Here is a rundown of what got me thinking...
Chase Elliott broke his leg on a snowboard. Many pit crew members were delayed getting to Las Vegas, and went right from the airport to the racetrack for the Truck race. More history was made in Daytona. A lengthy wait ended. Esteban Ocon had about every penalty imaginable in Bahrain. McLaren needed a lot of air to complete this race. Indy Lights made a mess of its season opener, and then IndyCar doubled down and made a bigger mess, and the IndyCar season opener is on my mind.
And Now We Wait
IndyCar was back on track this weekend in St. Petersburg. After 174 days without a race, 27 drivers took to the waterfront streets for a 180-mile race and after two hours, five minutes and 30 seconds, Marcus Ericsson won the 20th Grand Prix of St. Petersburg and Ericsson begins the 2023 season as the championship leader.
And now we wait. After 174 days of waiting for race one, we will wait 27 days until race number two. In 201 days, IndyCar will have raced once. In that same 201-day time frame, the NASCAR Cup Series will have raced 14 times, Formula One will have run nine races, MotoGP will have completed seven grand prix, the World Rally Championship will have run six rallies, hell, even IMSA will have run three races in that timeframe!
This is old news, but each year it cannot be ignored. IndyCar inevitably stumbles into a month break.
For the better part of the last decade, this month break has been inescapable. It was once late in the season, as the 2013 season had a month between Baltimore on Labor Day weekend and the Houston doubleheader the first weekend in October after no race could be organized in the middle of September. A round in Mugello, Italy was floated as an option but it never even made a draft of the schedule.
After a few rather condensed schedules, the 2016 season saw St. Petersburg move earlier into March and it created three weeks between it and Phoenix. That gap between round one and round two grew by a week the following season, as Phoenix moved to late April while Long Beach remained mid-April. There was also a three-week break between Mid-Ohio and Pocono at the start of August that year. That month gap between races one and two remained in 2018, even as Phoenix moved back to the second round of the season. There was still a three-week break between Mid-Ohio and Pocono.
IndyCar got a break in 2019 when Austin joined the schedule at the end of March, but that month break shifted deeper into spring, between Long Beach in April and the Grand Prix of Indianapolis in May. There were still three weeks between Mid-Ohio and Pocono as well.
Throw out 2020 due to the pandemic and let's be thankful we had any IndyCar races at all. In 2021, even after a delayed start due to pandemic concerns, there was over a month between Mid-Ohio on July 4th and Nashville on August 8, mostly because the Toronto round was cancelled due to travel restrictions, but a year after IndyCar organizing races on the fly, the series decided not to fill an open window in its schedule, even though the television time had already been set aside. Last season, when St. Petersburg returned to the opening round and was held on February 27, but Texas was three weeks later and then there were another three weeks until Long Beach after that.
This hasn't been a new problem, and everyone knows it must be resolved.
A month break doesn't have to be the end of the world. Formula One schedules a month off every summer and that hasn't stopped it from growing globally, and most notbaly in IndyCar's backyard, the United States. But it is a bad thing to have a month off after the first race of the season. It is quite baffling that IndyCar would allow itself to immediately step out of the spotlight after it was in hibernation for nearly six months.
Drivers are even voicing displeasure with the long offseason. They cannot be much happier to have a month off after one race.
IndyCar does have itself confined to a column of North America. The furthest race to the East is Toronto and 12 of 17 races are East of the Mississippi. Three of 16 race weekends are at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
If this is supposed to be a serious national series, it must find a way to have at least one race on the East Coast. It should probably figure out a way to have at least two. There are over 350 million people in the United States. The audience is there. Baltimore drew around 70,000 people on race day. We are nearly a decade removed from the last Baltimore race, but all those people in the Mid-Atlantic region didn't die in the last ten years. Many are still there, and there are many more the series could attract for the first time.
Between Loudon, Watkins Glen, Pocono, Dover, Richmond, Virginia International Raceway, Charlotte, Darlington, Atlanta, Road Atlanta, Homestead and now North Wilkesboro, there are a dozen tracks on the Eastern Seaboard hosting major series. They aren't all suited for IndyCar, but there are at least two IndyCar could make work. Three were on an IndyCar schedule at some point in the last six years.
The series has confined itself to the Midwest, but it must expand beyond that section of the country. Everyone involved knows it, but IndyCar cannot keep putting itself in a corner. When the problem has existed for the better part of a decade, IndyCar has been choosing to live with it rather than fix it. It cannot be ignored any longer.
Laguna Seca is beloved but it doesn't draw a crowd worthy of a season finale. Move it to two weeks after St. Petersburg and then flip Portland and Gateway so the season ends Labor Day weekend, before the start of the NFL season, on an oval. That would be step one toward fixing the problem, eradicating the one-month gap without having to do much heavy lifting. It would be a start. Once that is addressed, we can get into schedule expansion and decreasing the offseason by at least a month.
Many series are taking chances. NASCAR has added a dirt race, runs a race in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, is constructing a street course in Chicago and is reviving North Wilkesboro after it was abandoned for nearly a quarter century. Formula One is running its most races ever in a season and there are now three races in the United States, which will include a race on the Las Vegas Strip. The bare minimum IndyCar can do is fill the gaps that already exist to create a basic rhythm for its calendar.
That shouldn't even be considered taking a chance. It is basic common sense.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Marcus Ericsson, but did you know...
Max Verstappen won the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Ralph Boschung and Théo Pourchaire split the Formula Two races from Bahrain. It was Boschung's first victory in 96 starts after competing in seven Formula Two seasons. Pepe Martí and Gabriel Bortoleto split the Formula Three races.
Danial Frost won the Indy Lights race from St. Petersburg. Christian Brooks and Myles Rowe split the USF Pro 2000 races. Lochie Hughes and Nikita Johnson split the U.S. F2000 races.
James Daskalos and Memo Gidley split the GT America races from St. Petersburg. Ross Chouest and Jason Bell split the races in the GT4 class.
William Byron won the NASCAR Cup race from Las Vegas. Austin Hill won the Grand National Series race, his second victory in three races this season. Kyle Busch won the Truck race, his 63rd Truck victory.
Álvaro Bautista (race one and race two) and Toprak Razgatlioglu (SuperPole) split the World Superbike races from Mandalika. Can Öncü and Federico Caricasulo split the World Supersport races.
Eli Tomac won the Supercross race from Daytona, his fifth victory of the season, his seventh Daytona victory and his 49th career victory, breaking a tie with Ricky Carmichael for third all-time.
Coming Up This Weekend
NASCAR moves down to Phoenix.
There will be the Daytona 200.
Supercars opens its season with a return to Newcastle.
Supercross moves north to Indianapolis.
