Where Could IndyCar Race?
We are pushing a month of quarantine, which is fine, because it is what we have to do but we are getting antsy. People want sports and sports want to go on.
Major League Baseball has proposed sending all the teams to their spring training sites and having a radically different looking 2020 season with games behind closed doors and divisional alignment that does not follow traditional National League and American League alignment.
The National Hockey League is exploring neutral sites to finish out the regular season and playoffs, including places such as Grand Forks, North Dakota, Manchester New Hampshire and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
The National Basketball Association is trying to do something similar to the NHL.
The Premier League has floated out neutral site locations to end its season. The Korea Baseball Organization is on the verge of starting its preseason and beginning its regular season after South Korea's covid-19 outbreak has waned. Taiwan has started its baseball seaosn albeit with games behind closed doors.
We are starved. It is a necessary sacrifice but after one month we are trying to see how we can have just a little bit to nibble on. We want something new and unseen. Through these unpredictable times we want the unpredictability of sports. We want competition if there is a way for any of these sports to take place in a safe manner.
With many sports looking for options I sit and I wonder if there is a way for motorsports to continue in the same way. The traveling roadshow of motorsports differentiates from baseball, basketball and hockey in that it visits multiple locations and the tracks vary in size and shape. Baseball comes close with each park having its own dimensions and wall height but it is not an apt comparison.
Time ticks away on 2020 and with each week we find another race postponed or cancelled. A full championship is getting hard to envision at this rate and while multiple sports leagues are looking at quarantine options, motorsports series continue to move pieces and hope things we will be better come summer and autumn. There is no certainty things will be better and these series should be at the point of considering holding all its at a limited number of venues. It is not ideal but it could soon be the only option.
Where could motorsports series go to put on a series of races completely in quarantine?
For IndyCar, it is simple, it is Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It hosts the Indianapolis 500, it had a third race added to the second revised 2020 schedule. It has multiple layout and can be run clockwise or anti-clockwise. Theoretically, you could run 13 races and never run the same track twice at IMS and that is the proposal.
If everything hits the fan, IndyCar's option is to get everyone together at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and hold the championship there. The Indianapolis 500 would start the season on August 23 and the Grand Prix of Indianapolis would be round two on August 30. Where do we go from there?
The Labor Day Luau will be run on September 6 and let's have it on the IndyCar road course configuration but this time the track goes anti-clockwise and oval turn one is used. Since it is a holiday, let's run a slightly longer race, say 93 laps or about 220 miles? It is a holiday weekend, why not make it a doubleheader? Anti-clockwise on Sunday and clockwise on Monday?
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| Labor Day Luau: 2.3646-mile course |
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| Labor Day Luau: Same track, different direction |
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| Alternate Programming 300: 2.5644-mile course |
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| Alternate Programming 300 Part II |
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| In honor of the man with the vision |
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| Speedway Grand Prix Part I: 78 laps |
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| Speedway Grand Prix Part II: 78 laps |
After that, we will have a doubleheader for the penultimate weekend of the season, one race on October 10, the other on October 11 and this is on a new course and I call it the perimeter road course. It uses the road course section used inside oval turn one and the road course section inside oval turn two but instead of going inside the course and using Hulman Boulevard it turns onto the backstretch and uses the rest of the oval. It is a 2.5634-mile configuration. It requires a little work but it is doable. I propose two 100-lap races for the Circle City Shootout.
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| Circle City Shootout Race One will be clockwise |
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| Race two will be anti-clockwise |
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| This concludes the 2020 championship |
In an ideal world, we do not want a 14-race championship with 13 different configurations of Indianapolis Motor Speedway and IRP but maybe this is the best we can do for 2020. Nobody would like it but it would provide a championship with variety and enough races for it to feel like a complete championship.
Let's hope it doesn't come to that but if every other sport is preparing for neutral sites with games centralized behind closed doors then motorsports should be constructing a similar plan.
This might not even be possible but it might be the only shot we got.
Coming up later this week will be similar editions of limited location championships for Formula One and NASCAR.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Simon Pagenaud but did you know...
Aaron Smith II won Thunder Night Blunder from Martinsville.
Jenson Button and Emanuele Pirro split the Legends Trophy races from Sebring.
Chase Briscoe won NBC's iRacing Short Track Challenge.
Coming Up This Weekend
IndyCar has its "random" track race.
Thunder Night Blunder goes to Long Beach with seven different open-wheel classes.
NASCAR is back at Richmond
