A little help from 3Wide crew?  

It was over 40 years ago, but Kevin's post above reminded me of how we used to get to and from the track on race day. (Did it throughout the 70's, and well into the 80's.)

My father and I would park downtown (right across from the main bus station) and they had all of the city buses dedicated to running closed off routes back and forth to the speedway (about a 20 minute ride if I remember correctly.)  We would get to the downtown parking lot probably 3 - 4 hours before the start of the race, and then board a bus that would drop us off right near the first turn of the speedway.  If we arrived early enought to get on a bus, it was really stress free because not everyone was trying to get from downtown to the track at the same moment, so it was kind of a slow build.  That was the easy part.

The tougher part is when everyone (a few hundred thousand!) are all trying to leave right around the same time, right at the end of the race.  The line for buses then was huge, especially if your seats were not near where the buses were picking up (again, back then it was right near turn 1), as those seated closer to the departure point would be able to get in line for the buses ahead of those of us who had farther walks.

I don't know if there is 2024 version of city buses running from downtown to and from the speedway, but I do remember it was reasonably priced and we at least had the confidence that we'd get to the track... and to then not have to worry about finding a parking spot once we got out there.  If it still exists (buses from downtown), it might be worth looking into, but as everyone has agreed in their earlier post, being a lot earlier for things rather than a little late, will pay dividends as far as getting to the track and enjoying the event.

If you are fortunate enough to get to the track early, there's also a lot of pagentry (sp?) and stuff to watch/enjoy before the race... Plus it's a great day for people watching as you'll see it all and then some when 400,000 people all show up for a race....