Cars and drivers have come and gone. NASCAR and Formula One now race annually at Indy, breaking the long tradition of IndyCars only on the Speedway.
Even the renown of the Indianapolis 500 has suffered for the last 12 years because of the schism in American open-wheel racing.
But some things about the most hallowed ground in all of motor racing remain, come what may.
Here are Indy’s five staunchest traditions:
1. The song
Written in 1917 by Ballard MacDonald and James Hanley, “Back Home Again in Indiana” has been sung since 1946 as a prelude to the race. Actor/singer Jim Nabors, the soloist for 20 consecutive years and 29 of the last 35, will miss Sunday’s race because of illness. He will appear on the video boards at the speedway, and then the song will go on, sung by the crowd itself at Nabors’ request. The response could be thunderous.
2. The milk
Buttermilk was driver Louis Meyer’s favorite refreshment, and after his third Indy victory in 1936, he asked for a bottle of it in Victory Lane. A milk promotion executive saw a photo and got the idea to make milk the official victory drink. Emerson Fittipaldi committed local sacrilege in 1993 when he drank orange juice because he owned groves in Brazil and because his fitness diet didn’t allow dairy products.
3. The bricks
The speedway opened in 1909, surfaced with crushed stone and tar, which didn’t work well. Late that year the track was paved with 3.2 million bricks, and the nickname “the Brickyard” was born. Most of the bricks long since have been removed in favor of asphalt, but some still lie under the front straightaway, and at the start-finish line they still are exposed in a 3-foot “Yard of Bricks.”
4. The trophy
Unveiled by a Chicago design firm in 1936, the Borg-Warner Trophy is valued at more than $1 million for its silver. Each year, a silversmith adds the face of the winner to the trophy. After all the squares were filled with faces in 1986, a base was added to accommodate more. The 5-foot trophy stays at Indy and the winner gets to keep an 18-inch replica, the “Baby Borg.”
5. A.J. Foyt
The old Texas bull of a man is 72 now. For this, his 50th Indy 500, he remains the nearest thing to a breathing, ambling, cussing monument at the speedway. In 1977 he became the race’s first four-time winner. “If you have to pick one guy” who is the living symbol of Indy, says Al Unser Jr., whose own family has won nine 500s, “it’s A.J. Foyt.”
