A Few Hours Later

What a difference a few hours can make.

IndyCar has called off St. Petersburg and cancelled Barber, Long Beach and Austin. NASCAR has postponed Atlanta and Homestead.

It felt inevitable. This COVID-19 pandemic is bigger than every sanctioning body out there in sports. Holding events behind closed doors is only going to accomplish so much. This problem exists outside the paddock areas of these series and there is no way to cut either off entirely and hold a race. These drivers, crews and officials are coming from the outside world and come Monday they would rejoin the same world they left but after spending days traveling and coming in contact with a countless number of people.

There was no point in waiting until Friday to call off these events. It might have been one day too late. People had already traveled to St. Petersburg and Atlanta. The Road to Indy series had all completed a practice session by the time the official cancellation was announced. Crews were entering Atlanta Motor Speedway and NASCAR was hoping to accelerate its schedule, cancelling practice sessions, running qualifying for the Truck race in the afternoon and holding that race today and then doing the same for the Cup and Xfinity Series tomorrow because rain was threatening Sunday and into next week.

Who knows how many people were traveling to these places and now have to turnaround. Hindsight is 20-20 but when the rest of the world is pumping the brakes this isn't a contest to see who can go the furthest. You can always blow the corner and end up further behind than when you started.

It is a good thing these were called off and it is better late than never. We will wait for an indefinite period of time. For IndyCar, it will be no earlier than May 1st. For NASCAR, no earlier than March 29th. For Formula One, no earlier than the end of May but perhaps it will be early June. For the FIA World Endurance Championship, it is April 25th. For IMSA, it is May 3rd, the same for MotoGP. For Formula E, it is June 21st.

That was a paragraph of nothing but series and dates but it is an important reminder that this isn't going to be cleared up tomorrow. There is likely not going to be a wonder solution concocted in the next six days and come March 25th doctors will be saying we have this thing under control and in a week we can start to resume life with large events, filling arenas, stadiums, grandstands, parks and plazas. We are just going to have to wait.

Everything is on the table and it is better to start preparing for what was unthinkable a month ago than think things will pick up as schedule in two weeks or a month.

The Indianapolis 500 might not happen this year.

The Indianapolis 500 might take place in August.

The Indianapolis 500 might have fewer than 33 starters.

The Indianapolis 500 might have more than 33 starters.

The Indianapolis 500 might happen on Memorial Day weekend.

Those are all possibilities and there is no clear frontrunner of those options.

It is very early and I would hate to think we could reach a point where Formula One, IndyCar, NASCAR, IMSA and all these series that have begun or were about to begin could be completely cancelled but even that has a shot of happening. That is the extreme but in this moment we cannot rule anything out.

Let's find a middle point between believing we are going to wake up tomorrow and everything can resume as it normally would and this will never end.

Seasons are going to be affected. Hopefully not totally cancelled but we are going to see revisions. There are some races that are not going to happen. There are some races that are going to be rescheduled. There are going to be some races that happen on the scheduled dates.

There might be some series that completely re-arrange the schedule. There might be some races that are pushed back and others races that are months away being dropped to make room for those more highly coveted races. Nothing is off the table.

Championship structures might be changed. Race weekends might change.

It is the unknown and it is concerning. We all want to live our normal lives. We all want to go to work and see family and friends and go to races and basketball games and not have any worries about contracting something.

We really have no idea what tomorrow will look like.

I got to admit I have a writing schedule. If you have followed me long enough you know there is a pattern to my writing. There is the Musings From the Weekend each Monday that looks at something big picture. On IndyCar race weekends there is the Track Walk preview the Thursday before a race and then on the race weekend there is a preview morning of a race and a review after the race. There are other previews and reviews of seasons throughout the year. There are some specialty things I do around anniversaries or other events and I lay that all out.

I got to keep things organized and I can keep track of timing. If something needs two or three days to research and write and think over I can slot that into a period that is less busy, normally when IndyCar is off. If something is time sensitive I can find a place to squeeze it in and move something else back if I have to.

I have everything scheduled out through the end of September. The next month and a half of planned writing is not going to happen. Maybe I should write a Track Walk for Barber, Long Beach and Austin anyway. I will figure something out. There is nothing wrong with not writing for a little bit. Things will come up. There will be thoughts and ideas and they will need to be flushed out. It is just going to be different and not by the script.

It is a minor thing, a minor inconvenience and I will live. We will all live. In the meantime, we are going to be hanging out and playing the waiting game.

Although, who knows where will be in the next few hours? It changes that quickly.