Here is a rundown of what got me thinking...
We had a pair of season opening weekends, but IndyCar picked up where it left off with Álex Palou stomping the competition in St. Petersburg. Tires played a surprising role at the end of MotoGP's season opener at Buriram, and now Marc Márquez has a bit of a hole to climb out of. There are 21 races remaining. Plenty of time for a comeback. Dario Franchitti held up pretty well in the Truck race from St. Petersburg. History was made in the Cup Series. However, we look ahead to next weekend and the shared bill for IndyCar and NASCAR. IndyCar's most popular driver spoke about it in St. Petersburg though he was not gushing over the event.
Playing Second or Third Fiddle
It is a quick turnaround for IndyCar from the first race of the season as six days after the checkered flag in St. Petersburg, the green flag for the second race of the season will wave from Phoenix Raceway. IndyCar returns to the one-mile oval for the first time since 2018, but this time IndyCar is running during the NASCAR weekend along with the Cup Series and NASCAR's second division, the first companion weekend for the two entities since 2023. From 2020 to 2023, IndyCar and the NASCAR Cup Series raced together at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The final three years saw both series run on the IMS road course.
The weekends at Indianapolis were generally seen as positive as it brought the biggest series together. For one weekend, you could go to the same track and see both series compete. It was definitely convenient for spectators and the television partners. Whenever two series are getting together, optics come into play, and those optics were on the mind of Patricio O'Ward.
When asked in St. Petersburg about the upcoming Phoenix weekend, O'Ward did not express enthusiasm and noted how it looks for IndyCar competing on such weekends.
"I'm already tired of IndyCar being like the support race," he said. "I know every time we race with them, we are always the side show. It's great for the fans, but not for us... If they add more races together, great. If they don't, great too. I don't really care."
At least O'Ward was honest and did not sugarcoat it. He has a point but these weekends can be beneficial for multiple parties.
In IndyCar's case, it is getting an oval race early in the season. For the last few years, people were displeased with IndyCar scheduling and the amount of time between races early in the season. Now, IndyCar opens with three consecutive race weekends and four in the five weekends of March. That is not a bad thing. It was also IndyCar's only chance of getting back to Phoenix, and that is a problem.
IndyCar isn't getting to Phoenix on its own. It wasn't drawing more than 15,000 spectators eight years ago, and for all the cheer around growth, the series hasn't grown enough to pull out a reasonable crowd from the fifth-most populous city in the United States. Without NASCAR's shoulders to stand on, IndyCar would not be going to Phoenix at any point in 2026, and while there would still be three race weekends in March without it, IndyCar would be down a race weekend and only running at three ovals this season.
However, IndyCar is the guest, and it is treated as such. It was the same way with the Indianapolis weekends. When the two sanctioning bodies ran together at Indianapolis, the NASCAR teams got the garages and the IndyCar teams set up a paddock like a street course weekend in an available parking lot. IndyCar hit the track early Friday and the race started at noon on Saturday. It was the first race of the weekend, and people interpreted that to mean IndyCar was the less-important event.
The schedule is the same at Phoenix. IndyCar will race at 1:00 p.m. local time on Saturday, 3:00 p.m Eastern. NASCAR's second division races at 5:30 p.m. local, 7:30 p.m. Eastern that night. The Cup race is Sunday at 12:30 p.m. local, 3:30 p.m. Eastern (Don't forget about Daylight Savings starting next week).
IndyCar will practice at 8:00 a.m. local on Friday morning before qualifying at noon and then immediately getting into a high light practice session at 1:40 p.m. local. A final practice will run from 3:10 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. in Phoenix.
For a shared weekend meant to bring the series together, there is really not that much mingling. IndyCar gets the available time, but it is mostly to get out of the way before the NASCAR action takes place.
It is not the ideal schedule for IndyCar. Any team that has an accident or issue in the first practice session will be under the gun. They likely are not going to make it in time for qualifying and the goal will be ready to shake the car down in the 50-minute practice in the afternoon. If an accident occurs during qualifying, that team is not getting out on track for final practice, and with how the weekend is set up, it might be unlikely the team gets shakedown laps before the race to make sure the car is properly put together as we have seen in the past. The two-seater is running Saturday night, so I guess there is a window there where a team could run five installation laps, but I doubt that time will be there Saturday morning. Cup practice is at 10:00 a.m. local.
There are plenty of weekends where IndyCar is the main event and draws the crowd. We saw it at St. Petersburg, and we will see it at Barber, Long Beach and of course Indianapolis. To go to a track and not be given the arrangement you are used to feels like a slight, especially when everything is rushed. It will be tougher to recover from a setback at Phoenix than at other weekends. In an 18-race championship, one lost weekend can lose you the title. Losing it because track time was condensed because another series prioritized the time is salt in the wound.
It is the price that comes with such a weekend. It would be nice if the schedules could be balanced. Both races could take place on Sunday. The time is there and Phoenix has lights. It is tougher to do on an oval, especially if there is weather, but 12:30 p.m. on Sunday speaks a lot different in terms of prestige than 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, and even with such a start time, the IndyCar race could be complete in two hours. The NASCAR race could still start at 3:30 p.m. local, 4:00 p.m. at the latest.
But that is not the schedule we are getting and that is not the schedule we are going to see as IndyCar is tagging on to the NASCAR weekend. NASCAR is doing Roger Penske a favor because of IndyCar's inability to stand on its own with oval weekends.
It is a good weekend for the fans, and I understand why you would attend such a weekend. Long Beach and Detroit are arguably two of IndyCar's best weekends because IMSA is also competing. That is valuable to me. If I can see both, that weekend is better than just seeing one or the other. We lament the lack of shared weekends with sports cars that we once had when the American Le Mans Series and Grand-Am would run the same weekend as IndyCar.
I do quibble that such a weekend does anything to grow IndyCar.
If you are a NASCAR fan in the year 2026 of our Lord, you know about IndyCar. You just don't care enough to watch or at least make it your series of choice. IndyCar has been doing this for years. How many IndyCar races have led into NASCAR races whether it be on NBC or Fox? How many times have NASCAR fans been exposed to IndyCar if they have time before a Cup race? How many more oval races does IndyCar need to run to catch a NASCAR fans attention? The Indianapolis 500 happens every year, and NASCAR fans know about it. They are largely the reason it drew over seven million viewers in 2025 (thanks, Kyle Larson!).
We have had Fontana and Iowa before the half-ass repave and Gateway and Pocono and Milwaukee and Nashville. They have seen it. They will dabble with it when not busy with NASCAR. They are not coming to be full-time fans even if the racing is good, the championship is close without a playoff format and some of the best talents ever are competing. We did these shared weekends at Indianapolis for four years. It didn't do anything to grow IndyCar in a substantial way. We see that in the television ratings.
This is IndyCar's attempt to chase existing fans with a working knowledge of motorsports because 45,000 people are going to show up for the Cup race in Phoenix, and that is 30,000 more than IndyCar could draw at the same track even if it had a Super Bowl-esque budget in promotion. These are the same people who have had IndyCar buzzing in their ears for years and they have been swatting it away.
This strategy ignores the larger group of people with no motorsports connection who could be turned into interested and invested primary IndyCar viewers. You know, the group of people in the United States who have found Formula One and turned it into the second-most viewed motorsports series in this country. But that takes hard work and if the France family can do Roger Penske a solid at no additional cost to Penske, you know he is going to take it, even if we know what the results are going to be.
O'Ward's sentiments are heard, and if there is one thing we know about O'Ward is he is clearly interested in making IndyCar bigger and having it stand out on its own. He probably would love to race at Phoenix but race at Phoenix when IndyCar is the main event and drawing 45,000 people on its own and becomes the talk of the town for one weekend. That isn't happen next weekend and it probably isn't going to happen next year either. We live with the weekend we will be getting, but IndyCar should strive for more, and at least strive to be what Patricio O'Ward envisions.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Álex Palou, but did you know...
Marco Bezzecchi won MotoGP's Thailand Grand Prix. Pedro Acosta won the sprint race. Manuel González won the Moto2 race. David Almansa won the Moto3 race, his first career victory.
Nikita Johnson won the Indy Lights race from St. Petersburg. Sebastián Garzón swept the U.S. F2000 races.
Tyler Reddick won the NASCAR Cup race from Austin, his third consecutive victory, and Reddick became the first driver to open a Cup season with three consecutive victories. Shane van Gisbergen won the Grand National Series race. Layne Riggs won the Truck race from St. Petersburg.
Eli Tomac won the Supercross race from Daytona, his eighth Daytona victory. Seth Hammaker won the 250cc race.
Coming Up This Weekend
We know about IndyCar and NASCAR's rendezvous in Phoenix.
The Formula One season begins in Australia.
Supercars also tag along in Melbourne. There are companion weekends happening all over the globe!
Supercross has a Triple Crown event in Indianapolis.
