1909 Buick Race Car and Track Surface History

have the 1909 Buick and we'll run through these real quick so this never racing the n500 but it did compete in events predating the n500 here at Indianapolis this was driven by Louis Chevrolet um and and Buick became obviously a kind of household name in the automotive industry here we got ly St James in the Louis Chevrolet car she was just at the Mustang 60th anniversary in Charlotte and I'm going to give her the car with dry roted tires let her go and wooden Wheels a Buick actually won the first longdistance event here at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1910 with Bob Burnham um so they they established their brand fairly quickly nonskid tread design is advertising and this also has similar suspension adjustments on the rear here on the dampeners similar to the Dage heart for shock I can read that one and that that probably really came into play because this would have been racing on the crushed rock sprayed down by a layer of tar um and the surface broke up and became quite treacherous um so that's when Carl fiser 1910 basically was told by a lot of the competitors hey this surface is unsafe we can't race on it especially the motorcycle guys in 1909 and 1910 so these thin tires were cutting through the surface and the tar and breaking it up especially with the weight of these cars you know weighing a couple tons most of the time or not a couple tons but weighing close to a ton you know this is probably a this is probably a 2,000lb car but the weight's all concentrated on these four points so bricks became the solution um Carl Fischer decided to spend a lot of money to have 3.2 million bricks pave the track and uh it became known as the Brickyard here that's how we got our name sake those bricks a lot of people don't know this are actually still underneath the track surface so they've stood the test of time to the point they're the foundation that the asphalt's laid on top of so when people refer to you know the Brickyard we're still racing over the top of bricks we just have a few layers of asphalt by this time over the top of them I didn't get the chance to say anything earlier but notice the positive camber on this Louis Chevrolet car it's a leaf spring car it has no