Ray Harroun, an engineer with the Marmon Motor Car Company, came out of retirement to drive, and won the inaugural event before re-retiring for good in the winner's circle.

In a departure from that policy, for 1911 the management decided to instead schedule a single, large-scale event attracting widespread attention from both American and European racing teams and manufacturers.

The 1910 racing season at Indianapolis Motor Speedway began well, with an estimated 60,000 spectators for the 200 mi (320 km) Wheeler-Schebler Trophy on Memorial Day, won by Ray Harroun.

Most strongly considered were either a 24-hour contest — anticipating the 24 Hours of Le Mans, itself inaugurated just a dozen years later — or a 1,000 mi (1,600 km) endurance race, with a spectacular purse of $25,000;[5] equivalent to 37.615 kg (82.93 lb) of pure gold, and more than high enough to attract global as well as national and regional competition.

As suggested to the Speedway owners by business associate Lem Trotter, the time coincided with the completion of a late-spring agricultural practice known as "haying," after which the farmers acquired an effective two-week break.

Newspaper and trade magazine articles used ever-new superlatives for the challenges expected to soon face both drivers and engineers, and continuing discussion throughout the spring and winter kept the race as the primary conversation piece of the average citizen.

[6] Due to the publicity thus created, Speedway management, which had for the previous two seasons of meets charged the effectively nominal entry fee of one dollar per mile of scheduled race distances, took measures to ensure that the likely large entry list did not include any that were frivolous: at an accordingly heightened fee of $500 per car, participation became a nominally risky proposition to teams and manufacturers, since, although the high finishers were due to receive record purse money and accessory prizes, no money at all was offered to finishers below tenth place.

[6] May 1 also marked the beginning of a long tradition of the opening of the Speedway, on the first day of the month of the race, to free practice on the circuit during daylight hours by any and all participants.

One such example, the double-entry Pope-Hartford team based in Springfield, Massachusetts, came by way of the team's actual racing cars themselves simply being driven cross-country, while loaded up with toolboxes and as many spare parts as they could hold, making overnight stops in New York City, Buffalo, Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, before finally arriving, where they were duly met at the city's East Washington Street by Frank Fox, who was not only the slated driver of one of the two cars but also the company's local agent.

Ultimately, of the full forty-six entries originally submitted, only the two cars of the Falcar team from Moline, Illinois failed to appear, due to an inability to acquire critical chassis pieces.

In the years following these inaugural qualification sessions, which were held on May 27 and 28, 1911, anecdotes would occasionally arise, and thereafter be steadily embellished in their retelling, regarding the purported qualifying times and speeds of given competitors, and how they compared to one another.

[6] The largest racing purse offered to date, $27,550, drew 46 entries from the United States and Europe, from which 40 qualified by sustaining 75 mph (121 km/h) along the quarter mile-long main straight.

[9] Amid roiling smoke, the roar of the 40 machines' engines, and the waving of a red flag which signalled 'clear course ahead', American Johnny Aitken, in a National, took the lead from the fourth starting spot on the extreme outside of the first row, and held it until lap 5 when Spencer Wishart took over in a Mercedes, himself soon overtaken by David Bruce-Brown's Fiat which would go on to dominate the first half of the race.

[10] Nearing the halfway point, Ray Harroun, an engineer for the Marmon-Nordyke company and defending AAA national champion, and the only driver competing without a riding mechanic due to his first-ever-recorded use of a cowl-mounted rear-view mirror, passed Bruce-Brown for the lead in his self-designed, six-cylinder "Marmon Wasp" (so named for its distinctively sharp-pointed, wasp-like tail).

[12] According to track historian Donald Davidson, no protests were filed at the end of the race[13] and Mulford offered congratulations to Harroun in the Detroit Free Press newspaper on June 4.

But the undermining evidence to support Harroun as the rightful winner was the team strategy to run a constant 75 mph pace, regardless of position, in order to save tire wear.