This weekend, for the first time since 2020, the Brickyard 400 is back. NASCAR’s returning to one of the most famous tracks in motorsport: the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval, home of the Indianapolis 500. But it may never be back to the way it was during its glory days, and much of that struggle can be traced back to one day: July 27, 2008.
NASCAR at Indy has the right ingredients. It’s got the cool name. The track’s got history—people have been racing at Indy since 1909—and it’s a spectacle, owning the title of world’s largest sports facility by capacity, with more than 250,000 permanent seats along its 2.5-mile rectangular oval. And, of course, it hosts one of racing’s most famous sporting events, the Indy 500 (which sold 345,000 race-day tickets this year alone). But the last time NASCAR showed up at the Brickyard, the stands had more empty seats than people. It wasn’t always that way.
NASCAR arrived at the Brickyard in 1994, and it was the first race other than the Indy 500 to be held at the track since 1916. Jeff Gordon won in front of 250,000 spectators—the first of his five wins at Indy. More than 10 years later, attendance for NASCAR’s race stayed strong: Around 270,000 people attended the Brickyard 400 in 2007, then 240,000 in 2008.
Those 240,000-or-so fans witnessed what’s known as one of its worst races in modern motorsports history. Goodyear’s tires, run by the entire field in NASCAR’s top-level Cup Series, fell apart almost as soon as they touched the track.
Steel cords show through tires after only 10 laps
Photo by: Michael C. Johnson
The explanation only added to the embarrassment, since the 2008 Brickyard 400 was the Cup Series’ first trip to Indy with its then-new race car, the Car of Tomorrow. A combo of the fresh design and the chosen rubber compound saw tires chewed up every handful of laps. Constant tire failures led NASCAR to throw six preventative competition cautions during the 160-lap race, allowing teams to change their tires before they had the chance to fail. There were 11 cautions for 52 laps, totaling 130 of the 400 miles. The longest green-flag runs totaled 12 laps.
Rubber fragments and particles littered the track surface and venue. The average race speed sat at a sad 115 mph, compared to 146 mph the next year. Now-retired driver Carl Edwards, who finished second, said that none of the drivers “ran 100% until the last run” for fear of losing their tires even faster. The final run lasted only seven laps before now-seven-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson took the checkered flag. Ryan Newman, who finished 13th that day, said: “That wasn’t a race today. It’s ridiculous. It’s disrespectful to the fans.”
He wasn’t the only one to feel that way. At the time, NASCAR’s vice president of competition, Robin Pemberton, said: “There’s nothing wrong with the [Indianapolis track] surface. It’s obvious we didn’t go there with the right car-tire combination. We’ve got to do a better job. I can’t say enough how sorry we are. It is our responsibility, NASCAR’s, that we don’t go through this again.”
Jimmie Johnson takes a “competition yellow”
Photo by: Michael C. Johnson
But just like everyone’s tires, NASCAR’s reputation at the Brickyard was shredded. Racing fans in Indianapolis had already weathered the great Formula One tire fiasco of 2005, when the U.S. Grand Prix ran with just six cars on Indianapolis’ infield road course. Those six cars had Bridgestone tires, while the others, running Michelins, withdrew because their tires couldn’t hold up. The fallout from that race led F1 to temporarily abandon the American market.
NASCAR stayed at Indy in spite of the 2008 tire fiasco, but spectators didn’t. Attendance at the Brickyard dropped to 180,000 in 2009, 140,000 in 2010, and 138,000 in 2011.
Not all of that was the track’s fault: The Great Recession loomed overhead and NASCAR was coming down from its 2000s-era peak, so attendance and ratings suffered elsewhere as well. But the Brickyard’s decline was particularly stark. The last time the Cup Series raced on Indy’s oval was 2020, with pandemic-induced attendance restrictions—but in 2019, only about 60,000 fans showed up.
Sparsely-populated stands at the 2019 Brickyard 400
Photo by: Nigel Kinrade / NKP / Motorsport Images
Hoping to resurrect its Indianapolis experience in 2021, NASCAR moved to the track’s 14-turn road course for the first time—a BandAid on a 13-year-old wound. Indianapolis is one of racing’s most iconic venues, making it hard to remove from the schedule. But after all that time, NASCAR still struggled to outrun its history there.
A few months ago, and for the first time, I watched the 2008 Brickyard 400 (I didn’t get bitten by the NASCAR bug until I went to a race in 2009). It was fascinating to witness the race retroactively: I knew what disasters lay ahead and the ripple effect they would have—but the competitors and broadcast crew didn’t. They just knew things were bad.
I’m not sure the 2008 Brickyard 400 would be as catastrophic today as it was back then. It happened at the worst possible time: The economy was on the brink of a sharp decline, making it easier to cut the expense of attending the Brickyard after a race that went terribly wrong. NASCAR had lost its footing, and plenty of fans didn’t like the Car of Tomorrow. They hated it more when it wronged them at Indy.
Plus, back then, when we all had attention spans that weren’t measured in thumb scrolls, people just carried grudges longer. These days, I’ll forget about a bad race weekend in two weeks. Time moves quickly, and news cycles move even quicker.
For proof, just look at Bristol Motor Speedway this year. Like in 2008, Goodyear’s tire compound simply didn’t work with the track. There were a record 54 lead changes, with tire conservation—and drivers dropping like flies as their tires gave out—ultimately deciding the race. Fans loved it.
NASCAR didn’t throw regular competition cautions like at Indy, but there was only one green-flag run longer than 50 laps (or about 26 miles at Bristol, roughly the same distance the tires lasted at Indy in 2008). It was chaos, but it also gave spectators and competitors a conversation topic we’d been missing in recent NASCAR history: tire wear.
Yeah, sure: The tires wore a little too easily at Bristol. But we had something fun to talk about, and it colored everyone’s opinion of the race. As Stewart-Haas Racing driver Josh Berry said afterward: “I think I finished with like three flat tires, and the car was on fire in 11th. That might be the biggest shit show I’ve ever been a part of, but it was kind of fun.”
It’s too soon to tell if NASCAR’s Indy racing will ever recover from the 2008 Brickyard 400 disaster. But uncertainty is why we watch. Maybe in another 16 years, we’ll get to talk about the race that saved NASCAR at Indy—not the one that doomed it.