Indianapolis 500

The Indianapolis 500 is a car race held in Speedway, Indiana. It is one of the best well known events in American racing. The race is held every Memorial Day weekend at the 2.5 mile racetrack. Cars are purpose-built race cars with 800 horsepower V8 engines mounted behind the driver. The engines run on American-grown ethanol supporting American farmers.^{[Citation Needed]} Despite being a very American tradition, there are many successful foreign drivers, including Dario Franchitti from Scotland, Scott Dixon from New Zealand and Helio Castroneves from Brazil.

The event has been run for a hundred years and has a massive attendance on race day with as many as 400,000 attendees.^{[Citation Needed]}

The defending champion as of May 2011 is Dan Wheldon.