IndyCar: Top Five Tracks to Fill Schedule Gaps

Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca

After the April 2 race at Phoenix International Raceway, the Verizon IndyCar Series is scheduled to have a two-week break before returning to competition at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. However, instead of waiting two weeks to race, we’ll use one of those weeks to travel to the Left Coast and put on a race at a permanent road course.

We’re heading to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca the weekend before the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. The race courses are about six hours apart, which means travel costs would be manageable. It also means IndyCar would have a promotional challenge ahead of itself. There is a danger of diluting the market, but if the promotional efforts are segmented and focused on each metropolitan area, (Long Beach and San Francisco), you could still draw solid crowds.

The track itself is another course with deep roots tied to Indy car racing. CART raced there for years and the course itself has sections named for the legends of Indy car racing. For instance, there’s the double-apex Andretti Hairpin turn named for Mario Andretti and the Rahal Straight between Turns 6 and 7 named for Bobby Rahal.

It’s also home to one of the most memorable moves in the history of Indy car racing. It’s simply known as “The Pass”. It happened during the 1996 CART Grand Prix of Monterey. Alex Zanardi was battling Chip Ganassi teammate Bryan Herta for the lead when, on the final lap, Zanardi made a dive-bomb move into the infamous corkscrew section and ended up in the lead after going airborne. Zanardi ended up winning the race.

After Laguna Seca, we follow the current schedule and head to Long Beach. Then, we take a week to travel to Birmingham and hold the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama. Of course, after that we head into the Month of May and we will not be changing that section of the calendar.

June is also booked up with the double-header races at the Detroit Belle Isle street circuit, the Texas Motor Speedway superspeedway oval, and the return of the iconic Road America road course. We’ll that alone, even though it would make more sense to move Texas later in the year and keep the tour in the Midwest by switching it with Iowa’s July date.

The current July schedule is also booked up because of Iowa Speedway, Toronto, and the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. The travel time available in that month is all that’s left to fill, so there is no reason to add another event. That means we’re heading into August for our next change.