There’s little doubt that the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is one of America’s holy grails of motorsport. The Indy 500, one of the most prestigious races in the world, has cemented that reputation. When NASCAR arrived at the Brickyard in 1994, many unofficially began calling the race a new ‘Crown Jewel.’ NASCAR itself embraced that view a few years later. But not everyone agrees. Kyle Petty, for one, believes a race cannot simply buy its way into history.
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“You can’t buy a Crown Jewel,” Petty said on The Teardown podcast. “I don’t give a rat’s rear end whether Indy paid $20 million to buy your way into a Crown Jewel. It’s the history and the tradition of the place.”
Petty, who spent three decades in the Cup Series but never won in Indianapolis, feels that there are only three Crown Jewels in NASCAR: the Daytona 500, the Southern 500, and the Coca-Cola 600.
He pointed to NASCAR’s deepest roots, and the year 1949. The season marked the birth of modern stock car racing and laid the foundation for the sport. The Crown Jewels that grew from those Southern roots, Daytona, Darlington, and Charlotte, are the races that, in Petty’s view, truly define NASCAR.
“You don’t come along in the 90s and become a Crown Jewel, you know what I mean?” Petty added.
Petty did not completely dismiss the significance of racing at Indianapolis. Since Jeff Gordon won the inaugural Brickyard 400 in front of 250,000 fans in 1994, the Speedway has produced countless iconic moments. Those moments carry even greater weight because of the venue’s place in motorsports history.
The 116-year-old track has hosted far more than just IndyCar races. Formula 1 counted the Indy 500 toward its World Championship from 1950 to 1960. Later, from 2000 to 2007, the United States Grand Prix was held at the Speedway on a specially designed 13-turn infield road course.
Some of the greatest names in motorsports have celebrated victories at Indianapolis, from Michael Schumacher in Formula 1 and Helio Castroneves in IndyCar to Gordon, who won five NASCAR Cup Series races at the Brickyard.
However, while comparing it to the other three Crown Jewels with presumably just NASCAR in mind, Petty feels that it falls flat. “It’s not a Daytona,” he stated.
The 1979 Daytona race, which aired live on TV, remains one of the key moments in NASCAR history. In 1984, Richard Petty won his final race in the presence of President Ronald Reagan. By comparison, the Brickyard simply doesn’t have the same depth of NASCAR history. And it is going to be a while before it can get to where the other three races are today.
The 2026 Brickyard 400 takes place on Sunday, and while Petty may not place it alongside NASCAR’s three traditional Crown Jewels, winning at Indianapolis remains one of the sport’s most coveted achievements. Bubba Wallace enters as the defending winner for 23XI Racing, but who will add their name to the Brickyard’s list of champions this time?