IndyCar had a hard day's night in Iowa and Josef Newgarden took another victory on the back of utter dominance that even Mother Nature would curtsy to out of respect. New England was busy and the region had a trio of excellent races, including a photo finish at Lime Rock Park and a physical final lap at Loudon. The Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters visited a new venue and W Series tagged along and did something we have been talking about for a long time. The European Le Mans Series spent the night in Barcelona. Here is a run down of what got me thinking.
Why Are We Racing Saturday Night?
It is pretty clear what this one is about and it comes off as negative. Why are we racing Saturday night?
In a modern age where series need to maximum exposure for sponsors, racing Saturday night goes against that entire premise.
The Toronto IndyCar race got 502,000 viewers last week. The number of viewers for the last four Texas races was 388,000 viewers, 561,000 viewers, 336,000 viewers and 366,000 viewers. The three Phoenix races got 363,000 viewers, 343,000 viewers and last year's race was a 0.2 rating, off of the 0.21 rating/343,000 viewers from 2017. Gateway's two night races has drawn 359,000 and 391,000 viewers. The Iowa race was delayed over four hours but even if it had started on time the rating would likely be off from the week prior.
To be fair, it is hard to look at the data and pick out that Sunday races are clearly better in terms of viewership than Saturday night races. The ratings are all over the place for IndyCar. If you look at Long Beach, two of the last four years have gotten 321,000 viewers and 370,000 viewers. The Barber race this year got 296,000 viewers.
Then there are network TV races versus cable TV races and a network TV race is always going to win out. Road America got the network TV bump this year with a rating of 0.77 with 1,104,000 million viewers, well up from a 0.22 rating and 322,000 viewers in 2017.
It can at least be argued a Saturday night race has a lower ceiling than a Sunday race. Why allow a race to be on Saturday night then? Why race on Saturday night when you know 400,000 viewers would be great success but a Sunday afternoon race could see you over 500,000 viewers and maybe even getting to 600,000 viewers? If you are trying to get the biggest audience possible, why not race at that ideal television window?
The truth is, we like Saturday night racing. I like Saturday night. I want Saturday night races. It is something to look forward to and it looks great. A Saturday night race, whether it be Iowa or Texas or Gateway or going back to the days of Kentucky, Chicagoland, Richmond and even Milwaukee. It looks great and it mixes it up. Not every race has to be in the daytime.
There is also the fact that for some places it is better to have a night race. Iowa went back to a night race this year because the track hosted a Sunday afternoon race for three consecutive years and the attendance dipped. Heat is part of the reason. A night race is cooler than a day race and that is beneficial in Iowa in July, Texas in June and Illinois in August. It is just common sense. Instead of racing when it is 95º F, race when it 80º F and dropping with night settling in.
An argument could be made to give each track a date most suitable for a Sunday race and that is a valid argument but it is easier said than done. Texas has a NASCAR race in the spring and one late in autumn. Add to that IndyCar is already busy in April, May and doesn't want to run later than mid-September.
This isn't an IndyCar-only problem. NASCAR has a similar issue. The spring Richmond race was run on a Sunday in 2015, 2016 and 2017; the three races had 5.2 million viewers, 4.749 million and 4.579 million viewers. The race switched back to a night race in 2018 and the last two years the race has gotten 3.033 million and 2.787 million viewers and all of those races were on network Fox, so there is no cable drop to account for.
A Saturday night race is likely going to be a cable race. Saturday night primetime, even in the summer when fewer people are hanging around the television to begin with, is not going to be given up for a race on network television. The audience isn't there. A re-run of a television show four years ago is going to do better. It is just how it is, no matter how great the race will be. In turn, those tracks are always going to lose out because it cannot sell a title sponsor on a network television window but that is again a track's choice. Iowa could have kept its Sunday afternoon time slot and been in the running for a network television race. However, the benefit of running Saturday night and attracting more people to the track might be better than having a network race on Sunday afternoon.
With that said, the series and the network is still going to try and get the best television rating it can. There was a reason why Iowa was scheduled for a 7:15 p.m. ET, 6:15 p.m. local start time. One, because it was right after the NASCAR Xfinity Series race and it is one race leading into another, the hope is to keep the people tuned in and the second reason is the later you go the worse it gets. Iowa, if it had gone off as scheduled, was always going to end prior to sunset but IndyCar and NBC Sports knows it can't start a race at 9:15 p.m. ET and hope to get a respectable rating. Both parties are trying to minimize the damage and maximize the audience.
If Saturday is the problem, is there another night for night racing?
Sunday night races appear worse on paper. The rating might not be that bad, we saw that with the Chicagoland NASCAR Cup race last month. Though the race was delayed three hours, the Sunday night race drew 2.407 million viewers, down from 2.548 million from the year before but not as bad as it could have been. The problem with Sunday night races is people are not going to show up.
Unfortunately, motorsports are not baseball or hockey or basketball or football and will pack the house on Sunday night even though there is work the next day. Motorsports has yet to figure out how to draw a decent crowd without having most of the fan base travel from two hours or more away. If IndyCar or NASCAR could get 50,000 people from within an hour of the racetracks to show up then maybe Sunday night races would have a prayer but as of now that isn't the case.
And here we come to the always discussed, never explored weeknight races idea. Everyone is intrigued but nobody is sold. If Sunday would be a disaster, how would Monday through Friday be any better in terms of attendance? The one hope for weeknight races is the television rating would be a big kick up from what we see on weekends. Summer is notorious for being a dead sports window. The only thing going on every night is baseball. There is no basketball or hockey. The stage is open for the taking but no one wants to take the risk.
I don't want night racing to go away but I am trying to figure out how it can succeed. I think Saturday night races are a great option for IndyCar. Richmond is one track floating around that could return to the IndyCar schedule and that would likely be a night race and that is great. For starters, IndyCar has been doing a great job of avoiding racing head-to-head on Sunday with NASCAR. Some conflicts cannot be avoided or some conflicts do not exist at all if one series is on the East Coast and the other is on the West Coast but, when the series are in the same time zone, the way each side wins is if one races Saturday night and the other gets Sunday.
There is something exciting about a night race that certain day races cannot match. The only notable difference is the time of day. Racetrack race differently between night and day but we cannot give a value to that difference. It is just a great way to cap off a day. You spend all day waiting, going through life and then settle in for the action after all the chores are done and dinner has long been digested. It is a treat and on top of it all, we still get our Sunday and that Sunday is open for us to do whatever we please.
In the IndyCar world, the number of oval races is low and there are many not on the schedule that seem like possible options. Of all those hopeful oval races, the only ones I would want to be day races are Michigan, which doesn't have lights to begin with but even if it did I would want a day race, Milwaukee because we see what type of crowd Road America can draw with a start time before noon, and Darlington, because I want it to fill that early spring window in March that once hosted a NASCAR race. That's it. If Kentucky, Chicagoland, Kansas, Richmond, Phoenix, Fontana, Las Vegas, Memphis, Charlotte or Homestead are returning to the IndyCar schedule it better be a night race. I guess Loudon would have to be a day race and I am fine with that but the rest of them should be night races.
Saturday night is the best of a bad situation. If we are going to have a night race, Saturday is the best day for it. A Saturday night race is a cheat day. It is when we have something that is not good for us but we like it anyway because it makes us feel good. Sometimes the best thing you can do is bad for you.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Josef Newgarden but did you know...
Kevin Harvick won the NASCAR Cup race from Loudon, his first victory of the season. Christopher Bell won the Grand National Series race, his fifth victory of the season.
The #67 Ford GT of Richard Westbrook and Ryan Briscoe won the IMSA race from Lime Rock Park. The #9 Pfaff Porsche of Dennis Olsen and Zach Robichon won the GTD class.
Marco Wittmann and Mike Rockenfeller split the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters races from Assen. It was Wittmann's third victory of the season and Rockenfeller's first victory since Zandvoort in 2017.
Emma Kimiläinen won the W Series race from Assen. Megan Gilkes won the non-championship reverse grid race from pole position by 0.003 over Alice Powell, who started 17th.
The #26 G-Drive Racing Aurus 01-Gibson of Romain Rusinov, Jean-Éric Vergne and Job van Uitert won the 4 Hours of Barcelona. The #13 Inter Europol Competition Ligier-Nissan of Martin Hippe and Nigel Moore won the LMP3 class. The #51 Luzich Racing Ferrari of Alessandro Pier Guidi, Niklas Nielsen and Fabien Laverne won the GTE class.
Coming Up This Weekend
IndyCar ends its three consecutive weeks of racing at Mid-Ohio.
NASCAR's Cup Series will be at Pocono while the Grand National Series hits Iowa.
Hockenheim hosts the German Grand Prix.
The Spa 24 Hours is the third round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge.
Supercars are at Queensland Raceway.
Covering All Motorsports. From Indianapolis to Le Mans, Daytona to Monaco.
