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Fans are still buzzing about Sunday’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, and all of the craziness that ensued. With a lot of chatter on social media, it’s nice to think of all of the momentum that the NTT IndyCar Series will take into its next race. There’s only one problem with that – it’s three and a half weeks away.

Four weeks between races is way too much of a gap, especially following the season-opener. This reminds me of 2013 when we were nearing the end of the season. The race on the streets of Baltimore took place on September 1, then after a five-week gap the series resumed at Houston on October 5 before closing out the season at Fontana on Oct 19. By the time things picked back up in Houston, most fans had forgotten what happened in Baltimore. But many fans were pretty up to speed on the first quarter of the NFL season that clicked on by while die-hard IndyCar fans were waiting for their season to resume.

With all of the talk that the St. Petersburg race is getting – for better or worse – it would really be nice to ride that momentum into another race venue just two weeks after what we just watched. I realize that some compared Sunday’s race to the two races we’ve seen in Nashville and called it a sh**show, a label I thought fans reserved strictly for the Music City Grand Prix.

Personally, I didn’t think St. Petersburg was a sh**show, but I don’t really think the Nashville races are either. I don’t like seeing crashes in races. It tears up good equipment and causes hardships for the crew that has to put these cars back together; not to mention to the potential for injury (or worse) to the driver. Most true race fans don’t care to see crashes, it’s the non-fans who think that’s the only reason we follow this sport.

It’s wasted energy to complain about the schedule. This gap after the season-opener is nothing new. Last year, there was a three-week gap between St. Petersburg and Texas. The 2020-21 season-openers were both affected by COVID, so we won’t count those. The last time there was only two weeks separating the first and second races of the season was 2019, when St. Petersburg was run on March 10 and COTA was run on March 24.

Of course, COTA ended up being a one-time event. It was originally scheduled for 2020, but COVID wiped it out and it has never come back. That’s a shame, but I wish something could be done to add another March race to ride some of that momentum from Sunday’s race. By the time the cars take the track Saturday April 1 at Texas, no one will even remember St. Pete and that’s unfortunate.

We need a March race in a southern climate to fill that gap. This year’s St. Petersburg race was one week later than last year (Feb 27), but Texas is two weeks later. If Texas were to have held on to their same weekend as last year (Mar 20), we’d have the ideal two-week spacing – but then there would be a huge gap between Texas and Long Beach.

I keep hearing that next year’s 2024 schedule will be radically changed from what we’ve seen in the past. I was originally told this by someone in the know at last year’s Nashville race, and have heard this many times since. But I don’t know what that means. Does it mean that we will have the same seventeen races, but they will be moved around to different times of the year? Or does it mean that there will be many more new venues? If so, does that mean many more new races, or will it lead to some familiar races dropping off of the schedule? I have no idea.

I do know that date equity is important and has been achieved in many markets just recently. I can’t say that I’m a fan of Texas in March or early April, but if it fills a gap in the spring – I get it.

I just wish that now that we’ve finally gotten an IndyCar fix, it’s going to be tough to go back into winter hibernation for a month before coming out again a month later. Probably the only person that likes this is Marcus Ericsson, because he gets to bask in the glory of the most recent winner for a month. That’s in contrast to the poor bloke that wins the first race at Iowa – he or she gets to bask in that glory for less than twenty-four hours, before the engines are fired up for the next race.

The big question is – Now what do we do? Formula One races next weekend on Mar 17-19 (when IndyCar should be running). There is March Madness already going on and there’s baseball spring training. If you’re really hard up, the XFL s now in full swing. But if you’re mostly an IndyCar fan and don’t go in for stick & ball sports – you may be out of luck until April 1. That’s the next time IndyCar will be on track, for practice and qualifying at Texas Motor Speedway.

You can keep up with what’s going on by listening to Trackside each week. You can also subscribe to Trackside Online to be fully up to date on the entire IndyCar season. Otherwise, you’ll have to be content with watching replays of the St. Petersburg race or other archived races archived on Peacock. If you don’t have Peacock, you can find complete versions of many older race son You Tube. Otherwise, you’ll have to sit and wait another twenty-four days.

The good news is we are in the midst of the largest gap in the 2023 schedule. While most races will be a week or two apart, there are a couple of three week gaps, but no other four-week gaps. We are getting it out of the way early.

So go do some spring cleaning, get your taxes done early, watch some basketball or go spend a weekend with your significant other. This is the last time you’ll have time to do those things until September 10 is in our mirrors.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on March 8, 2023 at 4:04 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.