The IndyCar season didn't so much start 11 days as it stalled out.
One race down and there are still ten days until the next one. It was a lurch forward and the season doesn't really get start once IndyCar gets to Texas either. After Texas, there will be three weeks until the Long Beach round on April 10. The fourth round will be three weeks after that on May 1 at Barber Motorsports Park.
There are a few reasons for this calendar. St. Petersburg and Texas were both moved to dates that allowed those races to be broadcasted on NBC. Easter is also April 17. If it wasn't for Easter and NASCAR being at Talladega on April 24, Barber likely would have been one of those two weekends in late April. It would shorten the gaps but wouldn't entirely eliminate them.
Time off isn't a new problem for IndyCar. It is something the series has commonly battled, especially over the last decade. In recent years, it has mostly been at the start of the season.
In 2016, St. Petersburg moved to the middle of March, but it created a three-week gap until the second round at Phoenix. That gap grew by a week in 2017, as Phoenix moved to the end of April due to the Final Four of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament being the first weekend of April in Phoenix, and Long Beach was the second race. The gap between the first two races remained at a month in 2018. The problem was resolved in 2019 with Austin added two weeks after St. Petersburg, however, there was month gap between the fourth round of the season at Long Beach and the fifth round at the Grand Prix of Indianapolis. Austin fell off the schedule when it was cancelled due to the pandemic in 2020 and a return hasn't been mentioned since.
IndyCar has run 17 races or fewer in 11 of 14 seasons since reunification. However, IndyCar has not had more than 17 race weekends since reunification. In 2008, Long Beach and Motegi were the same weekend, as IndyCar fulfilled the Long Beach contract with the Champ Car teams running the Panoz DP01 chassis while the IndyCar teams ran Motegi as scheduled. In 2013 and 2014, IndyCar had three doubleheader weekends, meaning though there were 19 races and 18 races in those respective seasons, there were only 16 race weekends and 15 race weekends.
At IndyCar's current size, it struggles to be noticed. When the season started in late March and ended in late August or early September, people said the season was too short. IndyCar has spread its races out to have an earlier start and a slightly later finish and now the complaint is the amount of downtime during the season.
The easiest solution is to add a few races and fill the gaps, but IndyCar teams are maxed out at the current schedule size. The financial resources have not been there for an 18th race or 17th race weekend over the last decade. The series deserves credit for not biting the bullet and being irresponsible adding a race at the financial detriment of the teams, but after more than a decade at relatively the same size, a few different title sponsors, and with a new television contract starting this season, when will adding one more race not be an unreasonable financial burden?
Seventeen races fall in the Goldilocks zone. Not too many, but not too few, just the right amount. When an IndyCar season ends, you wish there were a few more, but it does not feel like an insufficient calendar. Simultaneously, the IndyCar season never feels too long. There is always urgency. There isn't a point where you feel like you can look away and not miss a thing. Each races has significant weight toward the championship. Seventeen isn't the only number of races that would feel just right. There is some room for IndyCar to grow.
In 2008, Formula One had 18 races and ended on the first Sunday in November. There are 22 Formula One races scheduled for 2022 and the final race will be the third Sunday in November. And Formula One is still looking to grow. NASCAR has been at 36 races for over 20 years, but this season sees only one scheduled off-weekend during the Cup season, the third Sunday in June. NASCAR will run 37 of 38 weekends from Daytona 500 on February 20 to the Phoenix finale on November 6 with the exhibition All-Star Race included the weekend before Memorial Day.
Meanwhile, IndyCar looks the same as it has been. IndyCar has arguably dropped to the third biggest series in the United States behind Formula One. It could arguably be fourth when you consider the television numbers the Superstar Racing Experience averaged over six weekends on CBS last summer.
Part of IndyCar's fall behind Formula One is because Formula One is regularly competing, as well as the Drive to Survive series. This season will see nine instances of consecutive races taking account for 19 of the 22 races. Twenty-two races is a lot for IndyCar, but 19 or 20 races, especially if IndyCar is going to start in February, should not be unobtainable. If anything, IndyCar needs to grow to survive.
Gaps are not a death kneel for a series. Formula One still has its summer break in August. That didn't hurt Formula One's viewership in the United States because it was worth the wait and the summer break will be the only time Formula One is off for consecutive weekends in the 2022 season. IndyCar has three stretches of consecutive weekends off bevoe we even get to the fourth race of the year! People invest in Formula One and are willing to wait a week. IndyCar does not have that level of interest, but the occasional two-week break isn't a bad thing. However, four races in a ten-week stretch to open a season is not a recipe for success.
The only choices are for IndyCar to either contract and return to starting in late March and ending Labor Day weekend or earlier, or IndyCar must add more races and accept increased costs. With IndyCar having more races than ever on network television in 2022, and that happened in part because of IndyCar's willingness to spread itself into February, IndyCar must plug up those gaps.
It is not healthy to have such a slow start to the season. Formula One starts the same weekend as IndyCar's second round at Texas, but Formula One will have completed more races by the last day of April than IndyCar.
IndyCar doesn't need significant growth. It shouldn't be reaching to where Formula One and NASCAR are at. IndyCar needs two races. Just two. Barber and Long Beach will move around as Easter moves. If Barber was a weekend earlier, April wouldn't be that big of a problem, but the gaps would still be there in early March and late April/early May.
At some point, IndyCar must realize its lack of races is holding it back. Organizing a race is easier said than done. There aren't any racetrack beating down the door to host an IndyCar race. If there were any, those tracks would already be on the schedule. But IndyCar must be ambitious. It must find at least one place that can hold a race and draw a crowd in early March. Then it needs to find another track for another spring race.
IndyCar has been smart, and the current schedule works financially for the teams, but if IndyCar is going to continue starting in February to accommodate for network television windows to increase exposure, the series and the teams must realize multiple gaps of three weeks or longer is a poor strategy and it has to take a chance with another race or two.
