So You Think IndyCar Wants to Abandon Ovals?

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IndyCar has put out a new fact sheet, which states that among the series’ principles is to, and I quote, “preserve and nurture the heritage of oval track racing.”

“Wait a minute,” you say. “IndyCar no longer races at Milwaukee, Richmond, Nashville, Michigan, Fontana and Phoenix.”

The only one of those events IndyCar choose to leave is Nashville. Nashville is one-line concrete track that has hardly any grandstands and those it has weren’t close to being filled when IndyCar raced there.

As for the other venues:

• Milwaukee has financial issues it is working out and if and when it does, I expect the track back on the schedule.
• Richmond, Michigan, Fontana and Phoenix were all taken off the schedule at the behest of their owner, the International Speedway Corp. (Nascar’s track arm). IndyCar would love to be back at any and all of these tracks if ISC would have them.

Unfortunately, things are only looking worse for the future of IndyCar oval racing. Recent actions at Kansas and Chicagoland lead me to believe that those two ISC tracks will dump IndyCar at the conclusion of their current contracts.

While I have been critical of IndyCar’s oval package, I still would like to see ovals comprise about half of the series’ schedule, and am worried that the series’ oval races will soon be represented by the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and a couple of token SMI tracks.

IndyCar isn’t running a race at a motorcycle track in Alabama, another possibly on a Brazilian street course or exploring a race in China because the powers-that-be there hate ovals. They are doing so because the owners and promoters of oval races hate IndyCar and want it to fail. The more successful an IndyCar event at an oval track is, the more of a threat it is to the Nascar race(s) at that track, and therefore to Nascar itself.

CART used to embarrass Nascar at Michigan with sell-out crowds and dazzling races that put Nascar’s taxi-cab parades to shame. So, ISC bought the track (along with Fontana and Nazareth) from Roger Penske, stopped promoting the CART races, then used the resulting decline in attendance to justify not extending its contract with CART. (IndyCar then replaced CART at the track for a few un-promoted races so ISC could pretend it wasn’t given open-wheel racing the middle finger.)

Some IndyCar fans rant and rave that IndyCar is committing suicide by leaving ovals for road courses and street circuits. And maybe they’re right (although I truly believe the old diverse CART model still works.)

But what do they suggest IndyCar do? Run a five-race schedule? Go back to a Mickey Mouse track (pun intended) like Walt Disney World Speedway? Tell ISC they’ll run at their tracks for free and lose millions of dollars promoting the race themselves?

It’s time for the oval zealots to get serious and join the rest of us in reality. As long as Nascar is the behemoth it is and as long as ISC is financially-solvent, an all-oval or primarily-oval IndyCar series just isn’t feasible.

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