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In recent years, I have been looking for any type of distraction while watching the Tennessee Titans play. I found one yesterday as I was perusing through Twitter to take my mind off of the depressing performance in front of me.

It was there that I saw the following post by Indianapolis sports personality Tony Donohue.

Given that Nathan Brown of The Indianapolis Star and David Land’s You Tube channel had already been reporting that there were rumors swirling around that Nashville would no longer be the NTT IndyCar Series season finale – I am assuming this is probably true. I have been told that this is somehow connected to the series failing to come to an agreement with Mexico City for a race there in 2026, but I’m not really clever enough to connect those dots.

Here is my one-time disclaimer: In case you didn’t know, I am a native Tennessean and have lived in Nashville for about a quarter-century. It is safe to say that I will live here until I assume room temperature – so I am probably just a little bit biased.

But even if I did not live here, it would seem like a silly idea to move the IndyCar season finale away from Nashville, especially when a boring road course on the west coast is the alternative.

When the series was here in Nashville just two weeks ago, IndyCar President Doug Boles commented what a natural fit Nashville was for the season finale (paraphrasing). That’s why I don’t think this decision came from Doug Boles. He hasn’t made a habit of lying to fans in the past. His legal background has taught him how to verbally navigate minefields carefully. If he didn’t feel that way, I don’t think he would have said it.

There aren’t too many people in the IndyCar pecking order that Boles listens to. Mark Miles, Bud Denker, Greg Penske and Roger Penske are about the only ones I can think of in the entire Penske Entertainment org chart that would be above Boles. He may sit at the top of IndyCar, but in the grand scheme of things – he still has a few bosses above him. The way I understand it, Mark Miles would be his immediate boss – but I could be wrong.

In 2015, the IndyCar season-finale was moved from Fontana to Sonoma. Consequently, the championship round of the series went from an exciting 2.0-mile oval to road course that offered so little passing that it was unofficially dubbed Snoroma.

Fans complained that any track besides Sonoma should be the season finale. It seemed very anticlimactic to settle the championship on the most boring track on the schedule. But we were told at the time that team sponsors wanted to celebrate the championship in style in wine country and the surrounding area. In 2019, Sonoma was replaced on the schedule completely with WeatherTech Raceway (Laguna Seca), and it was made the season finale.

The two venues are about 2.5-hours apart. Sonoma is north of San Francisco in the wine county, Laguna Seca is south of San Francisco in Monterey.

I recalled many season finales from the CART years at Laguna Seca. Except for a few moments like The Pass when Alex Zanardi imposed his will on Bryan Herta in the corkscrew, there were very few memorable moments that I could think of at Laguna Seca. I remember in the 1991 Marlboro Challenge, Rick Mears missed a shift and was passed by Michael Andretti coming out of the last turn. Unfortunately, I also remember the sight of driver Gonzalo Rodriguez going over the wall near the corkscrew and plummeting to his death.

Mostly, my memories of watching races at Laguna Seca were not much different that my memories from Sonoma – processional parades that offered little to no passing.

Susan and I attended the last IndyCar race at Sonoma. I will say it was an extremely nice and modern facility. As a TV viewer, I cold never understand why the announcers always described the surrounding scenery as beautiful. On television, it looked like nothing more than a dust bowl. I will say, however, the scenery was beautiful in-person. We have never been to Laguna Seca, but I will give it the benefit of the doubt and assume it is the same situation – that it is a lot more appealing in-person than what we see on the broadcast.

But there is no denying that the racing at Laguna Seca is suboptimal –and that’s being kind. Assuming Alex Palou doesn’t crush the field again in 2026 (which is a huge assumption) and the championship goes through the final race of the season, chances are good that Saturday’s qualifying session will all but wrap up the championship for someone, because track position is so important there.

In the 2000s, I sat through a lot of boring races at Nashville Superspeedway. The old g-Force and Dallaras did not race well at the concrete oval. When the updated Panoz and Dallara IR-03 hit the track in 2003, they were no better. The groove was just too narrow for that track.

When the series returned to the 1.33-mile oval in 2024, I feared we would be looking at the same boring races. Instead the DW 12 or whatever this iteration of the 2012 Dallara is actually called, proved to be quite racy. It was the same two weeks ago. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the racing was great, but it was good – and better than “not bad”.

I know I am old-school (and just plain old), but I am in the camp that the NTT IndyCar Series should end their season on an oval. They are not near as predictable as road courses, and anything can happen – especially when there is a championship on the line.

I spent a good part of that Titans game on a group chat with other IndyCar fans. There were opinions across the spectrum. You know I was touting why Nashville should continue as the season finale. Others joined in with me, but one person whose opinion I usually trust was flat-out against Nashville hosting the finale.

He has made the trip from Indianapolis to Nashville each year since the Music City Grand Prix brought IndyCar back to Nashville in 2021. He said there was no buzz at that oval the two years he has been there. He correctly pointed to the fact that this year’s oval crowd was noticeably smaller than last year’s finale, that was held during the Titans home-opener and just after the remnants of Hurricane Francine passed through the day before and played havoc with practice and qualifying. I had no comeback other than the fact that the championship had already been decided weeks before.

Another member of our chat opined with “Laguna is about as bad as it can get for a series finale. Sh***y race that no one can afford to go to.” He went on to text “Laguna will have absolutely NO local promotion or buzz. There will be ZERO lead up eventslike they had in Nashville. And the race will suck.”

If that were that many varying opinions on our group chat; imagine how divided fans will be on this one.

My personal opinion is that this is sponsor-driven. Sponsors are probably more drawn to a luxurious weekend in Monterey, than they are to the honky-tonks on Lower Broadway. Teams want to keep their sponsors happy, so they are going to back wherever their sponsors want to go. But I’ll bet if you were to poll the fans who pile into their campers and SUVs and actually drive to several races a year on their own dime because they love racing – they would probably overwhelmingly vote for ending the season and celebrating the championship in Nashville.

But the fans are being ignored. That’s why I don’t think that this decision involved Doug Boles. No one associated with this sport is more for the fans than he is.

Believe me, I’ve followed this sport long enough to know how important it is to keep sponsors happy, but can they not go to Laguna Seca in other slots on the schedule. I’m guessing, but I’m guessing that the majority of sponsor guests cannot name a single driver other than the ones on the team they are sponsoring. They can’t be going to Laguna Seca for the exceptional racing. They are going for a nice weekend in Monterey, that happens to feature a race.

Am I guilty of looking through Nashville-colored lenses in thinking that Nashville is the best place to hold the finale? It’s not like they are taking Nashville off of the schedule – at least I hope they aren’t. Actually, I do have a suggestion that would be a better location for the finale – Milwaukee. Those fans are rabid for IndyCar racing and it would be a great race with good attendance. Or am I blind and old-fashioned in my thinking that the championship should end on an oval. Let me know what you think. Unlike some, I’m curious to know what the fans think.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on September 15, 2025 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.