The answer was right there before me, just 55 miles south of Birmingham on Alabama 280.

I was taking advantage of some down time during the weekend of the second annual Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama in 2011, navigating the roads of Dixie toward the Auburn University campus, when approaching on the horizon was the announcement of the pride of Sylacauga, Alabama.

It’s a small town, Sylacauga, one whose 13,000 inhabitants still talk of the 1954 day that the first recorded meteorite chose the community of bedrock marble to make its landing. Sure, the town made its mark with three of its natives making their way to the NFL to eventually play for my hometown Indianapolis Colts, or when local hero Gerald Wallace was drafted by the NBA’s Sacramento Kings. All impressive for a sleepy Alabama community, but none answered the question I’d been asking myself for a year: “Can INDYCAR find a home in the heart of NASCAR country?”

The crowds at the inaugural Barber Motorsports Park race offered a hint to the answer. A sea of Crimson Tide shirts and War Eagle caps lined the picturesque hills of the track for that first running a decade ago. They may have come, I told myself, to see the state-of-the-art Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum. Sure, it didn’t display the history of stock cars, but the 1,200 motorcycles on display seemed enough to draw even the most casual of observers. Maybe the cars on display – the largest private collection of open-wheel Lotus machines in North America – would wet the whistle of even the most loyal stock car enthusiasts.

It could be, I wondered upon arriving for year No. 2, that the ever-evolving landscape of the facility brought the crowds back for more. The perfectly manicured lawns, the vibrant tree lines, maybe the gorgeous waterfall installed at the bottom of the track’s biggest elevation changes. Maybe, just maybe, that’s why they came.

Never mind the hospitality. The southern charm of the vast number of volunteers all willingly displaying one of Alabama’s crown jewels. That may have been what grew the crowds. The same gentleman I see every year from my broadcast perch on the museum’s top floor; it just may be that he makes everyone feel as welcomed and comfortable with each greeting as he does me.

Or maybe, it’s the racing that brought them back. They may have watched Helio Castroneves become a three-time Indy 500 winner in 2009, taking pride that he’d won the first Barber race the following year. It could have been that they fell in love with Dan Wheldon, just like most fans had, when the Brit tested their track in 2007. The nearby Honda manufacturing plant may have lured some eyeballs that were curious to see their company’s engines roar to breathtaking speed while navigating 17 turns in just 2.3 miles.

All the indications were there for me. Everything seemed to point to the answer that, yes, indeed, the NTT IndyCar Series could find a marriage with the great race fans of the South. Yet that question, that hesitation of wondering how it would be received, still seemed to linger to me like an elephant in the room as large as the massive spider sculpture sitting in the track’s “Charlotte’s Web.”

With all of the positivity – the local media coverage, the interstate billboards, the “Welcome, race fans” banners dotting the Birmingham streets – I still was only cautiously optimistic.

That’s when it happened. Driving toward Auburn, to see the Bo Jackson statue of the greatest multi-sport star of my generation, the highway marker in Sylacauga paid homage to its most famous son.

Jim Nabors Highway.

Just an hour south of Indy car racing’s newest track sat the town that gave us one of our sport’s most indelible cultural contributors.

Nearly every year of my childhood, I listened to Nabors masterfully bellow the notes to “Back Home Again in Indiana” as one of the Indianapolis 500’s greatest prerace traditions. It spoke to me every year: The moment that sports fans around the world hummed to the words of my home, knowing the greatest event in motorsports was about to unfold.

The epiphany struck as the highway marker announced the highway name. All the while, I had seen every possible sign that Indy car racing worked in the South. It all made sense. The town that gave us that man that sang to us, now made it clear that it was the perfect fit.

It was then that I realized, that for years to come, each April, the NTT IndyCar Series would indeed be back home again, at Barber. And here we are, heading back to Birmingham this week for the 10th annual race, in sweet home Alabama.

(Veteran broadcaster Jake Query is a member of the Advance Auto Parts INDYCAR Radio Network team and offers his musings regularly on IndyCar.com.)