t think that the road course was much of a crown jewel. It just felt like another race where now the Brickyard 400 is back. So, that’s a race on everybody’s bucket list.”
Hendrick Motorsports teammate Chase Elliott has longed for a Brickyard 400 victory to bookend his father’s victory in 2002. As a 6-year-old, Chase declined to kiss the bricks with his parents -- “I have no idea why I was uninterested” -- but “I’d certainly be all right with it now.
“When we left the oval, I didn’t really think a ton of it, but I do feel like coming back, it does mean more being on the oval, for me personally,” Elliott said. “This race has always been important because it was one of the few races that I was old enough to be around that dad had won, so I think because of that, it’s always been just a little more special than the rest. It was the only major that I was around for, so it’s always been really special.
“I always knew how much that race meant to him. And because of that, I’ve always had a lot of admiration for the event. It’s always been something in my mind that I would love to match and be able to share that moment with the shoe on the other foot. I feel like that would be really, really cool. Personally, that’s been a goal of mine ever since I started racing in the NASCAR deal. When we left, I didn’t really think as much about it. But certainly coming back, I’m like, yeah – if I were to ever win this race, this is definitely how I’d want to do it. I’m excited that we’re back on the oval.”
Chase Briscoe, an Indiana native, bought 500 tickets and requested a few dozen pit passes for a race that he once watched annually from a Turn 2 suite (and often snuck into the pits and garage to make connections in his racing career).
“It’s always just a really special weekend,” Briscoe said. “Being a Hoosier driver at IMS, it’s always special. Just the whole place kind of rallies around you. So I feel like every time I come here, I can find this other gear, just because I know how many people are here watching me. And hopefully it’ll be the same this weekend.”
Even for those without hometown connections, being back on the oval had special resonance.
“I think just pulling out of the garage and practice just had a different feeling,” said William Byron, who is driving the No. 24 Chevrolet that Jeff Gordon took to victory lane a record five times. “Just felt like it was a big race. So you only get that a few times a year. The 600, championship race or certain races that you know when you pull out of the garage, if you have practice, that it’s a bigger deal. So that’s how it felt for sure.”
Said two-time Cup champion Josey Logano, who is trying to become the second Penske driver to win the Brickyard 400: “Once you understand where we’re standing right now and what the history here and the impact it made on motorsports, to have your name on the list with the drivers whose names are on the list that have won here, that’s a huge dream. Doing it for Roger Penske? Even a bigger dream.”
Ross Chastain has learned the history from working with the management team of Cary Agajanian, whose family has raced in the Indy 500 for decades. In Agajanian’s office, Chastain has heard the stories while looking at life-size Indy 500 photos from the 1950s and ‘60s, and he understood the oval’s magnitude when he made his Brickyard 400 debut in 2018.
“Just driving down across the Yard of Bricks from Turn 4 to Turn 1, that feels right,” Chastain said. “Just looking through the history of this sport of this track, there’s been so many drivers that I look up to that have made that same path, just feeling the bricks.
“The first time across, it gave me goosebumps.”