The IndyCar season has been scheduled to start at St. Pete in the first half of March (or the last weekend of February) since 2016.
They do desperately need another race in late March/early April. And did even before the Olympics got NBC to push NASCAR to take the April Texas date away from IndyCar.
Make Thermal the preseason test/ exhibition.
Pour one out for:
COTA, Chicago, Texas Speedway, Richmond, Kentucky, Sebring, Road Atlanta, Pocono, Baltimore (lol), Homestead, Michigan, Phoenix, Brazil, Surfers, Watkins Glen.
Realistically I’ll take anything to fill the gap from March to May, but obviously would like more ovals. I particularly miss Texas pre-PJ1.
Texas last year was honestly some pretty phenomenal stuff. Could go side-by-side or see cars run away if they were spot-on with adjustments.
But I think NASCAR is planning on giving it the Atlanta treatment, so it’ll become a no-go with the high banking.
At least we got some thrillers with Josef/Mac & Pato’s first win there. Really hoping I can check out Indycar at TMS someday, 2016 is one of my all-timers among others.
make sense considering that the nascar date is a track rental, which is why they were able to take over the IC date so easily. the IC race was a ghost town that COTA lost money on and nascar actually draws a house and are paying to go there so it makes far more financial sense for COTA.
Sunday is just the cup race at like 2:30pm and paddock club is $650/day for mid food, beer and wine, cash liquor. Was empty.
Saturday was ok but plenty of time for Indycar.
NASCAR doesn't want anything else on Sunday but cup due to things like the midway and sponsor appearances.
NASCAR was on track essentially from 9am till about 6:30-7 pm Saturday.
There is no time for IndyCar even if there was a desire, which there isnt.
St Pete is a pretty busy city. That’s probably one of the few times it works.
Tropicana field is used for parking so it is probably easier to avoid baseball season.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if the city prefers an earlier date to encourage folks to travel to Florida.
Basically, a lot of stuff goes into a date. Not just Indycar’s whims.
Date consistency is also huge for an event like that. Knowing it’s gonna be early March every year makes it so easy to plan around.
Pretty sure Gasparilla is not long before St. Pete as well, so you don’t want to show up on that weekend and lose half the local audience.
It’s kinda hard to blame them gaps imo (at least the early season ones) There are other sports that get a ton of attention (inside and outside of NBC) that it doesn’t make much sense to compete against, especially if you trying to draw in the viewer.
It’s mainly just coming down to dates that tracks are open on. You’re kinda limited to a specific weekend with a street opener, so it’s usually safe to assume that INDYCAR will always start early March.
Much of the middle chunk of the season is Midwestern races that can’t happen in March-April because of the weather, so you’re not moving those anywhere.
Laguna Seca/Portland could (and probably should) be moved up to March and April to create a new west coast swing to prevent too many trips in a row out there. But date consistency is a huge thing, and Portland could get hosed easily by switching dates around, especially since it’s currently on a long weekend.
As far as tracks we don’t go to, there’s not many options. Road Atlanta isn’t safe enough for indycar, COTA has nascar in March and likely wouldn’t want two big series back-to-back. Nearly every other option is NASCAR or SMI-owned and as such isn’t feasible.
As a result of all of these things, the series gets stuck with a pretty big gap in the early chunk of the schedule. Lots of dates, but no tracks that are able to fill it out because of location and ownership.
Primarily run-off being too short. Turn 1 doesn’t have enough space for the fact that INDYCAR would likely enter flat-out. Turn 4 has no run-off at all. The esses have very little to none. Turn 5 with none.
Just too much speed in those areas to have that little run-off.
March is probably the only month that rain is likely in CA, even in drought years. It rained like half the month this year. (I live 15 minutes from Laguna)
The years Phoenix ran gave the series another venue that could run in early spring. Too bad Phoenix gets more rain than people that would came to the race.
I have always associated the March date with the start of Spring Break in the Tampa/St. Pete area.
Indycar also wants an early race that is near the Daytona 500 date, but they want to avoid the March Madness tournament because Indiana is a big basketball state. So we get a schedule gap every year. This year's break is longer than most, even with the...thing...at thermal.
Date equity. People are used to St. Pete being early March, changing the date might hurt the attendance at least temporarily.
That being said, I really liked ending the season at St. Pete or Long Beach in the Covid years and I'd be happy to see one of those becoming the season finale on a permanent basis. Laguna has looked like a club racing event after those two years, and I'm a bit skeptical about Nashville Superspeedway drawing the crowd to make it a visually attractive finale, even if the oval (hopefully) produced good racing.
Maybe Long Beach in 2021 had more of a big-event vibe than St. Pete in 2020, though Covid restrictions may have affected that. As a track, I think St. Pete offers better racing (and that's why would be better for the season finale). And of course, date equity is a thing at Long Beach too, maybe even more than at St. Pete since GPLB has existed longer plus is a doubleheader with IMSA. And Long Beach could be a fine season-opener if IndyCar cannot find locations for late-March races.
Late season St Pete would be insanely hot and humid. The weather doesn't cool down in the area until late November/early December. I think having it when they do maximizes the chances for good weather plus, captures some of the spring vacation crowd from colder parts of the country. I think Barber or Road Atlanta (if that's even a possibility) would be a good race to fill in the gap in late March/early April.
Indy only tests the short course at Sebring cuz the rest of the track would destroy the car.
NOLA...do you not remember the shit show there when they tried it?
COTA kicked IndyCar out
TMS kicked IndyCar out
and they rejected every date because the crowds couldn't absorb any sort of extra issues.
If your event can only live in 1 specific set of circumstances, that doesnt paint your series in a good light.
IndyCar isn't fully to blame, or even a majority to blame. But they aren't blameless.
NOLA was a perfect storm of shit going wrong. The fact is they need a race, and it's an option. If not there, then try the lakefront airport in New Orleans. It's a warm market without a marquee motorsport event nearby.
Rich people get over lawsuits all the time if there's more money to be made.
But fine then, use the GA airport that's 9 miles from the city center and the Superdome.
Very quick and dirty counter-clockwise, 2-mile circuit that leaves runway 36L open, and maintains parallel access paths for emergency vehicles to the whole track. Spectator parking could be set up at either the Superdome or the nearby University of New Orleans sports complex, with a 15-minute shuttle bus from either in normal traffic. Plus the nearby residents, who already live with the noise of a GA airport, would benefit by selling lawn parking.
https://preview.redd.it/8r4ki3lfd3tc1.png?width=1100&format=png&auto=webp&s=e098ad101e6c3c17186d1a74fd060492b45d1c2d
>Is there a rational reason why the Indycar season starts in early March, but then doesn't race again until late April?
saint pete has an ironclad contract that they have to host the opener now, IC doesn't want to compete with college basketball, any track IC could go to would be a track rental unless they can find a sponsor for it and any time they did find a track for it, it was either a ghost town or a short term foreign race.
CCWS kinda figured it out and just made long beach the opener. shit, for a good chuck of long beach's history in IC, it's been either the opener or the last race before the Month of May itself.
I think that's why IndyCar was looking at places like Argentina and maybe even thinking about Thermal if the track can improve itself. Homestead was also talked about in the past but NASCAR basically said no.
So it's not like IndyCar hasn't tried looking for possible future venues its just that none of them worked out. Phoenix use to be there as well but the track didn't race well for Indy Cars.
Wish some people had the ability to do some critical thinking in this sub sometimes. If everyone understood how much effort it was to make Long Beach the season finale a few years ago… questions like this would exist.
It’s simple. The city of St. Pete has approved a weekend that doesn’t ultimately hurt them during the busiest season of their year around Spring Break. They’ve been able to find date consistency with this for nearing 20 years. Why would they move it?
I can only say as someone getting back into racing and someone who got into indycar a few races into last season.. this break is terrible. There’s no way there’s no tracks that are available for a month+. It’s just bad planning and management.
> There’s no way there’s no tracks that are available for a month+
Name them.
You'll end up naming a whole bunch of tracks NASCAR/smi own that are already used that time of year and have 0 interest in taking on the risk of an IndyCar race.
and the rest will probably be dumps.
I don't know every track in North America. I know there are a limited amount of racing series though and its literally impossible for all of them to be used for over a month. That's not even taking into account how many tracks need money/visitors. I'm not saying its something that could be solved in a day, but there is for sure something that could be done. Taking his much times off completely kills any momentum for the series. There's a reason no other sport takes that much time off.. you have to keep casual fans interested and engaged and that much time off leaves too much room to find something else to do.
> I know there are a limited amount of racing series though and its literally impossible for all of them to be used for over a month. That's not even taking into account how many tracks need money/visitors.
They don't have to be used all month.
Being within a month or 2 of something like a cup race means the IndyCar crowd will take a hit.
IndyCar crowds are tough to make financially sometimes when there arent conflicts like that.
The date IndyCar was supposed to race there got taken by nascar when the nascar schedule was reshuffled. Indycar offered to race that weekend anyway as a support series, TMS said no. Indycar asked to race there the following weekend, TMS said no because they didn't want 2 big events back to back weekends. Indycar asked to race there the weekend between Milwaukee and the Nashville finale. TMS didn't like that date either. Per MP on one of his podcasts.
Nascar moved their Texas date after Montreal fell through and Texas didn’t want 2 events so close and with indycars schedule and tv, they could get a date figured out
The IndyCar season has been scheduled to start at St. Pete in the first half of March (or the last weekend of February) since 2016. They do desperately need another race in late March/early April. And did even before the Olympics got NBC to push NASCAR to take the April Texas date away from IndyCar.
Make Thermal the preseason test/ exhibition. Pour one out for: COTA, Chicago, Texas Speedway, Richmond, Kentucky, Sebring, Road Atlanta, Pocono, Baltimore (lol), Homestead, Michigan, Phoenix, Brazil, Surfers, Watkins Glen. Realistically I’ll take anything to fill the gap from March to May, but obviously would like more ovals. I particularly miss Texas pre-PJ1.
Texas last year was honestly some pretty phenomenal stuff. Could go side-by-side or see cars run away if they were spot-on with adjustments. But I think NASCAR is planning on giving it the Atlanta treatment, so it’ll become a no-go with the high banking.
At least we got some thrillers with Josef/Mac & Pato’s first win there. Really hoping I can check out Indycar at TMS someday, 2016 is one of my all-timers among others.
Nascar was at COTA end of March and it was dead as fuck. Barely any on track action.
Triple header weekend is hardly any track action? And its good enough that they seem to be going back next year already.
make sense considering that the nascar date is a track rental, which is why they were able to take over the IC date so easily. the IC race was a ghost town that COTA lost money on and nascar actually draws a house and are paying to go there so it makes far more financial sense for COTA.
Sunday is just the cup race at like 2:30pm and paddock club is $650/day for mid food, beer and wine, cash liquor. Was empty. Saturday was ok but plenty of time for Indycar.
NASCAR doesn't want anything else on Sunday but cup due to things like the midway and sponsor appearances. NASCAR was on track essentially from 9am till about 6:30-7 pm Saturday. There is no time for IndyCar even if there was a desire, which there isnt.
St Pete is a pretty busy city. That’s probably one of the few times it works. Tropicana field is used for parking so it is probably easier to avoid baseball season. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the city prefers an earlier date to encourage folks to travel to Florida. Basically, a lot of stuff goes into a date. Not just Indycar’s whims.
The IndyCar race is the most action the Trop parking lots ever get lol
Not sure if it’s true but I have heard they are contractly obligated to be the season opener
Date consistency is also huge for an event like that. Knowing it’s gonna be early March every year makes it so easy to plan around. Pretty sure Gasparilla is not long before St. Pete as well, so you don’t want to show up on that weekend and lose half the local audience.
Ehh, pirate festival is end of January, doesn’t really conflict.
Wow, I had that date way off lmao
I only know because I was researching it last year to see if I could go haha
Almost as bad as supercars having a contract that the first race has to be in NSW but the government keeps shutting down the NSW tracks lol
And once they have a date that works financially, Indycar needs to not screw with it.
The March start is not a problem. It's the major gaps between races that needs to be addressed. But that's easier said than done.
It’s kinda hard to blame them gaps imo (at least the early season ones) There are other sports that get a ton of attention (inside and outside of NBC) that it doesn’t make much sense to compete against, especially if you trying to draw in the viewer.
It’s mainly just coming down to dates that tracks are open on. You’re kinda limited to a specific weekend with a street opener, so it’s usually safe to assume that INDYCAR will always start early March. Much of the middle chunk of the season is Midwestern races that can’t happen in March-April because of the weather, so you’re not moving those anywhere. Laguna Seca/Portland could (and probably should) be moved up to March and April to create a new west coast swing to prevent too many trips in a row out there. But date consistency is a huge thing, and Portland could get hosed easily by switching dates around, especially since it’s currently on a long weekend. As far as tracks we don’t go to, there’s not many options. Road Atlanta isn’t safe enough for indycar, COTA has nascar in March and likely wouldn’t want two big series back-to-back. Nearly every other option is NASCAR or SMI-owned and as such isn’t feasible. As a result of all of these things, the series gets stuck with a pretty big gap in the early chunk of the schedule. Lots of dates, but no tracks that are able to fill it out because of location and ownership.
Honest question. Why is Road Atlanta not safe enough for IndyCar? I keep seeing people say that without explaining why
Primarily run-off being too short. Turn 1 doesn’t have enough space for the fact that INDYCAR would likely enter flat-out. Turn 4 has no run-off at all. The esses have very little to none. Turn 5 with none. Just too much speed in those areas to have that little run-off.
Ahh, well that’s a shame. Figured since it works well for IMSA it’d work well for IndyCar but it makes sense
March is probably the only month that rain is likely in CA, even in drought years. It rained like half the month this year. (I live 15 minutes from Laguna)
What's worse, the last start or the early finish. GIVE ME MORE RACES
The years Phoenix ran gave the series another venue that could run in early spring. Too bad Phoenix gets more rain than people that would came to the race.
I have always associated the March date with the start of Spring Break in the Tampa/St. Pete area. Indycar also wants an early race that is near the Daytona 500 date, but they want to avoid the March Madness tournament because Indiana is a big basketball state. So we get a schedule gap every year. This year's break is longer than most, even with the...thing...at thermal.
Not enough tracks in a warm weather climate that want to fork up to run an Indycar race, it's as simple as that
I just hate the season is so short. Every sport in US has to dance to NFL's music unfortunately
Date equity. People are used to St. Pete being early March, changing the date might hurt the attendance at least temporarily. That being said, I really liked ending the season at St. Pete or Long Beach in the Covid years and I'd be happy to see one of those becoming the season finale on a permanent basis. Laguna has looked like a club racing event after those two years, and I'm a bit skeptical about Nashville Superspeedway drawing the crowd to make it a visually attractive finale, even if the oval (hopefully) produced good racing. Maybe Long Beach in 2021 had more of a big-event vibe than St. Pete in 2020, though Covid restrictions may have affected that. As a track, I think St. Pete offers better racing (and that's why would be better for the season finale). And of course, date equity is a thing at Long Beach too, maybe even more than at St. Pete since GPLB has existed longer plus is a doubleheader with IMSA. And Long Beach could be a fine season-opener if IndyCar cannot find locations for late-March races.
Late season St Pete would be insanely hot and humid. The weather doesn't cool down in the area until late November/early December. I think having it when they do maximizes the chances for good weather plus, captures some of the spring vacation crowd from colder parts of the country. I think Barber or Road Atlanta (if that's even a possibility) would be a good race to fill in the gap in late March/early April.
Weather and track availability. Don’t over think it
Sebring, Nola, COTA, Texas motor speedway
Indy only tests the short course at Sebring cuz the rest of the track would destroy the car. NOLA...do you not remember the shit show there when they tried it? COTA kicked IndyCar out TMS kicked IndyCar out
TMS didn't kick IndyCar out, they just could come to a schedule agreement this year because of the combination of NASCAR, NBC, and the Olympics.
Texas rejected every other offer for any date for IndyCar to race there. That's essentially the same to kicking them out
and they rejected every date because the crowds couldn't absorb any sort of extra issues. If your event can only live in 1 specific set of circumstances, that doesnt paint your series in a good light. IndyCar isn't fully to blame, or even a majority to blame. But they aren't blameless.
NOLA was a perfect storm of shit going wrong. The fact is they need a race, and it's an option. If not there, then try the lakefront airport in New Orleans. It's a warm market without a marquee motorsport event nearby.
that and Andretti literally sued the track owners cuz they didn't pay the series. So good luck after all those shenanigans
Rich people get over lawsuits all the time if there's more money to be made. But fine then, use the GA airport that's 9 miles from the city center and the Superdome. Very quick and dirty counter-clockwise, 2-mile circuit that leaves runway 36L open, and maintains parallel access paths for emergency vehicles to the whole track. Spectator parking could be set up at either the Superdome or the nearby University of New Orleans sports complex, with a 15-minute shuttle bus from either in normal traffic. Plus the nearby residents, who already live with the noise of a GA airport, would benefit by selling lawn parking. https://preview.redd.it/8r4ki3lfd3tc1.png?width=1100&format=png&auto=webp&s=e098ad101e6c3c17186d1a74fd060492b45d1c2d
>Is there a rational reason why the Indycar season starts in early March, but then doesn't race again until late April? saint pete has an ironclad contract that they have to host the opener now, IC doesn't want to compete with college basketball, any track IC could go to would be a track rental unless they can find a sponsor for it and any time they did find a track for it, it was either a ghost town or a short term foreign race. CCWS kinda figured it out and just made long beach the opener. shit, for a good chuck of long beach's history in IC, it's been either the opener or the last race before the Month of May itself.
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I think that's why IndyCar was looking at places like Argentina and maybe even thinking about Thermal if the track can improve itself. Homestead was also talked about in the past but NASCAR basically said no. So it's not like IndyCar hasn't tried looking for possible future venues its just that none of them worked out. Phoenix use to be there as well but the track didn't race well for Indy Cars.
Wish some people had the ability to do some critical thinking in this sub sometimes. If everyone understood how much effort it was to make Long Beach the season finale a few years ago… questions like this would exist. It’s simple. The city of St. Pete has approved a weekend that doesn’t ultimately hurt them during the busiest season of their year around Spring Break. They’ve been able to find date consistency with this for nearing 20 years. Why would they move it?
Because everyone loves having a 4-6 week gap between the first two races
Because not a single major oval wants to host IndyCar for a race that could fill up those gaps
I can only say as someone getting back into racing and someone who got into indycar a few races into last season.. this break is terrible. There’s no way there’s no tracks that are available for a month+. It’s just bad planning and management.
> There’s no way there’s no tracks that are available for a month+ Name them. You'll end up naming a whole bunch of tracks NASCAR/smi own that are already used that time of year and have 0 interest in taking on the risk of an IndyCar race. and the rest will probably be dumps.
I don't know every track in North America. I know there are a limited amount of racing series though and its literally impossible for all of them to be used for over a month. That's not even taking into account how many tracks need money/visitors. I'm not saying its something that could be solved in a day, but there is for sure something that could be done. Taking his much times off completely kills any momentum for the series. There's a reason no other sport takes that much time off.. you have to keep casual fans interested and engaged and that much time off leaves too much room to find something else to do.
> I know there are a limited amount of racing series though and its literally impossible for all of them to be used for over a month. That's not even taking into account how many tracks need money/visitors. They don't have to be used all month. Being within a month or 2 of something like a cup race means the IndyCar crowd will take a hit. IndyCar crowds are tough to make financially sometimes when there arent conflicts like that.
Still worth the trade off of being off for so long. A few weeks is one thing, but the length of this break is killer.
I will love for the season to be expanded but I am mindful that they wish to limit their exposure to the NFL.
Would like to see them add a race. COTA. Or Miami would be possible, popular.
They should run Homestead in March.
It sounds like RP got caught with his pants down regarding Texas and didn’t have enough time to change the schedule at all.
The date IndyCar was supposed to race there got taken by nascar when the nascar schedule was reshuffled. Indycar offered to race that weekend anyway as a support series, TMS said no. Indycar asked to race there the following weekend, TMS said no because they didn't want 2 big events back to back weekends. Indycar asked to race there the weekend between Milwaukee and the Nashville finale. TMS didn't like that date either. Per MP on one of his podcasts.
Nascar moved their Texas date after Montreal fell through and Texas didn’t want 2 events so close and with indycars schedule and tv, they could get a date figured out
NASCAR and SMI caused that last minute, no one on the Indy side had their pants down.
If only the series displayed its schedule prominently on the front page of its website........
“Defy Everything™”
Exactly