Oilpressure

Although it won’t be officially announced until tomorrow (Tue Oct 8), it is widely accepted that the NTT IndyCar Series will stage a race sometime in the spring of 2026 in Dallas. It is presumed that Jerry Jones, owner of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys is involved and that the circuit will go around or be near AT&T Stadium – home of the Dallas Cowboys.

This isn’t the first time a temporary circuit has included a sports facility. From 2021-23, the Music City Grand Prix had their finish line just next to Nissan Stadium – home of the Tennessee Titans. It was due to the construction of the new Nissan Stadium (yes, it will bear the same name), that the race has been re-located to Nashville Superspeedway, some 40 miles to the east. Time will tell if the race comes back to the streets of downtown Nashville once the new stadium is complete in time for the 2027 NFL season.

The double-headers at Houston in 2013-14 were held in the parking lot of Reliant Stadium, home of the Houston Texans. The track also ran just beside the Houston Astrodome, former home of the Houston Astros and the Houston Oilers (who became the Tennessee Titans). Going even further back – until 1989, the Toronto Blue Jays used to play at Exhibition Stadium – located in the heart of Exhibition Place, where the Honda Indy Toronto is held.

Street races are not my favorite form of racing. I grew up an oval guy. While I’ve learned to really like natural terrain road courses like Road America and Barber Motorsports Park – oval races are still my favorite. I’ve grown to appreciate temporary street circuits and the purpose they serve on the schedule, and they are still races that can be very compelling. But I would have to say that street circuits are my least favorite form of IndyCar racing.

Some will ask what purpose do street courses serve on the schedule. Basically, they bring racing to the people. Some are more successful than others. The Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach is the gold standard for all street races. For half a century, spectators have flocked to the streets of Long Beach to see race cars, as well as the rich and famous. It has long been the site where celebrities from nearby Hollywood go to be seen. The actual racing that takes place at Long Beach is not always te most scintillating, but there have been some very intriguing and exciting races there from time to time. Aside from the Indianapolis 500, it is the one race that all IndyCar drivers want to win. It is one race that is still on our short list of races to attend before I hang up my keyboard.

Other street races aspire to be another Long Beach. The Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg comes close, IndyCar has raced on the streets of St. Petersburg since 2005, and it has become the traditional kickoff t the IndyCar season for quite a while now. While Susan and I have never been to Long Beach, we have been to St. Petersburg twice and had a blast both times. The racing is decent, but it’s good to see, hear and smell Indy cars on the track again after a long offseason. And who doesn’t like traveling to sunny 85° weather, when you know your neighbors back home are still scraping ice off of their windshield before going to work?

But for every Long Beach and St. Petersburg, there is a Denver or Baltimore. CART ran the streets of downtown Denver in 1990-91, on one of the most unimaginative circuits anyone could possibly dream up. Al Unser, Jr. won both of those races, but they were painful to watch on television. Spectator viewing areas were scarce because it was actually in the heart of downtown, where the only thing separating the skyscrapers from the track was a typical downtown narrow sidewalk. Eleven years later, CART/Champ Car returned to a course that was built to race around the then-Pepsi Center – home of the NBA Denver Nuggets and the NHL Colorado Avalanche. It was a better circuit that at least had some straightaways and sweeping curves. That edition lasted from 2002-2006.

Baltimore was a different situation. That street circuit was one of the better designed courses, but it went over railroad tracks which were problematic. It also had no trouble attracting fans. But the problem with Baltimore was that the locals never got behind the event, and that’s being kind. To be more truthful – the locals hated the event and basically ran it off.

When people move into a neighborhood that has a racetrack that has stood for decades, I have no sympathy when they complain about the noise or the congested traffic. If you live in the Inner Harbor of Baltimore and you are told that an IndyCar race is coming and you will be inconvenienced for weeks as they build a track; then on that weekend, you can barely even access your apartment – I can be a little more sympathetic. If it was me, I’d think I had died and gone to heaven knowing that a race track would be running just underneath my living room window.

But as hard as it is to believe – not everyone is a race fan. The Grand Prix of Baltimore took place from 2011 to 2013. After three years, the residents had had enough. There were other legal and financial problems with the event and it never came back. As a racing fan, it was one of the most fun street races to watch on TV, and I was sorry to see it go away.

If it is done right, not every street circuit is doomed to fail. If Jerry Jones has a personal investment in the Dallas event surrounding his stadium – Jerry Jones will not allow it to fail. Love him or hate him, you cannot deny the business acumen of Jerry Jones. He has yet to learn of his own limitations as the GM of a professional football team, but in the business world – his track record is outstanding.

Of course some are asking why build a temporary street circuit in Dallas, if there is a perfectly good oval just forty miles to the west. It’s a simple answer – it wasn’t working.

We often hear that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing the same way, yet expecting different results. It doesn’t seem that long ago that the Texas IndyCar race was drawing north of 80,000. Well, it was that long ago. Attendance and ratings have been in decline at Texas for probably the last fifteen years, for a variety of different reasons.

The late Eddie Gossage did IndyCar no favors by insisting that his Texas race be the next race after the Indianapolis 500, but also insisting that the two races be two weekends apart. While that gave him two full weeks to promote the new 500 winner coming to his track – by the time that race finally took place, the national public of casual fans had forgotten all about the Indianapolis 500. All of the momentum was gone as the series sat idle the following weekend.

IndyCar did themselves no favors by creating an aero-package that made passing almost impossible. After a decade of watching nail-biters at Texas, the 2009 IndyCar race at Texas was one of the biggest snoozers I can remember. Ryan Briscoe passed pole-sitter Dario Franchitti shortly after the start, and led for the next 160 laps. Helio Castroneves had a quicker pit stop and got out ahead of Briscoe and led for then last fifty or so laps to win. That was the race in a nutshell. In my eyes, that race was the beginning of the end for Texas. Attendance was already dwindling, but after that race – it just tanked.

I attended the 2023 race at Texas. I feared that the rumors of it coming off of the 2024 schedule were true, and I wanted to attend an IndyCar race there while I could. I was in the pits close to Turn One. Looking across the track to the stands, it looked like no one was there. This photo was time-stamped April 2 at 11:53 am, about halfway through the race. I was taking a picture of the empty stands when this young woman jumped into the picture without me realizing it. I’m not quite sure how that happened, but you can still see the empty seats.

Starting a race at 11:00 am local time in the south is not a recipe for success. Many would-be race goers chose to go to church at that time. I’m pretty sure IndyCar had nothing to do with that starting time. I also doubt that the track was thrilled with an 11:00 green-flag. This was likely an NBC call for whatever early April programming they may have had. Whoever set the time drove in the final nail for IndyCar at Texas, because no one was there. Without question, it was the smallest crowd of any IndyCar race I have attended in person. It was no shock when Texas was not on the schedule for 2024.

Texas Motor Speedway claimed they tried to work with IndyCar by offering a September date, but they made it clear that running in the spring was not an option because their only NASCAR date is in the spring. We all know how that goes.

Personally, I hope that Texas Motor Speedway comes back someday, but to continue down the same path both parties had been on for the past several years would have produced the same results. Something needs to change with the business model, in order to make Texas work again. That probably won’t happen for a few years.

In the meantime, it looks like IndyCar will once again have a footprint in what is a very important market for the series. Title sponsor NTT has its North American headquarters in Dallas. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the fourth largest metropolitan area in the US. The state of Texas is the second-most populated state in the US, with 30 Million, compared to California with 39 Million residents.

Since IndyCar parted ways with Texas Motor Speedway, the closest IndyCar racetrack to the state of Texas was Gateway. That’s not a track most Texans identify with.

IndyCar needs to have a presence in the state of Texas. It is about the only sports entity I know of that currently has nothing in Texas.

I get it that fans are not excited about a street race in Texas. I also understand why fans wonder why re-visiting the oval in Ft. Worth was not an option. But I also understand the importance of a street race in Dallas. Like it or not, fans will flock to street races. They see it as an event. As we saw here in Nashville – having a lot of distractions like concerts and other activities; covers up the fact that the actual racing is not that great. I hate to say it, but a lot of fans in attendance really don’t care. They are just there to have fun. If they become life-long IndyCar fans – great! If not, they just want them to have fun so they’ll come back next year.

After a few years of racing around Jerry World amongst a carnival atmosphere, maybe some other way of making Texas Motor Speedway work can be devised.

All in all, I don’t have the problem that many fans have with a Dallas street race starting in 2026. Let’s just hope that it is the eighteenth race on the schedule, and is not at the expense of another track.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on October 7, 2024 at 4:03 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.