The Milwaukee Mile is the oldest active circuit in the world – its first race was in 1903 – and was a much-missed link to Indy car’s history when it fell off the schedule in 2010. So God bless Michael Andretti, Andretti Sports Marketing, ABC Supply and the track owners for returning this hallowed patch of greatness to the Verizon IndyCar Series calendar.

Every Indy car ace needs to have a Milwaukee triumph to his name and it’s a stunning endorsement of Rodger Ward’s talent that he won here no less than seven times – to my mind, as great an achievement as his twice winning the Indy 500. While Michael Andretti would probably swap all five of his Milwaukee victories for just one at the Brickyard, the ability and bravery required to attain that many wins at the Mile should not be underestimated.

And look at the legends who have won at the Mile four times – Mario Andretti, Bobby Unser, Tom Sneva, Gordon Johncock, Al Unser, Johnny Rutherford, Paul Tracy and A.J. Foyt. (Super Tex also holds the record for Milwaukee pole positions, at seven.) One driver this weekend could join that illustrious group of four-time winners – Ryan Hunter-Reay, the defending race champion.

It’s appropriate that Milwaukee is also a place where memorable moments occur. Jimmy Clark and Lotus scored the first win for a rear-engined Indy car here in ’63. Foyt scored that amazing pole position in his front-engined dirt car in ’65, and finished the race as runner-up behind Johncock, for whom it was his first Indy car victory. Lloyd Ruby, famously unlucky at Indy (much like Michael Andretti) managed to score three of his seven Indy car wins at Milwaukee. In ’78, Rick Mears got his victory tally started here. Mike Mosley scored his third Milwaukee win by starting last, charging to the front and then lapping the field in 1981, scoring AAR Eagle’s final Indy car triumph. Michael led cousin John and father Mario to an Andretti 1-2-3 in 1991. And more recently, Hunter-Reay set an Indy car record by leading all 250 laps of the 2004 CART race for Herdez-HVM Racing.

The Mile is hectic because of its length, intriguing because of the variety of lines that can be taken, and exciting because it’s one of those rare ovals where a driver truly can sometimes make up for a deficiency in his car, be it power or handling. Add in the “see-everything-from-anywhere” grandstand layouts, the lingering State Fair atmosphere and the wonderfully varied architecture of Milwaukee itself, and you have one of the most solidly memorable and enjoyable events in the Verizon IndyCar Series.

This weekend, it will be difficult to escape thoughts of the IndyCar championship battle between Will Power, Helio Castroneves, Hunter-Reay, Simon Pagenaud…and maybe Juan Montoya and Scott Dixon, too. But for now, let’s try and do that. Most Indy car drivers would race at Milwaukee even if it was a non-championship event and first prize was a butter burger and a banana malt at Solly’s Grille.

So what challenges face the drivers over 250 laps of the legendary Milwaukee Mile? RACER editor David Malsher asked the 2008 (ABOVE) and 2013 Milwaukee polesitter Marco Andretti for his insights.

DM: It’s become almost a cliché for IndyCar drivers to describe Indianapolis Motor Speedway as the world’s fastest road course. But in Milwaukee you actually run road course wings and don’t have the banking of, say, Iowa, so is the Milwaukee Mile the oval that’s most like a road course?

MA: Mmm, I wouldn’t say that because, for me, Milwaukee is very like a typical oval in that if you’re the slightest bit out of the ballpark setup-wise, you’ll have a horrible day. Milwaukee is your typical short oval – kinda fast and frantic, always keeping you busy in the cockpit. Talking to my dad and my grandfather, it sounds like Milwaukee hasn’t got anywhere near the amount of bumps it once did, but it’s got old pavement and concrete and that makes it unique on the IndyCar schedule.

Given that track surface, is there enough power on these cars to break traction on corner exits? Is power-down ever a problem here?

Hey, you and I will always see eye to eye on the fact that we don’t have enough power! If you get it really wrong, you can definitely get loose off the corners, but where a loose car will really bite you around Milwaukee is on corner entry. From that perspective, it’s like any oval where you want it tied down on corner entry and then you dial out or deal with the understeer in the middle. It’s a fine line. Again, there’s a contrast with Iowa where you can be more aggressive on setup because if your car’s loose, then once you hit traffic, the dirty air causes push and so you end up kinda neutralizing the handling. At Milwaukee, it’s very different: if your car is already loose, traffic seems to make it worse. And I want a solid rear end on my car, so I can really lean on it all the way through the turns.

Bearing in mind Milwaukee’s straights are only 2-degree banked and the turns are only nine degrees, do you still do that usual oval thing of having the car steering into the corners already so you’re holding it to the right to go straight, or do you have the wheel set straight ahead more like a road course?

To be honest, whatever the oval, I always run it so I don’t need to force the wheel, right-hand-down on the straights. I’m always quite close to a road course setup, steering-wise. I just think that gives you a better and more natural feel to do that. You want to be having different sensations if you need to make a quick move to the right. I like predictability from a car and know exactly what it’s doing, so for me, setting the wheel dead straight is the natural choice.

In qualifying, how much gear changing up and down do you do, or do you use just the one gear?

Well, typically we run three top gears for the weekend, and ideally – and I mean in perfect conditions – you’ve got enough torque to run just one gear in qualifying. Obviously I can’t go into exact details of what I’m doing or my engineer will kill me! But the thing is, the series is so competitive that even the microsecond of power-cut when you change gear can make a difference to your lap time. However, if it’s windy, so you’ve got it blowing against you one way, and with you the other way, you’re going to have to commit to using two gears, to get the best acceleration at one end of the track, and maximize your top speed potential at the other. If you hit the rev-limiter and get an overboost penalty, that will kill your lap time.

On race day, are the straights long enough that you can get a serious tow from the car in front?

A tow doesn’t play as big a role at Milwaukee as it does at Iowa, because where you do your passing is different. I think a really good car at Milwaukee is one that allows you to get the majority of the pass done coming off a corner, not using his tow to get past going into a corner. You want to get to the corner, get the nose turned in and then get back on the power as soon as possible and with minimal understeer. Whichever guy is quickest on the gas is going to be the one who’s far enough ahead to claim the best line into the next corner. (RIGHT, Marco and Rubens Barrichello in 2012).

We’ve gotten used to seeing at Texas Motor Speedway how much of a difference a fresh set of tires will make to lap times if there’s a late caution and then a shootout at the end. But I think a lot more of us were surprised at the same thing happening at Iowa, the way Ryan Hunter-Reay and Josef Newgarden carved through to the front. What’s the situation in Milwaukee in those circumstances?

First I just want to say that Iowa really hurt for me. Ryan and I had been struggling all night, running together in eighth and ninth, but then the team pulls off that late stop and Ryan wins…meanwhile, my engine’s blown up… I mean, seriously?! We’d definitely have done the same thing as the No. 28 crew and taken tires. TK’s position was tough because he’s leading so you really don’t want to give up that track position, and even if you’d been second, then that would probably be a real 50/50 dilemma about whether to pit or not. But if you’re third or lower, you’ve got to pit. It’s one thing if you’re third and you know you’ve got something in reserve, got something for TK, then maybe you stay out. But if you’re third and you know the best you can do is match the two guys ahead but not catch and pass them, then heck yeah, you’re going to pit for tires and go for the win, otherwise you’re resigning yourself to third. Well if that’s the best you’re going to do, what’s the point? We’re all here to win.

Getting back to your question, a fresh set of tires at Milwaukee is going to make a pretty substantial difference, similar to Iowa. Obviously, when it comes down to those kinda decisions, it’s all relative in terms of how used your tires are and how used your competitors’ tires are: if you’re on just a slightly different strategy for whatever reason and the cars around you are on tires that are only 10 or 15 laps older than yours, then if there are just 20 laps to go, you’re going to stick with what you’ve got because you’re not going to have enough of an advantage and enough time to get back up to the front. So you’ll go with track position, especially because at Milwaukee it’s tougher to pass and make your advantage count.

You say it’s tough to pass, and while I realize you’re not allowed to talk about blocking, at Milwaukee it’s easy to use all the track and describe your blocking maneuvers as, “Hey, that’s just the line I’m taking,” right?

Ha! Yeah, exactly. Someone who’s driving on their mirrors and doesn’t want you to pass – either a competitor or someone trying not to get lapped – can make life very difficult for you. He can diamond the turns if you’re trying to go around the outside of him, or he can straddle the first and second lanes if you’re trying to go up the inside. That’s why, ideally, you want the car to work anywhere on the race track so you can take advantage of any openings you find or can create.

And situations like that is why you always need to be more focused on getting your car handling in dirty air – because the track’s so short, you’re almost always going to be in somebody’s wake.

Right, that’s vitally important. I’ll be totally honest with you: last year, some people were saying that electrical failure at Milwaukee lost us another probable win, but even though we’d pretty much dominated the weekend, I think ultimately I was eventually going to have my hands full trying to hold off Ryan (LEFT) because he had a car that was better in traffic.

Actually, there’s another point we have to consider at Milwaukee: do you want your car working well down low on the asphalt so you can hold the inside and hopefully get more clean air down there? Or do you want it working high and be able to carry more momentum into the turns and be able to get more passing done around the outside? There are a lot of technicalities to consider at Milwaukee, because there are just so many lines you can take.

Regarding taking the high line, how bad is the tire marble situation there?

Yeah, it can definitely catch you out if you’re working the high line in the turns, as a lot of us do through the race, although in the past I think we’ve seen IndyCar use the caution periods to clean the marbles up. You’ve just got to take into account how much understeer your car’s got, and subconsciously you build that into your calculations of where your right-front is heading on the exit of the turns.

We’ve learned that last year is a useless form guide for this year, at least on the road and street courses. On the ovals, there have been more similarities year to year. Bearing in mind how fast you’ve been at Milwaukee in recent seasons, is this one looking good for you?

Yeah, the tires have been different at various road and street tracks and that’s sometimes caught out a lot of teams including ours, which explains a lot of those performance variations at the same track, year on year. But on ovals the tire compounds have been consistent and so there is more carryover. The test we had there went really well and we ended up fastest. So…I’m hopeful.

Finally then, a shout-out to your dad’s Andretti Sports Marketing company. I’m hearing a lot of positive feedback about promotion of the ABC Supply Wisconsin 250 through various media channels.

Yeah, I tell you, if there’s not an improvement in crowd numbers, I think it’s only going to be down to potential weather affecting the walk-up crowd. I know the ASM team has been working really hard and smart on promoting this race and they can sleep easy in their beds knowing they’ve really exhausted the avenues of promotion available to them. I hope people realize what a great race this is to watch in person.