Summer officially began in the Northern Hemisphere, meaning it is winter south of the equator. NASCAR got rained out from Talladega and will attempt to go on Monday afternoon. There was some racing from Alabama and there was a first-time winner. Chad Reed ended his Supercross career, as the 2020 season came to a close about a month and a half later than previously scheduled. World Superbike released its updated calendar. Formula E will end its season with six races in nine days from Berlin in August. Formula E also announced a provisional 2020-21 schedule, which will take place entirely in 2021. Here is a rundown of what got me thinking.
When the Lights Go Out
Every 2020 season has featured a shakeup. Whether it has been cancelled races, postponed races, complete calendar shuffling or races held behind closed doors, no season scheduled to run over spring and summer has been spared. Some series have fared worse than others.
The worst fear is scrapping the entire 2020 season. Some are hoping to avoid such a fate. One series lost due to the pandemic will be Indy Lights, a series that has been highly vulnerable for a decade.
Ten cars participated in the one and only session held for Indy Lights this year, a qualifying session at St. Petersburg on Friday, March 13, when everyone hoped to get in a race weekend behind closed doors. The altered weekend proceeded for a few hours before the plug was pulled on the heels of numerous cancellations around the world. Ten cars fall in line with what Indy Lights has drawn for the last decade.
A few years have been better than others. When the new car was introduced in 2015, the grid grew with 14 to 16 cars regularly entered for a few seasons. Despite the new car and the initial expansion, few joined the series in recent seasons. Teams started leaving the championship. Indy Lights was back to where it was prior to the new car.
Indy Lights failed to reach a dozen entries in the last two seasons. It failed to draw more than nine cars for any race in 2018. The series has been in constant peril and the cancellation of the series feels like a deathblow. Indy Lights was always the leading candidate for a series to die because of the pandemic. It now sits in a vegetative state.
Management will do all it can to revive the series. Indy Lights is under the IndyCar umbrella, meaning it is under Roger Penske's watch. Penske is not going to let it die and IndyCar needs a development series. It has Indy Pro 2000 and U.S. F2000 but the gap from IndyCar and Indy Pro 2000 is too large. That final step is necessary.
Indy Lights has not been an appealing option for years. It is a yearly conversation about what can be done to increase participation, but I believe everything has been done. Enough incentives and discounts have been offered to IndyCar teams. The teams know what they are getting, and the teams decided it is not worth it. The series is not financially viable for sponsors. One race is broadcasted on television all season. The remaining races are behind a paywall with fewer viewers.
Penske has professed commitment to Indy Lights and stated the hope each leader circle team in IndyCar will provide at least one Indy Lights entry. That sounds great, but it will be difficult to enforce. If Chip Ganassi, Sam Schmidt, Bobby Rahal and A.J. Foyt didn't view Indy Lights as a valuable expenditure before the pandemic, it likely will not afterward without significant changes. You cannot force teams to join the series. A.J. Foyt Racing is struggling to field two IndyCar teams, same with Carlin. Neither need to take on an Indy Lights program. The same goes for smaller teams. Dale Coyne Racing is not an empire. It is set up for two IndyCar programs. The space and manpower aren't there for it to take on an Indy Lights team.
Developmental series are costly and usually draw less return on investment. Indy Lights is not the only series struggling in this battle. The NASCAR Xfinity Series has seen Chip Ganassi Racing and Roush Fenway Racing withdraw from the series. Richard Petty Motorsports even had a team in the second division that was closed down. If NASCAR teams are having this problem with a series which has every race broadcasted on television, including network races, then IndyCar and Indy Lights are not going to find some magic formula for success.
IndyCar should be weary that having IndyCar teams prop up Indy Lights when it is against those teams' best interests could hurt IndyCar. The last thing IndyCar needs is Ganassi, Foyt, Rahal and Schmidt all closing down an IndyCar program to put a car on the Indy Lights grid, meeting the textbook definition of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Does IndyCar need to re-evaluate how Indy Lights is structured? Yes. Does IndyCar need to find a more affordable option for Indy Lights in terms of equipment? Yes. But making IndyCar teams spend a million dollars it does not have to field cars for drivers that do not exist is not the answer.
It is a bummer Indy Lights will not be around in 2020. For all the issues dragging the series down, it has become an exceptional development series and produced quality drivers despite lack of overall numbers. The last two champions and last two vice-champions are both on the current IndyCar grid. The defending IndyCar champion was an Indy Lights champion. There are some faults. None of the Indy Lights champions from 2012-2017 are in IndyCar full-time. You cannot expect 100% retention, but you would hope to have at least two or three more, especially when the likes of Spencer Pigot, Gabby Chaves and Ed Jones showed competency in IndyCar.
Not only has a series been lost but a year of development has been lost. This was shaping up to be Kyle Kirkwood's breakout season. Kirkwood won the U.S. F2000 and Indy Pro 2000 championships in convincing fashion. Kirkwood has won in nearly everything he has sat in, from Road to Indy series to LMP3 cars. He already had a victory in 2020, having won the 2020 IMSA Prototype Challenge season opener at Daytona.
Kirkwood is not a driver IndyCar should lose. He could be alongside Colton Hetra, Patricio O'Ward, Oliver Askew, Rinus VeeKay and more in IndyCar for the rest of the 2020s into the 2030s. This could have been Santiago Urrutia's long-awaited ascension into IndyCar. Urrutia had finished second, second and third in Indy Lights from 2016 to 2018. He is more than ready for IndyCar, but without the scholarship funding, Urrutia remains an outsider despite his results. Toby Sowery and Robert Megennis were both hoping to improve in their sophomore seasons. David Malukas could have been a surprise. None of these drivers will get this opportunity in 2020 and IndyCar has, effectively, been shutoff for all of them in 2021.
Without a guarantee Indy Lights will be back, what is the path to IndyCar if it doesn't return?
The gap is too great to go from Indy Pro 2000 to IndyCar. There are still going to be plenty of drivers in Formula Two who will see IndyCar as an option. Álex Palou came from Super Formula. None of those series prepare a driver for the circuits IndyCar race at, nor feature an oval. That is a minus. Felipe Nasr is on the cusp of an IndyCar debut after a handful of years in sports cars and after previously being in Formula One. Colin Braun is another sports car driver who has been linked to IndyCar opportunity. Ricky Taylor tested for Penske a few years ago. Scott McLaughlin appears set to move from Supercars to IndyCar in the future. If a driver is out there, an IndyCar can go get them, but that it not an option for every team.
There should be a development series that leads into IndyCar. The Road to Indy system has been incredible for the last decade. The North American open-wheel ladder system has been more connected than it has ever been. IndyCar has benefitted. American drivers have benefitted. Teams have benefitted. The system was working, even though Indy Lights was running down a cylinder.
Indy Lights is worth reviving, but whatever iteration it has in 2021 must be financially viable for the teams and not be some money pit because we will just end up right back where we started come 2024.
Champion From the Weekend
Eli Tomac won the Supercross championship, his first Supercross championship.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Eli Tomac but did you know...
Justin Haley won the NASCAR Grand National Series race from Talladega, his first victory in the series and Haley became the 32nd driver to win a race in all three NASCAR national touring series.
Cooper Webb won the Wednesday Supercross races from Salt Lake City, his fourth victory of the season. Zach Osborne won the Sunday season finale, his first career victory.
Coming Up This Weekend
NASCAR has its previously scheduled doubleheader from Pocono.
Supercars return with a round from Sydney Motorsports Park.
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