Behind the Bricks: Trophy Tweaks

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The winner of this year’s Brickyard 400 will clench and keep a trophy that is both very familiar and brand new.

The switch of the race format from the IMS oval to the road course and back again has led to changes. The biggest one is that it looks a lot rougher than in the past, and that’s exactly as planned.

“Coming back to the Brickyard on the oval, we decided to go back to that historic and iconic trophy that features the brick,” explains Indianapolis Motor Speedway President Doug Boles on this week’s edition of the Behind The Bricks podcast. “One difference this year is this brick was actually molded from an original brick here at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, not a fake polished brick.”

The winner’s trophy is not the only shiny symbol of the race. A much larger one, called the PPG Trophy, stays with the track. Instead of a brick on top, it features the Speedway’s famed Wing and Wheel. The PPG trophy has some important tweaks, too, this year.

“The Brickyard was not the ‘Brickyard 400’ the last three years,” said Boles as he talked to Jason VanSickle, vice president of Curation and Education at the IMS museum. The two point to extra letters added to the engravings honoring the 2021, 2022, and 2023 winners. “So you have taken these Bricks here and the last three winners have ‘RC’ (road course) next to them.”

Boles brought the Brickyard winner’s trophy and the Xfinity Series trophy to the WISH-TV studios, to show viewers of Daybreak.

You can see the appearance by watching the interview above. To see the entire Behind the Bricks episode, visit any of the IMS social media channels. To listen to the stories on the go, visit the All INdiana Podcast Network .

Behind the Bricks: Brickyard 400 trophy