2018 IndyCar season in review: The good, the bad and the ugly

Superspeedway racing

Superspeedway racing is only listed as “the bad” because it isn’t quite on the level as road and street course racing, and compared to what it had been in previous years, it was not quite up to par. It was still decent, but it was nothing to write home about.

Over the past few years, IndyCar fans have been “spoiled” with wheel-to-wheel, tight racing action in superspeedway racing. That was not the case this season.

But just because fans were “spoiled” in years past doesn’t mean that it should just be expected that superspeedway racing is going to produce lackluster racing from now on. That is not the goal of IndyCar, nor should it be, as that will not stimulate long-term interest in the series nor will it assist in the retention of the growth that the series has experienced in recent years.

To address the elephant in the room, racing certainly does not need to be pack racing to be good racing. The pack race at Texas Motor Speedway in the 2017 season was an exhilarating race, but the race winner, Will Power, led 180 of its 248 laps and just seven cars finished the race without crashing.

To make it clear, the superspeedway racing that took place in the 2018 season is not listed as “the bad” simply because it did not produce this kind of pack racing.

With that in mind, there definitely need to be improvements made to the superspeedway racing moving forward, as the racing produced in the superspeedway races in the first season with the UAK18 left a lot to be desired, and it even frustrated several drivers, and justifiably so.