Drivers in the Indianapolis 500 motor race cover 200 laps of the course. If a race car driver maintained a speed of 200 miles per hour for an entire lap, how long would it take him to negotiate that lap?

To understand this calculation, you first need a key piece of information: the length of the track at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Each of the 200 laps covers a distance of exactly 2.5 miles. The math from there is a straightforward conversion of speed and distance into time. A speed of 200 miles per hour means a car would travel 200 miles in 3,600 seconds (one hour). To find the time it takes to travel just one mile, you can divide 3,600 by 200, which equals 18 seconds per mile. Multiply those 18 seconds by the 2.5-mile length of the track, and you arrive at a total time of 45 seconds.

While a 45-second lap is incredibly fast, it provides a fascinating baseline for understanding the true speed of modern Indy cars. The iconic 2.5-mile oval, nicknamed "The Brickyard" for the yard of original bricks still marking the start/finish line, has seen cars go much faster. During qualifying, drivers often average well over 230 miles per hour, pushing their lap times down below 40 seconds. The official track record, set by Arie Luyendyk in 1996, is a blistering 37.895 seconds, which equates to an average speed of more than 237 miles per hour.