Oscar Piastri had the weekend from hell in Baku and couldn't complete a lap, but fortunately for Piastri his McLaren teammate Lando Norris did not have a great weekend, and Norris finished seventh, scoring six points and meaning Piastri lost fewer points to Norris this weekend than had Norris won and Piastri finished second. Unfortunately, for both McLaren drivers Max Verstappen won and he is only 69 points with seven races to go. Elsewhere, there was teammate-on-teammate violence in NASCAR. Loudon is giving out much smaller lobsters, which feels like it should be the sign something is not right. A great young driver matched a record but no one has signed him long-term. There was an endurance race at Indianapolis, and that is what I guess I am writing about.
This Was a Bad Time for an Endurance Race
Look, I didn't have anything great on my mind. It was a pretty dull week, we covered the big stuff, and nothing else stood out, but something crossed my mind on Sunday. Why was IMSA running an endurance race this weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway?
Besides having an opening in the schedule, there is no great reason to justify running an endurance race this weekend.
For starters, IMSA didn't really need a fifth endurance race added to its calendar when Indianapolis returned two years ago, but that is not how money works. If Roger Penske wants a six-hour race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the middle of September, Roger Penske is going to get a six-hour endurance race in the middle of September! This is despite years of push back from IMSA to lengthen races at other circuits due to concerns about number of hours raced in a given season and trying to keep budgets now.
Mmhmm.
Either way, IMSA was at Indianapolis for another race at the Speedway, but why now?
Indianapolis is quite busy all spring and summer. There is the Indianapolis 500 and all the additional IndyCar stuff in May, historics are in June, NASCAR runs in July. Then there is the dirt track that has its few events. It is tough to fit anything during the summer. Besides, IMSA has the space in September before it ends the season with Petit Le Mans from Road Atlanta in October, but let's be honest, there is not a worse time of year to run an endurance on a Sunday.
For starters, an endurance race this time of year on a Sunday is a poor reminder of all the daylight we are losing. The sun is setting closer to 7:00 p.m. now. It is terrible. Who wants to be out at 6:00 p.m. on a Sunday? It is going to be dark before you get home. That's a bummer.
Second, what type of attention do you think this race is going to get? The NFL is on all day. IMSA started the race at noon and the first three hours were shown on Peacock. The final three hours were on NBC. It is still network television, but I don't know who is going to sit down and pick up a race that is already half over and stick with it to the end.
That is also the nature of endurance racing. It is a six-hour event! Few networks give six hours to any event. IMSA's fifth endurance race is not getting full network television treatment. It didn't even get a sniff of cable, and I know the viewership world is changing, but there is still an audience there that is otherwise not watching it via a streaming platform.
Strangely enough, there was also a disconnect between the IMSA race and the NASCAR race. I know only about 90 minutes of the IMSA race was complete by the time NASCAR coverage began, but this was a chance to have one lead into the other and no cross-pollination happened whatsoever. It is a layup, and it wasn't taken on the broadcast front.
Third, don't endurance races feel like a summer thing or at least a Saturday thing? I know autumn only technically begins this afternoon, but most of our summers have been over for the last three weeks.
Yes, the 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring are winter events, with Sebring sometimes falling in spring, but those races are held in Florida where the weather might not be the most hospitable from April through October. A summer date feels right for the endurance race. Turn it into an extended weekend. There will plenty of daylight when the race is over. It is great.
Doing it now and a Sunday is not a great combination.
Petit Le Mans does it right. It is a Saturday event. It takes up all of Saturday, and you can use Sunday to recuperate and get ready for the week ahead. It makes sense.
I know this will not be an issue next year, as Indianapolis will no longer be an endurance race, but it will run the regular two-hour-and-45-minute distance while Road America will become a six-hour race, and it will be run in August. Indianapolis will remain in mid-September.
The sprint distance will likely be better for Indianapolis, especially if it has a network television window. Everyone will get to see a race from start to finish rather than jumping in half-through. People have been clamoring for a longer Road America race since Grand-Am and the American Le Mans Series merged over a decade ago. People just wanted a four-hour race at Road America. Six hours will be satisfactory.
I would still make the argument a race this time of year would be better on a Saturday. There is competition no matter when you run. IMSA likely could not get a Saturday afternoon network television spot with all the college football that is on. It is really a lose-lose situation, but IMSA isn't IndyCar. It isn't packing it all up before the leaves change colors. IMSA runs a successful event in October, but hoping to somehow win the counter-programming battle against the NFL is not as great a moral victory as you can twist it to be.
IMSA was up against NASCAR yesterday for crying out loud, a playoff NASCAR race at that. If we are talking about not splitting racing fans, don't put IMSA directly against NASCAR. If anything, run Indianapolis on the Sunday following the Bristol night race on Saturday, which is actually what will happen next year. It doesn't force people to choose, and the NASCAR race can be used to promote the IMSA race.
For all the good that IMSA does, it does have an odd way it ends it season. The GTP class had not run in six weeks, and Indianapolis was only the second time it has completed since the start of July. It will be another three weeks until it is on track again.
With the length of IMSA's races, the schedule will not be as robust as some of the other motorsports disciplines out there, but I do think IMSA does a terrible job with summer. The schedule is so front loaded that it is out of sight for most of the summer, and with 11 total weekends, only nine of which features the top class, it feels likes IMSA is too underexposed to be properly noticed.
The schedule is not going to expand to 16 or 17 total race weekends with at least a dozen featuring GTP anytime soon, but for as much as we nag on IndyCar for its scheduling woes, IMSA has not seen much evolution over the last 12 years. There are parts of the country and circuits that never have IMSA come to town. You know where you need to go if you want to see IMSA, but it does feel like the series could be more present than it actually is.
Champions From the Weekend
The #32 Team WRT BMW of Kelvin van der Linde and Charles Weerts clinched the GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup championship with a victory in the second race of the final round form Valencia. The #63 GRT - Grasser Racing Team Lamborghini of Luca Engstler and Jordan Pepper won the first race of the weekend.
Jett Lawrence clinched the SuperMotocross world championship with finishes of first and second from Las Vegas. Jett's brother Hunter won the second race of the weekend.
Jo Shimoda won the 250cc SuperMotocross world championships with finishes of first and third from Las Vegas. Seth Hammaker won the second race of the weekend.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Max Verstappen, but did you know...
The #31 Whelen Racing Cadillac of Jack Aitken, Earl Bamber and Frederik Vesti won the IMSA race from Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The #11 TDS Racing Oreca-Nissan of Mikkel Jensen, Hunter McElrea and Steven Thomas won in LMP2. The #64 Ford Multimatic Motorsports Ford of Mike Rockenfeller and Sebastian Priaulx won in GTD Pro. The #70 Inception Racing Ferrari of Brendan Iribe, Frederik Schandorff and Ollie Millroy won in GTD.
Ryan Blaney won the NASCAR Cup race from Loudon, his third victory of the season. Corey Heim won the Truck race, his ninth victory, and Heim matched Greg Biffle's record for most victories in a season in the Truck series history.
Dino Beganovic (sprint) and Jak Crawford (feature) split the Formula Two races from Baku.
The #24 Kondo Racing Nissan of Tsugio Matsuda and Teppei Natori won the Super GT race from Sportsland SUGO. The #60 LM Corsa Lexus of Hiroki Yoshimoto and Shunsuke Kohno won in GT300.
Coming Up This Weekend
MotoGP could see the championship clinched at Motegi.
The FIA World Endurance Championship is racing at Fuji because of course it is the same weekend MotoGP is in Japan.
World Superbike will be at Aragón.
NASCAR will race at Kansas.
