Musings From the Weekend: Where Could IndyCar Race?

It was Easter weekend. Sir Stirling Moss passed away aged 90. I still cannot tell how things are. Simon Pagenaud won at Michigan on fuel mileage. Some drivers behaved poorly on iRacing. Belle Isle will not happen and IndyCar will have a third race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Formula One has postponed its trip to Canada. NASCAR took the week off from iRacing... kind of. Here is a run down of what got me thinking.

Where Could IndyCar Race?
We are pushing a month of quarantine, which is fine, because it is what we have to do but we are getting antsy. People want sports and sports want to go on.

Major League Baseball has proposed sending all the teams to their spring training sites and having a radically different looking 2020 season with games behind closed doors and divisional alignment that does not follow traditional National League and American League alignment.

The National Hockey League is exploring neutral sites to finish out the regular season and playoffs, including places such as Grand Forks, North Dakota, Manchester New Hampshire and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

The National Basketball Association is trying to do something similar to the NHL.

The Premier League has floated out neutral site locations to end its season. The Korea Baseball Organization is on the verge of starting its preseason and beginning its regular season after South Korea's covid-19 outbreak has waned. Taiwan has started its baseball seaosn albeit with games behind closed doors.

We are starved. It is a necessary sacrifice but after one month we are trying to see how we can have just a little bit to nibble on. We want something new and unseen. Through these unpredictable times we want the unpredictability of sports. We want competition if there is a way for any of these sports to take place in a safe manner.

With many sports looking for options I sit and I wonder if there is a way for motorsports to continue in the same way. The traveling roadshow of motorsports differentiates from baseball, basketball and hockey in that it visits multiple locations and the tracks vary in size and shape. Baseball comes close with each park having its own dimensions and wall height but it is not an apt comparison.

Time ticks away on 2020 and with each week we find another race postponed or cancelled. A full championship is getting hard to envision at this rate and while multiple sports leagues are looking at quarantine options, motorsports series continue to move pieces and hope things we will be better come summer and autumn. There is no certainty things will be better and these series should be at the point of considering holding all its at a limited number of venues. It is not ideal but it could soon be the only option.

Where could motorsports series go to put on a series of races completely in quarantine?

For IndyCar, it is simple, it is Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It hosts the Indianapolis 500, it had a third race added to the second revised 2020 schedule. It has multiple layout and can be run clockwise or anti-clockwise. Theoretically, you could run 13 races and never run the same track twice at IMS and that is the proposal.

If everything hits the fan, IndyCar's option is to get everyone together at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and hold the championship there. The Indianapolis 500 would start the season on August 23 and the Grand Prix of Indianapolis would be round two on August 30. Where do we go from there?

The Labor Day Luau will be run on September 6 and let's have it on the IndyCar road course configuration but this time the track goes anti-clockwise and oval turn one is used. Since it is a holiday, let's run a slightly longer race, say 93 laps or about 220 miles? It is a holiday weekend, why not make it a doubleheader? Anti-clockwise on Sunday and clockwise on Monday?

Labor Day Luau: 2.3646-mile course

Labor Day Luau: Same track, different direction

After Labor Day weekend, it will be the start of football season and the NFL will likely play games even if people are keeling over on the escalators so that means we need to have the Alternate Programming 300 and we need to do a course that has never been done before:

Alternate Programming 300: 2.5644-mile course

I present you with a five-turn circuit utilizing the road course section located inside turn one and the rest of the oval. It is basically 85% of the oval but with a hard left in turn one. Cars will have to brake and brake from at least 220 MPH! When do they start braking? Are they braking before the start/finish line? Let's make this weekend even better and make it a doubleheader, one 117-lap race on Saturday and then another on Sunday but going clockwise! Turn four becomes turn one, it is four right-hand turns and a left! Talk about bonkers!

Alternate Programming 300 Part II

After that chaotic weekend, the teams will need something a little more normal and I suggest we resurrect the Formula One course. The actual United States Grand Prix layout is not possible because the tight right-left section behind the museum has been completely removed but other than that this course is the close we can get to it. The track is 2.5228 miles, the race could be 73 laps, it would fall on September 20, almost 20 years to the day of the first United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis and we can call it the Tony George Memorial.

In honor of the man with the vision

We are getting to the end of September and we are at the halfway point of the calendar. How do we start the second half of the season? With another doubleheader but this time on the 2.5664-mile motorcycle course, Saturday going clockwise, Sunday going anti-clockwise.

Speedway Grand Prix Part I: 78 laps

Speedway Grand Prix Part II: 78 laps

Harvest Grand Prix is already scheduled for October 3 and we are going to keep that. My proposal is we take the layout for the Grand Prix of Indianapolis and run it anti-clockwise. I didn't do a diagram for that one. It is same track we have been watching for six years but in reverse. Same track, same length (85 laps), it is simple.

After that, we will have a doubleheader for the penultimate weekend of the season, one race on October 10, the other on October 11 and this is on a new course and I call it the perimeter road course. It uses the road course section used inside oval turn one and the road course section inside oval turn two but instead of going inside the course and using Hulman Boulevard it turns onto the backstretch and uses the rest of the oval. It is a 2.5634-mile configuration. It requires a little work but it is doable. I propose two 100-lap races for the Circle City Shootout.

Circle City Shootout Race One will be clockwise

Race two will be anti-clockwise

On October 17 we have the Roger Penske Cup. It uses the Formula One circuit but goes anti-clockwise, which means oval turn one is turn one. It is a 90-lap race, 227 miles

This concludes the 2020 championship

The season isn't over yet and IndyCar will have one race not at Indianapolis Motor Speedway but it is in the area. All these races have been great and 13 races on 13 different configurations is terrific but we need an oval and we need a short track. The season concludes at Indianapolis Raceway Park on Halloween Night, 400 laps for all the marbles.

In an ideal world, we do not want a 14-race championship with 13 different configurations of Indianapolis Motor Speedway and IRP but maybe this is the best we can do for 2020. Nobody would like it but it would provide a championship with variety and enough races for it to feel like a complete championship.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that but if every other sport is preparing for neutral sites with games centralized behind closed doors then motorsports should be constructing a similar plan.

This might not even be possible but it might be the only shot we got.

Coming up later this week will be similar editions of limited location championships for Formula One and NASCAR.

Winners From the Weekend
You know about Simon Pagenaud but did you know...

Aaron Smith II won Thunder Night Blunder from Martinsville.

Jenson Button and Emanuele Pirro split the Legends Trophy races from Sebring.

Chase Briscoe won NBC's iRacing Short Track Challenge.

Coming Up This Weekend
IndyCar has its "random" track race.
Thunder Night Blunder goes to Long Beach with seven different open-wheel classes.
NASCAR is back at Richmond