2027 IndyCar Schedule: Nashville – Part Three
When the 2027 IndyCar schedule was released last Friday, there was one major change. For 2026, the weekend slot around mid-July was occupied by the race at Nashville Superspeedway. For 2027, that slot was filled by the new race in Barcelona and the Nashville race was nowhere to be seen on the schedule. Since I am a longtime Nashville resident and grew up not far from here, I took that personally.
IndyCar and Nashville have something of a checkered past (no pun intended). Nashville Superspeedway (NSS) was originally built by Dover Motorsports, owners of the Monster Mile at Dover, DE at the time. They wanted a tie-in with their Dover property, so they used concrete instead of asphalt. The track opened in 2001, and the track still features the original concrete surface and had developed a lot of bumps between the seams over the last twenty-five winters. IndyCar included the brand new track on its 2001 schedule, and that first race was won by Buddy Lazier.
Susan and I attended each and every IndyCar race that was held at the track through 2008. IndyCar left Nashville off of the 2009 schedule, but I did not b lame IndyCar. The General Manager of the track at the time was absolutely clueless.
IndyCar had just gone through reunification with Champ Car in February of 2008. NSS had been paying the lowest sanctioning fee of any track on the schedule. With new tracks to accommodate from Champ Car, IndyCar wanted to bring all tracks up to the same sanctioning fee to standardize the fee structure. IndyCar made it clear publicly the entire month leading up to the 2008 race that if the Nashville area wanted the race to continue, track officials needed to step up the sanctioning fee.
The GM thought they were bluffing, since the races at NSS were some of the best attended races for IndyCar. Other than the Indianapolis 500 and races at Texas in the 2000s, I would say that Nashville may have had the third best attendance on the IndyuCar schedule. After IndyCar announced the 2009 schedule later that season, with Nashville left off, I saw a Sunday night interview on local television with the GM. He pretty well admitted that he had misjudged how serious IndyCar was. He had thought he could negotiate, but IndyCar stuck to their guns. He came across as totally incompetent. Years later, I came across someone who had worked directly underneath the GM. He confirmed that he was, in fact, that incompetent.
From 2008 until 2021, there was no IndyCar presence in Nashville – despite the fact that a two-time IndyCar champion was born and raised here and lives here. One of IndyCar’s key partners – Firestone – is based here also. Nashville is four hours south oif Indianapolis and three hours north of Barber Motorsports Park. It is a growing market with tons of tourists visiting each year. A race in Nashville could be a destination within a relatively short drive from Indianapolis, offering a lot of extra activities besides racing.
That all changed in 2021, when the Music City Grand Prix was born. Nissan Stadium, home of the NFL’s Tennessee Titans, was the focal point of a track that was too tight for Indy cars. The Titans worked with IndyCar to ensure the success of the event. While the race itself was justifiably described as a sh**show, riddled with cautions and two red flags and won by Marcus Ericsson; the event was considered a huge success. There were big-name concerts throughout the weekend, and the locals loved it. The racing was terrible, but none of the paying customers seemed to care. They were there for the three-day party atmosphere, and they did not leave disappointed. It was the fans that watched the disjointed race on television that got a bad taste in their mouth.
The following year, the racing was not that much better. It was another crashfest, this time won by Scott Dixon. But the 2023 race on the streets of Nashville was actually a good race, won by Kyle Kirkwood. But by the time the 2023 race rolled around, the Titans had already announced plans to build a new domed stadium, right next door to the current stadium. It would sit right where the IndyCar paddock had been for the past three years, and the roads around the current stadium were to be completely torn up. It was obvious that a total redesign of the track would be necessary.
They came up with a design that utilized the same bridge that head been in use before, but would have most of the track in downtown proper, on the west side of the Cumberland River., with the start/finish line on lower Broadway The problem was that none of the race officials sought out the necessary permits with the city. When Scott Borchetta took back control of the race in January of 2024, he was astonished at what had not been done to run the newly configured race that was to serve as the 2024 season-finale. He quickly determined that there was no way to run the race as advertised. He worked with IndyCar and Nashville Superspeedway, which was now owned by Speedway Motorsports, Inc (SMI) to move the downtown street race to the oval that sat near Lebanon, TN – about 35 miles to the east.
Still slated to be the season finale, the 2024 race was run in mid-September. Unfortunately, that coincided with the Titans home-opener. Like any team, there was optimism for the Titans at the start of the season. With a new coach and quarterback in place, most Nashvillians opted to attend or at least watch the Titans on TV. The IndyCar race was poorly attended, again illustrating the need to end the IndyCar season on Labor Day to avoid NFL conflicts. Colton Herta was still a Nashville resident at that time, and he won that first race at NSS.
For 2025, the series returned to Nashville Superspeedway to race at the end of August; once again serving as the season-finale. The attendance was much better than 2024, but still didn’t approach the full houses from the 2000s. Josef Newgarden won that race, becoming the second Nashville resident to win in Nashville in as many years. The track had produced two exciting races and the fans seemed to be warming up to traveling the distance to the remote area to watch good racing.
2026 is where things fell apart. In 2008, I didn’t blame IndyCar – I blamed the track for IndyCar leaving Nashville. This time I blame IndyCar.
With the World Cup playing the championship game on July 19, it was decided to move the Nashville race to that same date to capitalize on a potentially giant lead-in crowd from the World Cup Final followed directly by the immediate start of the race. Fate was not the friend of Nashville Superspeedway that day. First, the World Cup game went into overtime, extra-innings or whatever they call a tie in soccer. The start of the race was on hold. When the game was finally decided, it had begun to rain at the track. The dream scenario of catching an artificially inflated ratings number was gone, but they still planned to get the race in that night.
As fans were getting ready for a true night race, after track-drying efforts were completed – the bottom fell out. It rained into the night and the race was pushed into the next day. Few people came out on Monday. Nashville residents chose to work, instead of blowing a day of vacation at the track. Those that traveled – most drove or flew bacxk home. A few stayed, but the stands were sparse. It was a bad look. To make matters worse, Alex Palou put on one of his clinics and ran away with the race, making it the most boring of the three races on the series return to the oval.
I don’t think Nashville was given a fair shake. Whoever made the decision to chase a big ratings number by putting the Nashville race immediately after the World Cup, inadvertently killed off IndyCar at NSS. What happened to the idea of Nashville serving as the season-finale? That decision was made before it was known that the series would be back racing on the oval. After two years as the season-finale, they moved the race to mid-July. Not only is that the hottest time of the year, but July is also the rainy season in Middle Tennessee. It’s almost a daily event to have the heat create late afternoon storm clouds that gather around 4:00 pm. Around 5:00 pm they unload water, usually as a downpour. After about an hour, the sun comes back out creating a wall of steam making it hard to even breathe. That is generally July in Tennessee.
By August, the state is in a drought. Had the series stuck with the original plan to have Nashville as the season-finale over Labor Day weekend, they would have had dry weather which was cooler than July. If they would’ve run it as a night race on Sunday night before Labor Day – I truly believe fans would’ve come out in droves. College football played their games on Saturday. The Sunday before Labor Day had a very light selection of sports to choose from. It would’ve been a hit with TV ratings, as well as at the gate.
I suspect that the opportunity to grab a big ratings number came from FOX, but IndyCar went along with moving the race to mid-July and setting a start time for the heat of the day. Everything that could have gone wrong with that plan, did go wrong – and they ended up running a race on a Monday that no one attended or watched. But instead of chalking it up as a learning experience and trying to run a night race over Labor Day in 2027, they penalized fans in Nashville because they didn’t come back on Monday.
When it was confirmed that Nashville would not return next year, I tried to rationalize things where IndyCar was not the bad guy in all of this. I read Scott Borchetta’s release where he worded it like the Music City Grand Prix needed to focus all of their energy to making the Nashville street race come back by the end of the decade. That sort of took the sting out of things. But I have friends in Indianapolis much closer to the situation than I am. In talking to them, I am told that IndyCar was the one who pulled the plug on Nashville. Borchetta was trying to keep the oval alive to keep the momentum going to eventually get downtown, but IndyCar made the decision. Borchetta’s statement was just sugarcoating.
The new Nissan Stadium is scheduled to be completed by late-winter of 2027. It will host a few concerts and other events before the Titans begin playing next September. Preparations for demolition on the current stadium are to begin as soon as the Titans current miserable season is over. At least we know the Titans will not be in the playoffs, so they can begin the process the day after the Titans last home game. But there is just so much they can do, while the new stadium is under construction. With such close proximity, they have already announced there will be no spectacular implosion. Instead, the old stadium will be dismantled piece by piece. I see no way that the area around the stadium area would be ready to host a street race in 2027 – not that I’m an expert in stadium demolition. But what about 2028?
By taking NSS off of the schedule for 2027, that means there will be no Music City Grand Prix since it was born in 2021 – either on a street course or an oval. We all know that when an event takes any sort of hiatus, even for a year – more times than not, they never come back. That’s not always the case. Belle Isle was dropped from the CART schedule after the 2001 season, but was brought back as an IndyCar event in 2006. But the event took another hiatus beginning in 2009, and didn’t come back until 2012. But both times, it did come back. I can’t even count how many lives the Milwaukee Mile has had this century – so it does happen.
Selfishly, I cannot over-emphasize how nice it is to attend a race weekend and spend every night in your own bed. The hotel cost-savings aside, it is a luxury you can’t understand until IndyCar comes to your town. But even if I didn’t live here, I would still be very upset that Nashville has lost its IndyCar date. It’s bad enough that the date was lost, but losing it due to the pursuit of a false and misleading ratings number following a World Cup match is frustrating. The word used by one of my Indianapolis friends is “short-sightedness”.
I am hopeful that Scott Borchetta is being factual and not just trying to be optimistic, when he says the street course for the Music City Grand Prix will return before the nend of the decade. The public enjoyed the street race the three years that they raced there. The real racing fans enjoyed the oval a full county away. IndyCar needs the Nashville market, probably more than Nashville needs IndyCar. But Nashville has embraced IndyCar and they will again if/when they return. Let’s hope that’s sooner than later.
George Phillips
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