This weekend, for the first time since 2020, the Brickyard 400 returns. NASCAR returns to one of motorsports’ most iconic tracks: Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Indianapolis 500. But it may never be the same as it was in its glory days, and much of this struggle can be traced back to one day: July 27, 2008.
NASCAR racing at Indy has all the right elements. It has a great name. The track has history—people have been racing at Indy since 1909—and it’s a spectacular sight, with the nickname The largest sports facility in the world by capacitywith more than 250,000 permanent seats along its 2.5-mile rectangular oval track. And of course, it hosts one of the most famous sporting events in racing, the Indy 500 (which sold 345,000 tickets on race day this year alone). But the last time NASCAR raced at the Brickyard, there were more empty seats in the stands than people. It wasn’t always that way.
NASCAR has arrived at the Brickyard. In 1994It was the first race other than the Indy 500 to be held at the track since 1916. Jeff Gordon won in front of 250,000 spectators—the first of his five Indy wins. More than a decade later, NASCAR attendance remains strong: an estimated 270,000 people attended the Brickyard 400 in 2007, and 240,000 in 2008.
Those roughly 240,000 fans witnessed what is widely regarded as one of the worst races in modern motorsports history. The Goodyear tires, used by all entrants in the top-tier NASCAR Cup Series, collapsed as soon as they touched the track.
Steel ropes show through the tires after only 10 turns.
Photography: Michael C. Johnson
This explanation only added to the embarrassment, as the 2008 Brickyard 400 was the Cup Series’ first trip to Indy with the then-new race car, Car of tomorrowThe combination of the new design and the chosen rubber compound resulted in tire wear on every lap. The constant tire failures led NASCAR to issue six precautionary warnings to the competition during the 160-lap race, allowing teams to change their tires before they had a chance to fail. There were 11 cautions for 52 lapsThe total distance covered was 130 miles out of 400 miles. The longest green flag run was 12 laps.
Rubber fragments and particles littered the track and field. The average speed of the race was 115 mph, compared to 146 mph the following year. Now-retired driver Carl Edwards, who finished second, was among the racers who suffered breathing problems. He said Neither driver was able to “run 100 percent until the last lap” for fear of losing their tires too quickly. The final lap lasted only seven laps before seven-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson took the checkered flag. Ryan Newman, who finished 13th that day, He said“This was not racing today. It’s ridiculous. It’s disrespectful to the fans.”
He wasn’t the only one who felt that way. At the time, NASCAR’s vice president of competition, Robin Pemberton, He saidThere is no error in: [Indianapolis track] “Obviously we didn’t get there with the right combination of tires and cars. We have to do better. I can’t express how sorry we are. It’s our responsibility, as NASCAR members, to not have to go through this again.”
Jimmie Johnson receives a “competitive yellow card”
Photography: Michael C. Johnson
But as with everyone’s tires, NASCAR’s reputation at the Brickyard has been damaged. Indianapolis race fans had already weathered the Formula 1 tire disaster of 2005, when The United States Grand Prix was held with only six cars. At the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Those six cars were equipped with Bridgestone tires, while the other cars with Michelin tires withdrew because their tires could not hold up. The fallout from that race led to Formula 1 temporarily abandoning the American market.
NASCAR races continued at Indy despite the 2008 tire disaster, but spectators did not. Attendance at the Brickyard dropped to 180,000 in 2009, 140,000 in 2010, and 138,000 in 2011.
It wasn’t all the track’s fault: The Great Recession was looming and NASCAR was declining from its 2000s heyday, so attendance and ratings suffered elsewhere, too. But the Brickyard’s decline was particularly stark. The last time the Cup Series was held on the oval track at Indy was in 2020, with attendance restrictions due to the pandemic — but in 2019, there were only 100,000 spectators. About 60,000 fans attended..
Sparsely populated grandstands at the 2019 Brickyard 400
Photo: Nigel Kinrad / NKP / Motorsports Pictures
Hoping to revive the Indianapolis experience in 2021, NASCAR is moving to the 14-turn road course for the first time — a band-aid on a 13-year-old wound. Indianapolis is one of the most iconic racing venues in the world, making it difficult to remove from the schedule. But after all this time, NASCAR is still struggling to move beyond its history there.
A few months ago, I watched the 2008 Brickyard 400 for the first time (I didn’t get NASCAR fever until I went to a race in 2009). It was amazing to see the race in retrospect: I knew the disasters that lay ahead and the effects they would have—but the competitors and broadcast crew didn’t. They just knew things were bad.
I don’t think the 2008 Brickyard 400 would have been the disaster it was then. It happened at the worst possible time: The economy was on the verge of a nosedive, which made it easy to cut back on the cost of attending the Brickyard after a race that went horribly wrong. NASCAR had lost its footing, and many fans didn’t like the Car of Tomorrow. They hated it even more when it wronged them at Indy.
Plus, back then, when we all had attention spans that couldn’t be measured by the number of pages we wrote, people held grudges longer. These days, I can forget a bad weekend I had in two weeks on the track. Time flies, and the news cycle moves even faster.
For proof, just look at: Bristol Motor Speedway this yearAs in 2008, the Goodyear tire compound was not compatible with the track. Record 54 bullets changedwith tires saved – and drivers dropping like flies when their tires wore out – ultimately decided the race. And the fans loved it.
NASCAR races didn’t throw the usual competition cautions like Indy did, but only one race was longer than 50 laps (or about 26 miles at Bristol, roughly the same distance that tires lasted at Indy in 2008). It was a mess, but it also gave spectators and racers a topic of discussion that had been missing in recent NASCAR history: tire wear.
Yes, definitely: the tyres wore out easily at Bristol. But we had something fun to talk about, and it influenced everyone’s opinion of the race. As Stewart-Haas Racing driver Josh Perry said: He said after that“I think I finished the race with three flat tires, and the car was on fire in 11th. It was probably the biggest bad show I’ve ever been in, but it was kind of fun.”
It’s too early to say whether NASCAR Indy will ever recover from the 2008 Brickyard 400 disaster. But the uncertainty is why we’re watching. Maybe in another sixteen years, we’ll be able to talk about the race that saved NASCAR at Indy—not the race that damned it.
