Ray Harroun an engineer with the Marmon Motor Car
Company, came out of retirement to drive.
On May 30, 1911, Ray Harroun (above) drove his single-seater
Marmon Wasp to victory in the inaugural Indianapolis 500, now
one of the world’s most famous motor racing competitions.
The Indiana automobile dealer Carl Fisher first proposed
building a private auto testing facility in 1906, in order to
address car manufacturers’ inability to test potential top
speeds of new cars due to the poorly developed state of
the public roadways.
The result was the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, built on 328
acres of farmland five miles northwest of downtown Indianapolis.
The idea was that occasional races at the track would pit cars
from different manufacturers against each other in order to
showcase their full power and entice spectators to check out
the new models themselves.
In 1911, Fisher and his partners decided to focus on one long
race per year, as opposed to numerous shorter events, in order
to attract more publicity.
The purse for the grueling 500-mile race would be the richest
in racing.
