Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum
Cars, trophies, driver stories, engineering, strategy, and an active racetrack make the reimagined museum useful even to visitors who do not arrive as racing experts.
Artwork inspired by Garo Antreasian
The museum’s 2025 reimagining expanded the story well beyond a row of winning cars. More than a century of Indianapolis Motor Speedway history unfolds through machines, equipment, trophies, film, and personal accounts. Galleries explain qualifying, pit work, race strategy, safety, media, and the engineering tradeoffs that made different eras fast. The Borg-Warner Trophy and Indianapolis 500 winners remain anchors, but context is what makes them meaningful.
Begin with the chronology, then choose one car from two different decades and compare tires, aerodynamics, cockpit, materials, and safety. That exercise turns unfamiliar vehicles into readable evidence. Interactive areas can clarify the roles of driver, strategist, and crew, while rotating exhibitions reward repeat visits. Track tours are separate, weather- and activity-dependent, and especially valuable for understanding scale; remember that the museum sits inside an active venue whose race days change normal access.
- Founded
- 1956
- Reimagined
- 2025
- Collection
- 55,000+ artifacts
Quick guide
- Compare two eras
- Choose two cars decades apart and read changes in tires, bodywork, cockpit protection, materials, and sponsorship.
- Follow a race team
- Connect driver skill with mechanics, strategy, timing, communication, and the many decisions made away from the wheel.
How to see more than famous race cars
- Compare two eras
- Choose two cars decades apart and read changes in tires, bodywork, cockpit protection, materials, and sponsorship.
- Follow a race team
- Connect driver skill with mechanics, strategy, timing, communication, and the many decisions made away from the wheel.
- Read the trophy closely
- Use the Borg-Warner Trophy’s portraits and additions as a physical timeline, not merely a photo stop.
- Treat tours separately
- Track tours depend on weather and Speedway activity; reserve ahead and keep a museum-only plan as backup.
Good to know
Open daily 9 a.m.–5 p.m., except Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Standard admission covers all museum display areas; track and guided tours cost extra and depend on Speedway activity. Enter the grounds through Gate 2 for normally free museum parking. During public track events, an event ticket may also be required and the museum lot may be unavailable. The renovated museum provides accessible parking, limited loaner wheelchairs, accessible tour buses and simulators, captions, sensory bags, and a wellness room.
Notice these
- Indianapolis 500 winners gallery
- Borg-Warner Trophy
- Qualifying and pit-work interactives