Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park

History

This strip has hosted NHRA’s U.S. Nationals since 1961. It sits in Clermont, 10.5 miles west of downtown Indianapolis and about four miles west of the Indianapolis 500 speedway, on a 250-acre racing complex. Early zoning trouble was settled once neighbors were promised there would be no night racing. The 4,400-foot drag strip was the first part of the million-dollar complex to be finished. On September 8, 1960, Red Dyer tested it in Ray Godman’s “Tennessee Bo-Weevil” A/MR, topped 150 mph and predicted there’d be no end to the records set there. He was right. A break-in race ran on September 11, and at the grand opening, a regional race on October 1-2, 1960, Bruce Andrews and Tom Prosser both set national records.

From spring 1961 races ran every Sunday, run by the Indianapolis Timing Association. Before June 1961 Mickey Thompson held the track record at 166.55 mph, and $100 was offered to any gas dragster that could beat it. Wally Parks called it the finest drag strip he’d seen anywhere in the world. The U.S. Nationals came to Indy on September 1-4, 1961, while NHRA’s nitro ban was still in force. “Sneaky Pete” Robinson won top gas eliminator at 8.86 and 170.77 mph and then took top eliminator over Dode Martin in Dean Moon’s Mooneyes A/D. Most of the national press, though, covered 150 rowdy fans who marched on a tavern closed under Sunday liquor laws, chanting for booze and beer. Seventy-five police officers and reserves broke it up and arrested sixteen.

In 1963 gasoline was spread across U.S. 136 and set on fire, causing a massive traffic jam. In 1964 fans threw empty beer bottles at people in the stands, which led to a ban on all bottles. That same year the fuel ban was lifted, the first time since 1956 that fuelers could race at the Nationals. For 1965 the event added security, rumors that the Hell’s Angels might show came to nothing, and the race ran smoothly with a record 1,222 competitors. At the 1968 Nationals, part of a temporary 300-seat bleacher near the starting line collapsed and four people were hurt. The U.S. Nationals, still run every Labor Day weekend, is regarded as the granddaddy of all drag races. The track became O’Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis in 2006 and Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis in 2011, the name it still carries.