Things Are a Mess in Texas
The NTT IndyCar Series schedule for 2024 is still not out, although series officials had hoped to have it out by the season-finale at Laguna Seca. It turns out that there has been a kink thrown in that no one really expected. The problem is with the penciled-in date for Texas.
IndyCar has been racing at Texas Motor Speedway (TMS), since the track opened in 1997. Until 2003, IndyCar raced at the 1.5-mile oval twice a year – a night race in June and a daytime race at the end of the season.
When Texas received a second NASCAR date in the fall of 2004, they had no desire to continue the fall IndyCar race. It was ultimately lopped off of the schedule, leaving the June night race as the only IndyCar race at TMS.
For decades, the Milwaukee Mile was the traditional race immediately following the Indianapolis 500. But Milwaukee was on and off the schedule, and bounced around to other dates in the summer months, so the night race at Texas settled in as the first race after the 500. Then somewhere in there, Detroit squeezed itself in-between Indianapolis and Texas, because Roger Penske was the promoter for Detroit. He wanted his race to be the one immediately following the 500, and he usually got what he wanted – even before he bought the series.
Once The Captain bought IMS and the series, he decided he wanted to move Texas before the Indianapolis 500, to give everyone a high-speed oval under their belt before the 500 – so Texas moved to a daytime race in April, much to the chagrin of many longtime IndyCar fans.
For the first time, I attended the IndyCar race at Texas this past April. It is a very impressive facility. Unfortunately, it was sparsely attended (at best). I’m not sure if there were three-thousand people in the stands. Whoever decided that the race should start at 11:30 on a Sunday morning, did the event no favor. It also didn’t help that there was a three-day Taylor Swift concert on the same weekend at nearby AT&T Stadium, where the Dallas Cowboys play. The women’s Final Four was also being played in Dallas that weekend, with the men’s Final Four taking place about four hours away in Houston. IndyCar was not on the minds of many locals that weekend.
The tentative date for the 2024 Texas IndyCar race was April 7.
Remember when I said that IndyCar lost it’s second TMS date in the fall, because NASCAR gave Texas a second Cup race? Somewhere along the way, NASCAR took away the spring race. That left IndyCar to race in the spring, and NASCAR to race in the fall. TMS has figured out what I was opining about last week – that trying to go head-to-head against football is a losing battle. Fans would prefer to either attend Cowboys games on Sunday, or stay home and watch football instead of attending the local NASCAR race.
TMS is tired of fighting that battle, so they want to move their NASCAR race from their September date to April 14 – one week after IndyCar’s preferred date. According to Nathan Brown of The Indianapolis Star, TMS wants to move the IndyCar date to the fall.
Further complicating this is NBC’s coverage of the Olympics in late July and early August, which shoves all of their usual programming to the side. Races that would normally fall into that window have to be moved to other dates to accommodate NBC’s Olympic schedule.
Wherever Texas has to be moved to on the schedule, IndyCar needs to do it. Furthermore, it needs to be moved back to being a night race. That means it most likely would not be on Big NBC, but would be shuffled to USA Network. In my opinion, that’s OK. If worse comes to worst, IndyCar could run Texas at night during the Olympics – but it would have to be shown exclusively on Peacock, since all of their other networks will be tied up with Olympic coverage. That’s not optimal, but it’s an option.
Another idea I’ve heard tossed around is to take a year off from Texas in 2024, with the thought of returning in 2025. I don’t like that idea at all. That’s sort of like when your girlfriend thinks it’s a good idea for the two of you to take some time away from each other, saying absence makes the hearty grow fonder. If you’ve ever been handed that line, you know it may apply to one or the other, but rarely does it apply to both. One of the two involved, finds out that there’s a much better life out there. I’ve been on both sides of that equation in the past, and never got back together with her. Sometimes I was the punter, while sometimes I was the puntee. Never did we ever have a do-over.
I fear that if IndyCar takes a year-long sabbatical from Texas Motor Speedway, that’ll be it. It will be years before going back, if ever. If memory serves me correctly, IndyCar was going to take a one-year break from Fontana, after the 2015 race – and then reassess. You see how that went.
Apparently, IndyCar needs Texas a lot more than TMS thinks they need IndyCar. Texas Motor Speedway is part of the fabric of the modern-day IndyCar Series. It has not been around as long as Milwaukee or Long Beach, but it has been on every NTT IndyCar Series schedule at least once, since 1997. This race needs to continue.
Whatever ends up happening, this is a mess – and one that seems like it could have been avoided. At least that’s the way it seems to me. For years, we’ve been hearing that “this year” could be the last year that Texas is on the schedule. That’s one reason I went this past spring – I wanted to attend a Texas IndyCar race in-person, while I still could.
I understand why NASCAR takes precedent over IndyCar. With so few people sitting in the stands this past spring, it’s hard for IndyCar to use any leverage that they don’t have. But the date ended up being a bad one for the locals, and setting a Sunday morning green-flag in the Bible-Belt was a very poor decision on someone’s part. But given a good date with little competition that starts at a convenient time, I feel like attendance could have been increased significantly. As it was, a very small crowd got to watch a very good race.
I don’t know what will happen, but I have an idea that IndyCar or their fans are not going to like it. This will be whatever the new track management decides is best for themselves and NASCAR. IndyCar will have to just do what they’re told or not race there at all. Neither is a good choice. This is a mess!
George Phillips
Oilpressure 
September 22, 2023 at 6:21 am
You have to remember how bad it looks for INDYCAR to only have 3,000 people in the stands. It makes INDYCAR look minor league and no matter how good the racing is, 3,000 people is horrible. The series may need ovals but only having 3,000 people says to me that it’s time to move on. Very sad situation.
September 22, 2023 at 8:18 am
3,000 is a tremendous underestimate, in my opinion (formed by counting the crowd in what appeared to be “average” attended sections and applying that to the number of open seating sections). The crowd at Texas this spring was not impressive, but it easily topped 10,000, perhaps 15,000 if the suites were relatively full.
That said, it is not a crowd that looks great at a facility the size of Texas.
September 22, 2023 at 6:27 am
George you hit the nail on the head. What a mess! It’s hard for me to understand the brain trust in Indycar. They need to fix this with a evening race and consistency on the date. They could fix the milwaukee mile with the same kind of plan.
September 22, 2023 at 6:48 am
Let’s think out of the box a bit. Make Texas a mid-week night race ala Thursday Night Thunder . F the on site spectators what do they really add to any race other than background.no track spectators reduces need for a lot of extra expense. IC rents the track ,make it a one day show , made for TV only . Pick a date that works for IC and TV . I don’t think an empty grandstand means much if you market it that way .
September 22, 2023 at 7:59 am
I can’t argue your point about attendance this year, as I wasn’t present for the first time in years. I will say that I have been there when there’s been 25k plus and it still looks like an anemic crowd.
To lose one of the most exciting oval races would be a huge disappointment, so I hope they can figure out how to make it work.
September 22, 2023 at 8:03 am
Considering the lack of attendance (poor scheduling and promotion can wear some of that blame) over the years, I assumed this race would have been off the schedule years ago. I always heard Eddie Gossage liked IndyCar racing, so maybe that’s why they kept coming back every year. When Eddie retired, I figured it was only a matter of time before the folks in charge down there said goodbye to IndyCar. I don’t want to lose another oval, but I also don’t like seeing 3K people in the stands at an IndyCar race. Hey, I never wanted to see them leave Chicagoland, Kansas, Homestead, or Phoenix either, but it is what it is I suppose.
September 22, 2023 at 8:18 am
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September 22, 2023 at 8:33 am
“When Texas received a second NASCAR date in the fall of 2004, they had no desire to continue the fall IndyCar race.”
Eddie Gossage has long claimed that he attempted to maintain the fall Indycar date, but was told no by NASCAR.
The late-coming nature of this news is quite disappointing, and I suspect it is less driven by TMS than it is by SMI corporate, the TV networks, and/or NASCAR itself. While I expect TMS doesn’t relish competing against football… I suspect they also don’t relish competing against the NASCAR event they promote at COTA either, which is what they would do in the event of this schedule change.
If the option for Texas next year is September or nothing, Indycar should probably take it to maintain continuity and keep the schedule where they expected it to be and then try to figure out a better date for the race in 2025.
September 22, 2023 at 9:09 am
Even if they finalize the schedule, it’s not set in stone. I can remember a couple of times where races were cancelled during the season and of course, it seems it was frequently an oval that bit the dust. There has also been a few times where something bad happened and the race disappeared … again, usually an oval.
I used to love watching Indycar race at Homestead, Kentucky, Pocono, etc., and planned to attend Homestead in person since it’s close… but it never came back.
Whoever finalized the Texas race time last year during the middle of traditional “church” time in the Bible belt really messed things up. Attendance at Texas (or any Oval) during the summer months, weather plays a big factor. If it’s too hot/humid, a lot of folks stay near their AC. That’s why no matter when they hold the race in the summer… it needs to be a night race! If you hold it in the daytime, it needs to be before the 500, or at the end of the season.
Whenever a certain race is on the schedule, it should remain consistent as much as possible. As with most major recurring sporting events, many people make attendance plans well in advance. Shuffling races from spring or summer to the fall can really affect how many attend in person from one year to the next.
Schedulers need to be smart in what they do.
September 22, 2023 at 9:30 am
I don’t think ovals have been especially common victims of in-season cancellation, certainly not compared to street races. Of the 8 races on the original 2020 schedule that wound up cancelled, only 1 was an oval. Prior to that, you would have to go back to 2003 CART race at Fontana to find a scheduled oval race cancelled during the season. Between 2003 and 2020 Champcar cancelled 5 scheduled races (not counting the 11 races lost from their 2008 schedule) and Indycar cancelled 3. 7 of those 8 races were on street circuits.
Last year’s Texas race start time was almost surely chosen by NBC.
September 22, 2023 at 12:47 pm
Indycar has been bitten quite often when date equity was lost from one of its events. Whenever that happened, it usually wasn’t long until the event went out of the window. It is no surprise that TMS is now in danger of that. Returning to the traditional June date would probably work best. But they have to put Laguna Seca somewhere, now that Nashville gets the weekend that IndyCar was racing at Laguna Seca this year. In an intervew at this year’s season finale, Graham Rahal imagined the heat it is going to get inside of a race car at Laguna in June, and you could tell he was not a fan. Remember when he won at the final race at Fontana that was also pushed to June, and when hardly anyone showed up? I find it hard to believe that IndyCar is doing that again, only because they are afraid of staging an event on the same day as Football.
Sonoma might get a chance to return to the calendar soon.
September 23, 2023 at 11:08 am
The climate in Monterey, CA is not like the climate in inland Southern California. For one thing, The average June high in Monterey, CA is about 20-25 degrees cooler than the average June high in Fontana. Beyond that, Laguna Seca’s recent September date is actually in its area’s hottest time of year, the high temperature will likely be 5-10 degrees cooler for a race in June.
Fontana’s issue was, to some extent, as much about time as date. A day race in October would have been nearly as hot as a day race in June. But the comparison we got was a day race in June to what had been a night race in September or October, a difference of 20-40 degrees instead of a difference of 3-6 degrees.
September 23, 2023 at 6:10 pm
the final two sentences tell the whole story:
IndyCar will have to just do what they’re told
or not race there at all. Neither is a good choice.
September 27, 2023 at 4:03 am
[…] was an exceptional race. I also learned firsthand what an impressive facility it is. But as I detailed last week, IndyCar has been shoved to the back burner at […]
September 28, 2023 at 9:02 am
[…] was an exceptional race. I also learned firsthand what an impressive facility it is. But as I detailed last week, IndyCar has been shoved to the back burner at […]