Race Weekend in Indianapolis: 15 Years of Getting People to the Yard of Bricks on Time

If you have never driven near the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on the morning of the 500, I cannot fully explain it to you. Picture roughly a third of a million people all trying to reach the same square mile of asphalt within the same two-hour window. Streets that are one-way for the day. Neighbors selling their front lawns as parking. Helicopters overhead. It is, genuinely, one of the largest single-day sporting events on earth, and it happens right in our backyard.

I ran my first race weekend back in 2010, when I was still driving for another company before I started this one in 2012. I made every rookie mistake there is. I have since learned that on race day, the job is not driving — it's knowing which roads close and when, where the drop-off points actually let you back out, and roughly how many minutes to add before it stops being funny.

The tour that turned into a podium

A couple of years ago I had a family in town who had never seen the Speedway. We were doing a city tour — downtown, the war memorials, a few of my favorite spots — and I told them we had to at least drive past the track. One thing led to another, a few doors were open that usually aren't, and before the afternoon was over I had them standing up on the victory podium at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The looks on their faces are the reason I still love this job. They left a review afterward that I keep coming back to; you can read it and others on our reviews page.

You cannot fake local knowledge. Either you've spent fifteen years learning where the shortcuts and the open doors are, or you're reading the same map as everyone stuck in the line next to you.

What race-week transportation should actually solve

People think they're hiring a car. What they're really hiring is the answer to three problems: parking that doesn't exist, traffic that doesn't move, and a group that doesn't want to split up. Our Indy 500 transportation and broader sports & event transportation are built around exactly those:

• No parking gamble. We drop you as close as the day's road closures allow, then we handle the vehicle. You walk in; you don't circle for an hour.
• Groups stay together. Our Sprinter vans keep eight to fourteen people in one vehicle instead of four rideshares that arrive at four different times.
• A driver who knows the exits. Getting in is half the battle. Getting out afterward, when everyone leaves at once, is the half nobody plans for.

And it isn't only the 500. Race weekend has become a whole season — the Brickyard, the Grand Prix, concert nights that spill out of the infield. Any weekend the Speedway is busy, the whole city's traffic pattern changes, and that's true whether you're staying downtown or coming in from around Indianapolis.

Book early. I mean it.

Every year I turn away good people in May because they called in April. Race weekend, graduation weekend, and the big Saturdays sell out first — a fleet is a fixed number of vehicles, and there is no surge button to summon more. If you already know your dates, lock them in now and thank yourself later.

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