Indy Car Coloring Page: Free Printable PDF Sheet for Kids

Indy Car: History & Fun Facts

Built Around One Famous Oval

The Indianapolis 500 first ran in 1911 on a 2.5-mile rectangular oval paved with 3.2 million bricks, earning the track its lasting nickname, the Brickyard. That single race grew into the modern IndyCar Series, which still visits ovals, road courses, and street circuits every season, but the 500-mile race at Indianapolis every Memorial Day weekend remains the series' signature event and the reason these cars carry the Indy name.

Racing an oval for 500 miles asks something different of a car than a road course does. Drivers hold a car flat-out through banked turns for long stretches, so an Indy car is tuned for sustained high-speed cornering rather than the constant braking and accelerating of a twisting road circuit.

One Spec Chassis for Every Team

Unlike Formula 1, where each constructor designs and builds its own chassis, the IndyCar Series has run a single spec chassis built by Italian manufacturer Dallara since 2012, with every team racing the same basic tub and bodywork. Teams and drivers still compete hard, but the competition centers on setup, strategy, engine tuning between two approved manufacturers, and driver skill rather than each team inventing a completely different car. That's a major reason an Indy car and a Formula 1 car can look similar at a glance but come from very different racing philosophies.

The Aeroscreen Changed the Cockpit

For decades, IndyCar drivers raced with an open cockpit and no windscreen at all, leaving their heads and shoulders exposed above the bodywork. That changed in 2020 when the series introduced the aeroscreen, a curved, ballistic-resistant canopy mounted over the cockpit to protect the driver's head from flying debris at speeds that can top 230 miles per hour on the fastest ovals. The curved shape traced on this coloring page wraps up and over the cockpit opening, a detail that instantly separates a modern Indy car from an open-cockpit Formula 1 car, which uses a smaller titanium halo bar instead of a full screen.

The exposed suspension arms connecting each wheel to the body are another shared trait of open-wheel racing, but on an Indy car they're built to survive the wheel-to-wheel contact that happens more often on ovals, where cars run closer together at speed than on a wide road course.

Push-to-Pass and Superspeedway Strategy

IndyCar drivers get a limited allotment of push-to-pass boost, extra horsepower they can trigger with a button for a set number of seconds during a race, to help set up an overtake. Managing that limited boost across 500 miles becomes as important as raw speed. On the biggest superspeedways, cars also run in tight drafting packs, using the reduced air resistance behind another car to save fuel and set up a late charge to the checkered flag, a style of racing that has no real equivalent on a Formula 1 road circuit.

Turbocharged V6 Power Under the Bodywork

Every IndyCar runs a twin-turbocharged 2.2-liter V6 engine built by either Chevrolet or Honda, tuned to produce well over 700 horsepower on qualifying boost. That's less peak horsepower than a Top Fuel dragster but far more than a road-going sports car, and it has to hold up for a full 500-mile race distance instead of a few seconds. Qualifying runs at the Indianapolis 500 have topped 230 miles per hour, which is why the low nose, wide wings, and every other shape on this coloring page exists to keep the car glued to the track at those speeds.