Sebring went to the wire in almost every class. Corvette broke out some silver. Corvette also will not field GTD-Pro for the 2022 IMSA season. Mazda MX-5 Cup continues to be the best series on the planet. Shane van Gisbergen was incredible with a broken collarbone and made an amazing pass to open the weekend. The Supercross championship is entering its final stages. NASCAR should consider using Atlanta's infield road course when it returns in July. IndyCar had an iRacing event, Álex Palou won his Ganassi debut at Montreal, and I have to double-back and talk about that. Here is a rundown of what got me thinking.
Credit Where Credit is Due
Two weeks ago, after a long and quiet winter, I picked apart IndyCar for having not held any iRacing events during the offseason after highly suggesting the exhibition would continue as a bridge during the 2020-21 offseason. Three days later, IndyCar announced it would hold a three-race series, all on Thursday nights, over three weeks in late March and early April. This past Thursday was the first event.
I have to give IndyCar credit. It came up with a series and it fulfilled what a sufficient preseason iRacing series should be. Three events are plenty. It's not too many that it becomes overkill. It's not only one or two events that people could miss. Three events provide enough of a stage to present the series. It allows for the variety of IndyCar to be showcased and this year's IndyCar iRacing calendar presents something different.
The first race was at Montreal, a track that once hosted Champ Car but has not featured North American open-wheel racing's top series since 2006. Round two will be at Homestead, a track IndyCar has a notable history at, but Homestead hasn't hosted IndyCar in a decade. The final event will be a fan voted venue between Kentucky, Phoenix, Sonoma and Sebring.
Last Thursday's opening event from Montreal was a good start. It was a straightforward race, 32 laps, no gimmicks, first across the line was the winner. It was streamed on IndyCar's YouTube page and other social media avenues and while it was not broadcasted on NBCSN like the events were in 2020, there are advantages to streaming. There is greater flexibility if an event goes long. There is time to interview three or four drivers and get every question answered. The broadcast isn't rushing for a hard out-time. Another perk is there are no commercial breaks. You get to see the entire race, all the passes, all the spins and all the necessary replays.
There was plenty of time over the winter though to set up a television broadcast strategy with these events. It has been a hectic period as sports leagues did not take place during the pandemic and many leagues are competing in a condensed window after seasons were delayed last year. The prime windows IndyCar got last year are not available, but there is some time for IndyCar to fit a 90-minute window, or even a 60-minute window, and there is also a different avenue.
NBC launched the streaming service Peacock last summer and Peacock will be where live IndyCar practice and qualifying sessions can be found in 2021. These iRacing events would have been great for Peacock, a place where you don't have to worry about hard deadlines and commercials, and it would have been a chance to get people acclimated to visiting the platform to see IndyCar ahead of the 2021 season.
The race format was enough as well for these iRacing events. It took about an hour and you had about a round of pit stops. Once all the post-race interviews were complete, an hour and 15 minutes had surpassed, and it was over. It didn't require someone to give up their entire night. I think there could be a little more of a show at the top. A few pre-race interviews, especially with those starting at the front, would have been beneficial. The broadcast jumped right into the race, but you didn't get a sense of who was where until the starting grid came up. I feel like there needed to be a little more of buildup.
There are a few areas necessary for improvements.
One of the detractors from the opening weekend was the lack of IndyCar drivers in IndyCar's iRacing event.
There are about 24 full-time IndyCar drivers. There were only 18 entrants for this first event. About ten of them will be regulars in the 2021 IndyCar season.
I will bet IndyCar had been working on this for a while, but when this is condensed over three weeks, announced a week before the first race and it appeared the racing schedule that has already began was not thoroughly taken into consideration, you are going to lose out to scheduling conflicts.
The first event was held the Thursday of 12 Hours of Sebring weekend. Simon Pagenaud, Alexander Rossi, Scott Dixon, Sébastien Bourdais and Jimmie Johnson were all busy with sports cars. Conor Daly had a previously scheduled sponsorship engagement. Those are six notable drivers unavailable, one of which is the defending champion, one of which has won one of the last two Indianapolis 500s, two of which are two of IndyCar's last three most popular drivers and the other is the center of the commercials promoting IndyCar's first race of the season. You have to get at least half of those drivers in this event.
This was avoidable and it points that more work should have been done to ensure the drivers were available. None of Andretti Autosport's full-time drivers were available. Ed Carpenter Racing ran an all Road to Indy lineup. Arrow McLaren SP, the team obsessed with becoming IndyCar's fourth best team, didn't even participate. Only two drivers that finished in the top ten of the 2020 championship competed (Josef Newgarden and Takuma Sato). I know this is a voluntary exhibition and some drivers are going to decline, but participation dictates whether or not these events will be a success.
It sounds like more drivers will be participating at the Homestead round and I hope even more are available for the final event. In the future, a little more schedule awareness is necessary.
But I think we can still have a little more fun with these events. The opening race was good, but with iRacing, I think it is ok to take chances. Have a random caution pop up. Invert the starting order. Invite a few guests. You can have fun and a fair competition.
I look at the four choices for the fan vote track and those are pretty boring options. IndyCar has raced at Phoenix and Sonoma recently. Kentucky is tame. Sebring is different, but is that really the biggest IndyCar can dream?
Dinner with Racers had IndyCar at Talladega race alongside NASCAR Cup cars and the Porsche 919 Hybrid last year. If you want to draw viewers, have Talladega as an option and have it against Bathurst, Eldora and Monza (road course or oval). We can take a step out of reality for a second with these iRacing events and stepping out of reality will get more people interested and might get more drivers interested in competing. If you are going to do something, do something that gets people talking.
I am glad IndyCar ended up having something. It still needs a sanctioned iRacing series, but these are the right steps to make in the infancy of the 2020s. This is year two of increased iRacing involvement and we are still learning, but we are getting an idea of how this can fit with a real-life championship. We can take these missteps and apply them to better implementation in future years.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Álex Palou, but did you know...
The #5 JDC-Miler Motorsports Cadillac of Loïc Duval, Tristan Vautier and Sébastien Bourdais won the 12 Hours of Sebring. The #52 PR1/Mathiasen Motorsports Oreca-Gibson of Scott Huffaker, Mikkel Jensen and Ben Keating won in the LMP2 class. The #54 CORE Autosport Jon Bennett, Colin Braun and George Kurtz won in the LMP3 class. The #79 WeatherTech Racing Porsche of Cooper MacNeil, Mathieu Jaminet and Matt Campbell won in GTLM. The #9 Pfaff Motorsport Porsche of Laurens Vanthoor, Zach Robichon and Lars Kern won in GTD.
Ryan Blaney won the NASCAR Cup race from Atlanta. Justin Allgaier won the Grand National Series race. Kyle Busch won the Truck race, his 60th Truck victory.
Shane van Gisbergen swept the three Supercars races from Sandown.
Cooper Webb swept the Supercross races from Arlington.
Coming Up This Weekend
Formula One opens its season in Bahrain.
MotoGP opens its season in Qatar.
NASCAR has its dirt race at Bristol.
The aforementioned IndyCar iRacing round at Homestead.
