Episode 12: The Future Lap

Introduction

Walk back out to the Yard of Bricks.

You have been here before. In Episode 2, "Bricks," we stood at this same spot and talked about how the original 3.2 million paving bricks of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway were laid down in 1909, and how, in 1961, all of them were paved over with asphalt except for a 3-foot strip across the start-finish line. That strip is the Yard of Bricks. It is the surface where winners kneel and kiss the track. It is the surface where every Indianapolis 500 winner since 1996 has placed their lips to the bricks.

That tradition started with Dale Jarrett winning the Brickyard 400 in 1996. He climbed out of his stock car, walked over to this 3-foot strip, and got down on his hands and knees and kissed the bricks. The next year, Ricky Rudd did it. Then Mario Andretti. Now every winner of every major race at Indianapolis does it. The Yard of Bricks is where history is set.

Stand back from it.

Imagine this same view. The same pagoda behind you. The same grandstands stretching to the horizon. The same red and white retaining walls. The same 2.5-mile oval, banked at 9 degrees in the turns. The same Yard of Bricks across the start-finish line.

Now imagine a car coming down the front straight at 175 miles per hour. Imagine that car making the left turn into the first corner. Imagine it adjusting its braking, balancing throttle and steering with millisecond precision. Imagine it executing a passing maneuver on another car that is also moving at 175 miles per hour.

Now picture this: there is no human in the driver's seat.

The car is empty. The cockpit is full of computers. The wheels are turning. The steering is moving. The throttle is responding. But there is no driver. The car is making every decision by itself, in real time, based on data from cameras, lidar, radar, GPS, and inertial sensors. The car is racing another empty car. Both cars are running their own software. Both cars are making decisions every millisecond about when to pass, when to brake, when to defend a line. There is not a single human in either car.

This has actually happened. It happened at this same oval, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, for the first time on October 23, 2021. It was called the Indy Autonomous Challenge. Nine university teams from around the world built software for identical Dallara race cars. The cars then competed for a $1 million prize. The cars drove themselves.

That is one possible future of the Indianapolis 500. It is not the only one. There is also a future in which IndyCars are partly electric, like the hybrid system that debuted in 2024. There is a future in which young engineers in Indiana learn through electric kart racing programs like the Purdue evGrand Prix. There is a future in which sustainability becomes as important to racing as speed.

This is the Season 1 finale. Over 11 episodes, we have covered the cars, the bricks, the voices, the aerodynamics, the fuel, the safety, the human body, the pit stops, the women drivers, the engineering that flows to your driveway, and the billion-dollar business of May. Today, we look at what comes next, and we synthesize the themes that hold together everything we have learned.

The First Race Without a Driver

The Indy Autonomous Challenge began in 2019 as a paper exercise. It was an idea promoted by Energy System Network, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit, with a simple but ambitious vision: hold the world's first head-to-head race between autonomous cars on a high-speed oval. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway agreed to host (Indy Autonomous Challenge, 2026).

The COVID pandemic delayed the first race. In the meantime, nine university teams from around the world developed software and tested it in simulators. The teams ranged from Technische Universität München (TUM) in Germany, to PoliMOVE (a partnership between Politecnico di Milano in Italy and the University of Alabama), to KAIST in South Korea, to MIT in the United States, to Cavalier Autonomous Racing (University of Virginia), to Purdue University with the United States Military Academy at West Point, and several others.

Every team built software for the same hardware: a Dallara AV-21 race car. The AV-21 was Dallara's modified version of its IL-15 Indy Lights chassis, fitted with lidar, radar, optical cameras, GPS, inertial measurement units, brake-by-wire and steering-by-wire systems, and a powerful onboard computer to run the software stack. All hardware was identical. The competition was 100 percent software (Indy Autonomous Challenge, 2026).

On October 23, 2021, the first on-track event was held. It was a time-trial format. Cars ran one at a time, racing against the clock. The race car had to demonstrate that it could complete laps autonomously, at high speed, without human intervention. TUM, from Germany, won. They completed two laps of the 2.5-mile oval at an average speed of 135 miles per hour (RTI, 2021).

That race was just the beginning. Over the next four years, the IAC has steadily increased complexity. In 2022, the cars raced head-to-head, with one car attempting to pass another. PoliMOVE made the first successful autonomous pass in racing history at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, beating TUM. In 2023, the IAC went international, with events at Monza in Italy and at CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas. In 2024, the new IAC AV-24 platform debuted. It set the autonomous land-speed record at 192 miles per hour. The AV-24 also set the autonomous hillclimb record at the famous Goodwood Festival of Speed in England, completing the climb in 66.37 seconds at a top speed of 111 miles per hour, with code by PoliMOVE (Indy Autonomous Challenge, 2026; Robot Report, 2024).

The biggest milestone came at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. Four autonomous race cars competed against each other at the same time, running for 20 laps with multiple overtakes and no accidents. The winning car was Cavalier Autonomous Racing from the University of Virginia, which passed KAIST in the final laps. Paul Mitchell, President and CEO of the IAC, called it the first true autonomous race: "Our goal has always been multi-agent racing. To be the first to complete a race with all of our AI drivers, with five overtakes, no accidents, and a head-to-head finish, is testament to the progress of the global IAC ecosystem" (Indy Autonomous Challenge, 2025).

What technology made this possible? The race cars use three primary types of perception:

LiDAR. Light detection and ranging. The car emits laser pulses and measures how long each pulse takes to bounce back. This builds a 3D map of the surroundings up to 200 meters away. Each car's lidar can capture up to 1 million points per second.
Radar. Radio detection and ranging. Lower-resolution than lidar but works through rain and dust. Detects other cars and walls.
Optical cameras. Standard high-resolution cameras. Capture color and texture information.

These three sensor types feed into a process called sensor fusion, in which the software combines all three streams of data into a single coherent picture of the world. Sensor fusion runs in real time, with computation cycles measured in milliseconds.

On top of sensor fusion, the software runs perception, prediction, planning, and control:

Perception: what is around me, what are they?
Prediction: where are those things likely to be in 1 second, 5 seconds?
Planning: what trajectory should I follow, given my goals and the predicted positions of other cars?
Control: what specific commands (throttle, brake, steering) should I send to the car right now?

The software has to do all of this every 10 milliseconds. That is 100 cycles per second.

The most impressive part is that the AI is doing this at 192 miles per hour. Every decision matters. Even a delay of 50 milliseconds at that speed means the car has traveled 4 meters. Small errors become big crashes.

The IAC is not just a sport. It is a research platform. The same algorithms that race at Indianapolis will eventually run in autonomous trucks on highways, autonomous taxis in cities, and autonomous delivery robots on sidewalks. The leap from "drives well in normal traffic" to "drives well at 192 mph with another autonomous car right next to it" is enormous. Anyone who can build software for the harder problem can build software for the easier one.

Purdue AI Racing and the Pipeline

Indiana has its own team in the Indy Autonomous Challenge: Purdue AI Racing, sometimes called PAIR.

The Purdue team began in 2021. Originally, Purdue partnered with the United States Military Academy at West Point. The combined team had limited resources and finished mid-pack in the early IAC events. In 2024, Purdue rebooted its IAC program, branding it as Purdue AI Racing. They hired Dan Williams as principal investigator. Williams spent 37 years at ZF, the German tier-1 automotive supplier, working on vehicle dynamics and control systems. He brought decades of industrial autonomous vehicle expertise to the academic team (Purdue Engineering, 2024).

The reboot has been successful. In 2025, at the Laguna Seca Raceway in California, Purdue AI Racing finished second behind PoliMOVE. PoliMOVE has been the dominant force in the IAC; Purdue's second-place finish was their best result to date. KAIST took third (Robot Report, 2025).

Williams told Purdue Engineering News in 2024: "Our team needs computer programmers, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, vehicle dynamicists, and controls experts. We're also looking for sponsorships, which is an important part of motorsports." (Purdue Engineering, 2024)

The team also enjoys a hometown advantage. The Purdue Motorsports Engineering program, the only accredited motorsports engineering degree in the United States, recently relocated to Dallara's headquarters in Speedway, Indiana, just steps from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Purdue students from both the West Lafayette and Indianapolis campuses can now participate in IAC team work, in the same building as the actual car manufacturer.

This is exactly what Indiana high school students should pay attention to. The work being done by Purdue AI Racing is not abstract or future. It is happening right now, in the same town as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, with university students at Purdue working on artificial intelligence software for race cars that will set the path for autonomous trucks and taxis.

For a high school student interested in computer science, the path is clear:

High school computer science classes (especially those teaching Python, C++, and machine learning fundamentals)
Strong math foundation (especially calculus, linear algebra, and statistics)
Undergraduate degree in computer science, electrical engineering, or mechanical engineering at Purdue, IUPUI, Rose-Hulman, IU, Ball State, or any solid program
Participation in a student team like PAIR, evGrand Prix Autonomous, or Formula SAE during college
Internships at AI companies including those working in autonomous vehicles, robotics, or related fields

The training pipeline matters. The IAC creates a competitive ecosystem where teams from Purdue and from around the world test their AI against each other in the toughest possible environment. The engineers who graduate from that pipeline are immediately competitive for jobs at Waymo, Tesla, Cruise, Aurora, Mobileye, Apple, every major automaker, and every defense contractor working on autonomous systems.

The Indy Autonomous Challenge is not just a fun race for engineering nerds. It is a deliberate workforce development tool. It is creating, in real time, the next generation of AI engineers and autonomous-system specialists. And many of those engineers will live and work in Indiana.

The Hybrid IndyCar

Not every future is fully autonomous. The current IndyCar Series still has human drivers, and the cars in the 2026 Indianapolis 500 still had drivers behind the wheel. But the technology under the hood has changed dramatically in the last two years.

On July 7, 2024, at the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio, the IndyCar Series introduced its first hybrid powertrain. The 2.2-liter twin-turbocharged V6 engine, the same one that had powered IndyCar for years, remained in place. But it was now paired with an Energy Recovery System (ERS) developed jointly by Honda Racing Corporation USA and Chevrolet, with components from Skeleton Technologies (Estonia), Empel (Italy), Ilmor (Indiana / UK), and BrightLoop Converters (France). All major components fit inside the bellhousing between the V6 engine and the gearbox, with a total system weight of 42.5 kilograms (Futurride, 2024).

The Energy Recovery System has four major components:

Energy Storage System (ESS): 20 supercapacitors from Skeleton Technologies. Operates at maximum 60 V and 2000 A. Stores up to 320 kilojoules per lap. Can fully charge or fully discharge in 4.5 seconds.
Motor Generator Unit (MGU): A 48-volt electric motor/generator unit that can either capture energy under braking (acting as a generator) or push the car forward (acting as a motor).
DC/DC converter: Manages voltage conversion between the supercapacitor pack and the rest of the car's electrical systems.
Voltage Control Device: Manages safety and stability.

The system adds about 60 horsepower (45 kilowatts) when deployed. Combined with the existing "Push to Pass" system used on road and street courses, the total horsepower boost reaches over 120 horsepower. That pushed total IndyCar horsepower to over 800 horsepower for the first time in two decades (IndyCar, 2024).

The system is a real-time refinement of what Formula 1 introduced with KERS in 2009. Where F1 KERS used a lithium-ion battery (with safety challenges including the famous BMW Sauber 2009 incident where mechanics were shocked), IndyCar uses supercapacitors. Supercapacitors can charge and discharge much faster than batteries, which suits the short, high-power bursts of racing. Supercapacitors are also safer in a crash (less risk of thermal runaway), more durable over thousands of charge cycles, and operate at lower voltage (48V instead of the 200-400V of typical batteries) (Skeleton Tech, 2024).

The performance impact has been substantial. According to IndyCar, 12 of the 14 on-track passing records set in the 2024 season were achieved with the hybrid system in place. On road courses, hybrid power assisted 71 percent of all passes at Portland International Raceway. On ovals like the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the system allows drivers to harvest energy when "lifting off" in another car's draft, then deploy that extra power to complete the pass (Motorsport.com, 2024).

The hybrid system is part of IndyCar's broader sustainability program. It complements:

Shell 100% Renewable Race Fuel (introduced 2023, covered in Episode 5)
Renewable diesel used in race team transporter trucks
Firestone's sustainable alternate tires with reduced petroleum content

The future of the IndyCar Series, as announced in 2026, includes a new chassis that will further evolve the hybrid system: longer deployment windows, increased horsepower, lighter weight (85 to 100 pounds lighter than current), and a new 2.4-liter twin-turbocharged V6 engine. The Aeroscreen (covered in Episode 6) will carry forward. The hybrid system will get more powerful (IndyCar, 2026).

The point is this: even when the car is still driven by a human, the engineering inside the car is changing rapidly. The drivers of the 2030 Indianapolis 500 will be driving cars that are part electric, that use Shell Renewable Fuel, that are made from carbon fiber, that are protected by the Aeroscreen, and that have automated safety systems built in. The cars will still race. They will just race using cleaner, more efficient technology than anything that came before.

Electric Karting in Indiana

The pipeline that creates the engineers who build hybrid IndyCars and autonomous race cars starts well before college. One of the most important on-ramps in Indiana is the Purdue evGrand Prix, an electric karting competition that has been running since 2010 (Wikipedia, 2026).

The evGrand Prix was founded by James Caruthers, a Purdue chemical engineering professor, with a $6.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. The grant supported the Indiana Advanced Electric Vehicle Training and Education Consortium (I-AEVtec), a partnership between Purdue, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Indianapolis, Ivy Tech, Purdue Calumet, and Indiana University Northwest. The goal was to train the next generation of electric vehicle engineers (Wikipedia, 2026).

The first evGrand Prix race was held on April 18, 2010. Since then, the event has grown into one of the largest collegiate electric racing competitions in the country. Today, evGrand Prix has three divisions:

Collegiate evGrand Prix. University teams build their own electric karts and race them at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. 15+ colleges have participated since 2010.
High School evGrand Prix. Indiana high schools build karts from Topkart chassis with Motenergy electric powertrains. Started in 2017.
Autonomous evGrand Prix. Self-driving electric karts. Started in 2018.

The competition is structured around real engineering work. Teams build their own karts, tune the electric powertrains, optimize battery energy efficiency, and refine chassis dynamics. They submit design reports and STEM outreach videos as part of the academic competition. The race itself is just one part of a much larger educational program (Purdue evGrandPrix, 2026).

In 2024, a team called "Lady Elizabeth" made history. They were the first all-female team to win the collegiate evGrand Prix. The team built their kart from a bare Topkart chassis. They named their kart after Elizabeth Miller, the first Industrial-Biomedical Engineering graduate from Purdue, a single mother who had to overcome significant obstacles to complete her degree. Crew chief Sophia Hester (in exploratory studies) and driver Tatum Langston (in mechanical engineering technology) led the team. They came from twelfth place to first across the race weekend (Purdue Digital Twin, 2025).

"Honestly, my goal was just to survive the race," Tatum Langston said. "It was the first race I'd ever actually finished, and the first time I'd gotten to see the checkered flag! So I was just really happy. I originally thought I was second, and they had to tell me that we won! I was just in shock!" (Purdue Digital Twin, 2025)

Lady Elizabeth was a milestone. The first all-female team to win the Purdue evGrand Prix (or the legendary Purdue Grand Prix gas-kart race that has run since 1958). It connects directly to Episode 9 ("Breaking the Brickyard Glass Ceiling"), where we tracked the women drivers at the Indianapolis 500. The Lady Elizabeth team are the next generation. The high school student in Indianapolis right now who wants to follow Janet Guthrie, Lyn St. James, Sarah Fisher, Danica Patrick, and Beth Paretta could begin her path on a Purdue electric kart.

For Indiana high school students, the evGrand Prix is a real entry point:

Many Indiana high schools already participate (ask your physics or engineering teacher)
High school kart kits start around $4,500 for the chassis, $1,500 for the powertrain
Schools can apply for sponsorships and grants
Teams compete at Purdue and at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway each spring

This is the kind of opportunity that doesn't always show up in a guidance counselor's career booklet. It is hands-on engineering with real outcomes. It teaches kids how to wire a powertrain, how to manage a project, how to balance design constraints, how to work as a team under pressure. It is, by some measures, the best STEM program in the state, and it is open to any Indiana high school that wants to start a team.

Four Speedway Patterns

This is the Season 1 finale, so let me step back and synthesize what we have covered. Over 11 episodes (Episode 12 included), four patterns have emerged from the story of the Indianapolis 500. I want to name them, because once you see them, you will see them everywhere.

Pattern One: Innovation Happens Under Pressure

Episodes 1, 4, 5, 6, and 10 all illustrate the same pattern. When a race team faces a problem (overheating brakes, drag at high speed, energy wasted in braking, a friend dying in a crash, the need for cleaner fuel), they innovate. The Indianapolis 500 is, by design, a pressure cooker. Cars run at 230 miles per hour. Drivers face physical extremes. Money is on the line. Engineers have to solve the problem this week or lose next weekend.

That pressure is productive. The aeroscreen exists because Justin Wilson died. The HANS device exists because Dale Earnhardt died. The SAFER barrier exists because too many drivers were dying in concrete-wall crashes. Disc brakes became famous because they kept Jaguar in the race at Le Mans. Hybrid technology exists because F1 wanted to be more efficient. The innovations themselves are the legacy of the people who pushed for them.

In your own life, you are likely to face moments of pressure: an exam, a job interview, an injury, a family crisis. The pressure will not be pleasant. But pressure also creates the conditions for innovation. The discipline you learn under pressure is the discipline that shapes your skills.

Pattern Two: Indiana Is the Place

Episodes 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 all keep returning to Indiana. The Indianapolis 500 is in Indiana. Dallara's IndyCar factory is in Speedway, Indiana. Firestone's Indy 500 tires are made in Indianapolis. Purdue's Motorsports Engineering program is in Speedway. The Indianapolis 500 broadcast originates in Indiana. The Indianapolis 500 medical staff trains at Indiana University in Indianapolis. The IMS Museum is in Indianapolis. The economic impact ($1.058 billion per year) lands in Indiana. The 8,440 jobs are in Indiana. The Main Street businesses are in Speedway, Indiana.

This is not an accident. Indiana made deliberate choices over more than a century to become the center of American motorsports. The four founders (Carl Fisher, James Allison, Arthur Newby, and Frank Wheeler) built the Speedway in 1909 in Indianapolis because they wanted it to be the test track for the burgeoning automotive industry. The state and city governments invested in infrastructure. The Hulman family (Tony Hulman, Mary Fendrich Hulman, Mari Hulman George) owned and ran IMS for 75 years, prioritizing community impact over short-term profit. Purdue University built the only accredited Motorsports Engineering program in the United States. Visit Indy markets Indianapolis as the Racing Capital of the World.

For a high school student in Indiana, this means something specific: you are in the right place at the right time. The opportunities that exist in the Indiana motorsports ecosystem cannot be replicated anywhere else in the United States. They were built deliberately, over generations, by people who chose to invest in this place.

Pattern Three: Doors Open Slowly, Then Quickly

Episodes 6, 8, and 9 all illustrate the same pattern. Change in this industry happens slowly at first, then accelerates. Janet Guthrie raced in 1977. Lyn St. James raced in 1992 (15 years later). Then Sarah Fisher in 2000 (8 years later). Then Danica Patrick in 2005 (5 years later). Then 4 women in 2010 (5 years later). The gaps shrink. By 2024, two women were simultaneous lead race engineers at Chip Ganassi Racing.

The same pattern shows up in safety. Bill Vukovich died in 1955. The SAFER barrier did not arrive until 2002. That is 47 years. But after the SAFER barrier, the HANS device, the aeroscreen, the AMR INDYCAR Safety Team, the medical innovations, all came in waves. The infrastructure builds on itself. Once you have one safety improvement, the next becomes easier to add.

In your own life, this matters. You will look at problems that have been around forever, and you will think they are unsolvable. They are not unsolvable. They are just at the slow part of a curve. The change you start today may not seem to matter for 5 or 10 years. Then suddenly, it does.

Pattern Four: The Business Is Built on the Spectacle

Episodes 1, 3, 11, and this episode all illustrate the same pattern. What looks like a race or a sport is, underneath, a business and a community. The spectacle is real (300,000 fans, the Indianapolis 500 ceremony, the speed, the danger, the engines, the bricks). But the spectacle exists inside an ecosystem that includes:

8,440 jobs in Indiana
$1.058 billion in annual economic impact
78,000 hospitality jobs across the broader Indianapolis tourism economy
The town of Speedway, Indiana, with its Main Street businesses
Indiana University Public Policy Institute studies
Purdue Engineering programs
Firestone, Dallara, IMS, IndyCar
Hundreds of media outlets and tens of thousands of community volunteers

The spectacle is the part you can see. The ecosystem is the part you live in if you live in Indiana.

These four patterns hold across the entire season. Innovation under pressure. Indiana as place. Doors that open slowly then quickly. Business built on spectacle. They were not deliberately chosen at the start of the season; they emerged as we covered each topic. But they are real. They explain the past 117 years of the Indianapolis 500, and they will explain the next 117 years.

The Future Lap

What is the future lap?

In one possible future, the 2050 Indianapolis 500 looks much like the 2026 race. 33 cars on the grid, human drivers, an internal combustion engine paired with a hybrid system, on the same 2.5-mile oval, with the same Yard of Bricks across the start-finish line. The technology evolves. The fans still cheer. The race remains the cultural and economic anchor of central Indiana.

In another possible future, the 2050 Indianapolis 500 features fully electric cars. Battery technology has advanced enough to deliver 200+ miles of range at race speeds. The engines have become much quieter, with a high-pitched electric whine instead of the roar of a V6. Some traditional fans complain about the silence. Others embrace the new sound. The race remains 500 miles.

In another possible future, the 2050 Indianapolis 500 includes both human-driven and autonomous classes, racing on alternating Sundays. The autonomous class draws engineering fans from around the world. The human class draws traditional racing fans. The Speedway hosts both.

In yet another possible future, the Indianapolis 500 is supplemented by spinoff series: an all-electric series at IMS for younger fans, an autonomous series that races at IMS during the Carb Day weekend, and a women-only development series modeled on Beth Paretta's Paretta Autosport. The Speedway becomes a campus of multiple racing traditions, not a single race.

We don't know which future will arrive. The technologies of today will shape the futures we have. The choices made by the IMS, by IndyCar, by Indiana high school students, by Purdue engineers, by Visit Indy, by sponsors, and by fans will all matter.

What we do know is this:

Autonomous racing is real. The Indy Autonomous Challenge has been racing driverless cars at IMS since 2021. The technology improves every year. Whether this leads to a new IndyCar autonomous class, or whether the technology stays as a research platform, the autonomous era has begun.
Hybrid racing is real. The hybrid IndyCar debuted in 2024. It uses supercapacitors instead of batteries, captures braking energy, and delivers 60+ extra horsepower on demand. This technology will get more powerful in the new chassis coming in the next few years.
Electric racing is real. Purdue's evGrand Prix has been running collegiate electric karting since 2010. High schools in Indiana have been competing since 2017. The autonomous division has been racing since 2018. The pipeline that will eventually produce a fully electric IndyCar exists today.
Sustainable racing is real. Shell 100% Renewable Race Fuel debuted in 2023. Renewable diesel is in race team transporters. Firestone is testing reduced-petroleum tires. The Indianapolis 500 is moving toward a smaller environmental footprint.

For Indiana high school students considering their future careers, this is the right moment to invest. The skills required for the future of motorsports include:

Computer science and machine learning (autonomous systems, sensor fusion, real-time decision-making)
Electrical engineering (hybrid powertrains, battery management, electric motors)
Mechanical engineering (chassis design, aerodynamics, materials)
Software engineering (vehicle control systems, simulation, data analytics)
Materials science (carbon fiber, composites, ceramics, advanced alloys)
Sustainability engineering (alternative fuels, energy systems, carbon footprint analysis)
Robotics (perception, planning, control)

These are not just motorsports careers. They are the skills that will define the broader automotive, aerospace, defense, robotics, and energy industries for the next 30 years. Anyone trained to work on a hybrid IndyCar or an autonomous race car can apply those skills to passenger cars, delivery trucks, agricultural equipment, military vehicles, or aircraft.

The Indianapolis 500 has always been about the future. Ray Harroun's rearview mirror in 1911 was the future. Bill Vukovich's safety advocacy in the 1950s was the future. Janet Guthrie's 1977 race was the future. Angela Ashmore's 2022 engineering win was the future. The Indy Autonomous Challenge starting in 2021 is the future. The hybrid IndyCar in 2024 is the future. The next future has not been written yet. Some of the engineers who will write it are sitting in Indiana high schools right now.

Wrap-up

The Yard of Bricks has been at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway since 1909. The original 3.2 million bricks of the racing surface were all paved over in 1961, except for this 3-foot strip across the start-finish line.

In 117 years, those bricks have witnessed nearly every chapter of American motorsport history. Ray Harroun's 1911 win in the Marmon Wasp. Bill Vukovich's death in 1955. Mario Andretti's 1969 win. Janet Guthrie's 1977 race. The first paved surface in 1961. The Brickyard 400 starting in 1994. The first Dale Jarrett brick-kiss in 1996. The SAFER barrier in 2002. The aeroscreen in 2020. The Indy Autonomous Challenge in 2021. Angela Ashmore's engineering win in 2022. The hybrid IndyCar in 2024.

And the bricks remain.

The Yard of Bricks does what monuments are supposed to do. It outlives the people who pass over it. It connects the kid in Indianapolis who watches her first 500 with her grandfather, to the engineer who works on the 2050 Indianapolis 500 chassis, to the AI researcher who codes a driverless car for the IAC, to the medical doctor at the AMR INDYCAR Safety Team, to the small business owner on Main Street Speedway who sells coffee to all of them.

The bricks are the anchor. The race is the spectacle. The community is the substance.

This has been Season 1 of Speedway: The Greatest Spectacle in Learning. Twelve episodes. The first race in 1911. The bricks. The voices. The shape of speed. Fuel. Safety. The driver's body. Pit stop precision. Breaking the Brickyard glass ceiling. From track to driveway. The business of May. The future lap.

If you stuck with us for all 12 episodes, thank you. If you joined partway through, welcome. If this is your first episode, go back and listen to Episode 1. We will release one more episode separately: the bonus episode on Purdue Motorsports Engineering, which goes deeper on the educational pipeline that connects Indiana students to motorsports careers.

Season 2 of Speedway is in development. We will tell you more soon.

For now, walk back to the Yard of Bricks. Take a photo. Put your hand on one of the bricks. Feel how cool it is. Notice how worn it is. Imagine all the people who have stood here before you, and all the people who will stand here after.

The race continues. The bricks remain. The story is yours now.

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