Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the self-proclaimed Racing Capital of the World, is the white-hot center of American motorsports. The world-famous facility hosts three of the biggest, richest and most prestigious events on the racing calendar – the Indianapolis 500, the Brickyard 400 and the United States Grand Prix. This year IMS also was the site of the inaugural HO Mini Indy 500.

My day job (also my night job and my weekend job) is managing GM Racing Communications’ PR program in the Indy Racing League. I’ve represented Oldsmobile and Chevrolet since the IRL series was formed in 1996. Consequently I spend the month of May camped out in Indianapolis in a cinder-block office on Gasoline Alley while the real racers practice and qualify for the Indy 500.

Did I mention that it rains in Indianapolis? This year’s race took place during one of the coldest and wettest months on record. The concession stands sold more hot chocolate than beer, an indication of just how bad the weather was. Indy cars don’t run in the rain, so we had a surplus of time on our hands. What better way to while away the hours on a rainy day than racing? After all, real racers will drive anything with wheels and a motor, even if it’s about 1/64th the size of their usual rides.

Construction of the mini Indianapolis Motor Speedway was a three-week project on the kitchen table of my rented studio apartment. After I got the track up and running, I devoted my solitary evenings to building structures and scenery modeled after the immense track where I spent my days.

The real IMS oval is 2.5 miles long. Even at 1/64 scale, an HO version would measure 206 feet in length. Since my portable version had to fit on a 36” x 80” hollow-core door, I gave up any hope of building an accurately scaled replica. However, I wanted to capture the aura of Indy with buildings that represented the familiar features of the track. For inspiration, I simply had to step outside my office and look around.
I laid out the four-lane oval with Tomy track, using three 15” straights, 9” and 12” curves, and 9” straights for the “short chutes” at the ends of the track. Tomy power packs and 45 ohm Parma controllers were a good match for the box-stock Super G+ open-wheel race cars.
I used Gregory Braun’s terrific Lap Timer 2000 software for timing and scoring, operating on an ancient IBM laptop. The system was triggered by infrared photocells and a timing bridge made from scrap aluminum and an aquarium light. Greg’s program plays an audio file of engine sounds every time a car crosses the start-finish line. With lap times averaging around 1-second flat, four slot cars zipping around the track sounded just like the real cars screaming outside my door.

Since the slot car track was to be dismantled after the Indy 500, I built lightweight, inexpensive structures. I found everything I needed to build a desktop Indy 500 at a nearby artist supply and craft store. The grandstands and buildings were constructed from 3/16” foamcore. This marvelous material is lightweight, rigid, and dirt cheap. The only tools required were a steel ruler, a hobby knife and a lifetime supply of No. 11 blades. Hot-melt glue, straight pins, toothpicks, wooden barbecue skewers, Velcro and tape hold it all together.

I built my own version of Indy’s new SAFER “soft walls” using 1/4” foam salvaged from a computer box sandwiched between layers of foamcore. Just as on the real track, Turn 1 and Turn 3 were high-impact areas where inexperienced drivers gave the soft walls a severe test. Aluminum window screen mounted on galvanized florist wire fence posts protected the spectators from errant race cars.

The Speedway’s gift shop was the source for an assortment of diecast Indy cars that replaced the NASCAR stock cars on the Winner’s Circle pit lane. I also assembled a display of diecast Chevrolet Indy 500 Pace Cars under an infield tent and a parking lot filled with Corvettes in celebration of Corvette’s 50th anniversary. Ambulances and emergency vehicles from the remainder bins at Wal Mart and Toys R Us filled out the scene.

Due to the small size of the track, I took some liberties with the relative sizes and locations of the buildings. The Hall of Fame Museum, for example, was arbitrarily relocated from the infield to outside of the south end. That is one of the perks of owning your own track.

All of the graphics for my vestpocket Indy 500 track were designed with Word 97’s rudimentary drawing program and printed with a portable Canon BJC-70 printer with a color cartridge. Printing the graphics on high-quality paper at the highest resolution setting produced astonishingly good results. Clear acetate was a reasonable facsimile of glass windows and doors, while green acetate simulated the tinted windows of the Pagoda tower and suites. Back home in California, my faithful wife produced crowds of people in Photoshop to populate the grandstands and flags that flew on straight pins above the tower and museum.

When the word got out that there was a slot car track in the GM Racing garage, the drivers, crew chiefs and mechanics soon arrived. Sam Hornish Jr., the 2001-2002 IRL champion, set the track record at 1.045 seconds. Sam is a veteran video game player and RC racer, so he quickly got in the slot car groove. He was inspired to buy an HO version of his Pennzoil Indy car, but his low-downforce Mattel chassis was no match for my Super G+ Formula 1 car. At least I can say that I’m one of the few drivers to beat Hornish on an oval.

On the day after Helio Castroneves won the Indy 500 in a Chevy-powered Dallara, I dismantled the track for storage. It’s waiting for my return next May, and I’m already making plans for the 2003 edition. Now that I’ve mastered the Indianapolis 500, I’m thinking about taking on Michael Schumacher on a replica of the IMS Grand Prix circuit.