BROOKLYN, Mich. — The final IndyCar race at Michigan Int’l Speedway was Sunday and it leads one to wonder why.
Other than the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and The Milwaukee Mile, there is no track on the IndyCar circuit that has more history than the two-mile oval located in the Irish Hills of Michigan.
The first race ever held at MIS was an IndyCar race Oct. 13, 1968, and Formula One driver Ronnie Bucknum was the winner. There was no race in 1969 when the tire companies feared the speeds were too high for their products, but every year since 1970 there has been an IndyCar race, whether the sanctioning body was the United States Auto Club, CART or the Indy Racing League.
But all that will change as Sunday’s Firestone Indy 400 was the last time the high-speed, open-wheel racing machines competed at MIS, at least for the foreseeable future.
A highly respected columnist once said a good column should never have the pronoun “I,” stating there were easier ways to offer an opinion without calling attention to the writer.
With that in mind, I’m going to make an exception to that advice, at least for this offering.
The very first auto race I ever covered was the 1981 Michigan 500 as the sports intern for the Toledo Blade.
There wasn’t much demand for someone to work the pits in those days from the regular staff writers, so as an intern, I offered my assistance to the Blade’s motorsports writer at that time, Dave Wolford. It rained on the originally scheduled date and was moved to the following Saturday.
It fell in the middle of Wolford’s vacation schedule, so the sports editor at the time, John Hannen, decided to send the intern to cover the whole thing.
What happened that day left a lasting impression on the intern, and little did he know, it would chart his career path, whether he liked it or not.
There was a huge pit fire in the race that began when Herm Johnson pitted, and a spark ignited the highly combustible methanol fuel. The invisible flames shot up the fuel hose and ignited the fuel tank. As crew members scrambled out of the way, the fire spread to other pit areas, exploding other fuel tanks.
Was this a sporting event or a war zone? wondered the intern, who had witnessed enough fiery outbreaks covering Coach Bob Knight as a student reporter at Indiana University.
After the race was red-flagged and the flames extinguished, the race resumed with more drama about to unfold.
Racing legend A.J. Foyt crashed on the backstretch and nearly lost his arm. At that time, the barrier was ARMCO instead of concrete and it sliced through his arm, leaving battle wounds that exist today.
When the brutal race finally concluded, Pancho Carter was the winner in a disputed finish with Tony Bettenhausen, who claimed he was the real winner.
 So when a mid-sized North Carolina newspaper advertised for a job opening in the sports department that included auto racing, the clips from that day were packaged with the resume, sent away and led to a full-time staff position.
Auto racing in North Carolina meant NASCAR but over time and with new job opportunities, IndyCar racing was back on this writer’s schedule.
And outside of the Indianapolis 500, some of the fastest and most dramatic IndyCar races were held at Michigan Int’l Speedway, whether it was Juan Pablo Montoya’s brilliant victory over Michael Andretti in 2000 when the rear wing included the Hanford Device, to Tomas Scheckter taking on his team owner Eddie Cheever and new teammate Buddy Rice to win the IRL’s first race at Michigan in 2002, MIS was the site of some significant moments in this form of racing.