Indianapolis 500 Chronicle
by Rick Popely with L. Spencer Riggs
“Perhaps the most important 500 miles ever run at the Speedway were covered by a long machine during the war. Taking part in a tire test, Wilbur Shaw realized the once-proud racing facility was ripe for demolition. The very sight of his beloved Brickyard crumbling away gave Wilbur a cause.”
Prior to my fellow reviewer John Aston recently telling you about Rick Shaffer’s It’s… A… New Track Record! there have been only two really reliable Indy 500 references. Neither had been reviewed on this site because they were published prior to the birth of SpeedReaders.info and we are only now taking a stab at catching up with the noteworthy books of their day.
Whereas the 2026 Shaffer book only covers the single 1962–1972 decade the one we want to look at here, and the one to follow next week, cover many more decades and they must be considered seminal Indy 500 resources (and are still easily found).
Popely’s Indianapolis 500 Chronicle covers virtually all aspects of each race year-by-year from 1909 to 1998. Each year’s race is presented and covered similarly. As the Table of Contents above indicates, the early years are each covered by a pair of facing pages. But beginning in the 1950s covering each race is given two, three, sometimes four facing page pairs, and that continues to be the case from then on. I picked at random one of the years that utilized three facing pages to show you how a year is typically presented.
As I observed when I reviewed it for a print publication in December of 1998, the book is “more than just a research tool—it is also fun to peruse and actually read. The vignettes surrounding each year’s competition—some are of the race, some are stories of the people or cars, some are statistical—all are interestingly presented.”
Chronologically arranged, each car and driver is shown in qualifying order. A sidebar gives the finishing order with race and team statistics. The book presents a tremendous amount of information logically and usefully. Or as a purchaser expressed it, the entire book is “an unbelievable compilation of factual data.” 
Copyright 2026 Helen V Hutchings (speedreaders.info)
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