It was a sprint weekend in China, and a near 20-year drought ended. Formula One's April opened up as the Bahrain and Saudi Arabia rounds were postponed due to conflict in the Middle East. Max Verstappen confirmed his Nürburgring 24 Hour program with Mercedes-AMG. F1 the movie won the Academy Award for Best Sound. Conor Daly will drive for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing at the Indianapolis 500. It was a generally positive weekend in Arlington where Kyle Kirkwood took victory, and IndyCar has concluded a three-week swing to start the season where it saw some actual momentum.
Mo-Mo-Momentum
Three weeks, three races, and IndyCar feels like it has established itself in 2026, something that would not be the case in the recent past. It has been well-covered IndyCar's struggles with scheduling, and for a long-time the start of the season has been disjointed. There would be St. Petersburg, but then there would be three weeks or four weeks until the next race, and then there might be another two weeks to the race after that. Even before the third race of this streak, IndyCar was seeing the benefit of being present.
Viewership did not fall off the cliff from race one to race two as we saw in 2025, and for a Saturday afternoon race in Phoenix, viewership exceeded expectations. It is still early in the season, but IndyCar announced its presences to start 2026. It has not been hidden, and there is slim chance if you have been following either IndyCar or NASCAR or any Fox propety that you did not know IndyCar was back. The only question is what took so long?
Some aspects of scheduling have been out of IndyCar's control, but IndyCar also made a choice not prioritizing a greater balance at the start of its season and making sure it was regularly active and available. It didn't necessarily need to be a weekly thing for the first part of March, it just had to be more present, and not go missing for a handful of weeks while NASCAR and Formula One were running at a consistent rate and the rest of the sports world remained busy.
How long will this last? And this question covers two fronts.
In the macro, IndyCar's start to 2026 will need to carry over the entire season. Even for NASCAR, the viewership does not remain at the same level from the opening portion of the season to the very end. NASCAR has a great opening month or so, but viewership dips as spring starts and continues a decline into the summer. There are periods where it levels out. Even at the end of the season, the final races are pretty even, but far from where they started.
IndyCar has actually been pretty consistent in comparison. The difference is the viewership is pretty low. IndyCar is aiming for a million viewers each race while NASCAR is somewhere in the four million range before dropping to the three million range and then settling the finish of its season somewhere in the two million range.
Some IndyCar races hit a million. Some races falls short. For the opening two races to be over 1.2 million viewers is a big change for the series, and it is the level IndyCar should be looking for. It needs incremental growth. Last year was bolstered because of a big rise in the Indianapolis 500, but plenty of races were down, and there were eight consecutive races where IndyCar did not draw over 800,000 viewers from Gateway in June until the Nashville season finale. It needs more races to be over a million and in that 1.2 million range. If it can have half the races at that level, it will be a great season, and it will show how important a good start will be.
Now, how long will this last?
IndyCar was able to have three consecutive weeks of races to open 2026 and four race weekends during the five weekends of March, but it will not always line up that way. The Phoenix race was a combination weekend with NASCAR. Everyone was positive about the experience but that doesn't mean it will continue. That also doesn't mean NASCAR will not move Phoenix. If Phoenix is moved to late February, will IndyCar still tag along and have its season opener be on a NASCAR weekend when it will be third on the totem pole? What if Phoenix moves to the same weekend as St. Petersburg or Arlington? This is where you must be careful with what you wish for. It is an event IndyCar has no control over and it must make accommodations should NASCAR want it to continue.
Even if it isn't three races on the spin, IndyCar needs to be around and keep people engaged, though I would argue a pair of races to start would be a good thing. It is a six-month off season. To have a race and then have it followed with a week off is not the start IndyCar needs. It would be good to return and remain around for a minute. People need to get back in the flow of the season. They have already have enough of a break. Some up and stick around for a while. Disappearing, even if only for a week, should be avoided.
If there is anything to learn from this three-week period is IndyCar should make it a priority to be around. Some aspects of scheduling are out of its control, but it is ultimately IndyCar's choice how present it wants to be. Not being around for most of March should no longer be a choice. Even without Phoenix, it has three parts. We know we can trust on St. Petersburg and Barber Motorsports Park being around. Arlington just completed year one and street courses do not have long shelf lives, but the pieces are at least there for 2027, and IndyCar can make a choice to prioritizing filling the start of the season when considering future venues.
There is still an upcoming break. There is a week off before Barber on March 29, but then there will be two weeks off until Long Beach. One of those is Easter and there is a general acceptance that no race is going to draw well on Easter. It is a built in off-week. Is taking the following week off going to be too much? We will have to wait and see, but the difference from 2025 to 2026 is IndyCar will have four races in the bag by the time we get to Long Beach unlike last year when it had only two races in the six weeks prior.
We will see how far this momentum goes. Long Beach is the final race before the month of May, and Kyle Larson is not walking through that door. We will find out how well Arlington did soon enough and maybe we will find it fell back down to earth and was level to where things were in 2025. In that case, the work will continue, but if things carry over for another race, there will be good reason to feel positive. The hard part will be keeping it up over remainder of the season. It isn't supposed to be easy.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Kyle Kirkwood, but did you know...
Andrea Kimi Antonelli won the Chinese Grand Prix, his first career victory. George Russell won the sprint race.
Max Taylor won the Indy Lights race from Arlington. Leonardo Escarpioni and Jeff Jeffers split the USF Pro 2000 races.
Denny Hamlin won the NASCAR Cup race from Las Vegas, his 61st career victory. Kyle Larson won the Grand National Series race.
Takamoto Katsuta won Safari Rally Kenya, his first career victory.
Coming Up This Weekend
MotoGP makes its first trip to Brazil in over two decades.
It is 12 Hours of Sebring weekend.
NASCAR is not throwing it back in Darlington.
Formula E has its first race at Jarama.
Supercross returns from its week off with a round in Birmingham.
