The first running of the Indianapolis 500 took place in 1911, around 44 years before this magazine first churned out an issue as Sports Cars Illustrated. Built up over 60 years, our archives are exhaustive, but there’s no getting around the fact that we weren’t at the Brickyard for that first 500?but the Associated Press was. And on the eve of the 100th running of the Indy 500, the AP has unearthed its original 1911 dispatch from the first “International 500-Mile Sweepstakes Race,” and it’s every bit as old-timey and quirky as we could have hoped.

We highly recommend reading the report?you can get it in full here?and not only for the outdated and curious language throughout. It’s a first-hand account of the state of endurance racing over a century ago, when a 500-mile speed contest was considered an outlandish endeavor for daredevils. The winner, Ray Harroun (pictured in his no. 32 Marmon Wasp), completed the race in just under seven hours, and even boasted that “At no time was the throttle wide open and I relied wholly on consistent high speed” to win. It speaks volumes about the reliability and safety, or lack thereof, of the cars running in the race that the winning driver would avoid full throttle in a race.
Celebrating the Indy 500’s 100th Anniversary: 100 Most Interesting Facts and Milestones
Before There Was a 500: The Story of the Brickyard
Back Home Again in Indiana: 11 Things to See or Do en Route to t...