IndyCar: It’s not optimal, but at least it’s happening

IndyCar rescheduled the Mid-Ohio doubleheader for this upcoming weekend. Unfortunately, the second race is set to be run during the start of the 2020 NFL season.

The IndyCar race weekend at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course was scheduled to be the second weekend in August, and it was transformed into a doubleheader weekend to make up for some of the races that had to be canceled completely due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Unfortunately, these two races of the Honda Indy 200 around the 13-turn, 2.258-mile (3.634-kilometer) natural terrain road course in Lexington, Ohio ended up being postponed indefinitely themselves.

Fortunately, however, they were rescheduled, allowing IndyCar to maintain a 14-race schedule, of which nine events have already been contested going back to early June.

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These two races were rescheduled for this Saturday, September 12 and Sunday, September 13 for 4:30 p.m. ET and 1:00 p.m. ET, respectively.

So often we hear from fans about NASCAR needing to move their start times up for Sunday afternoon races. IndyCar has been in a similar position, with so many start times coming later in the day for Sunday races — although Sunday races have been pretty few and far between so far in the 2020 season due to the schedule changes.

Now we finally get a 1:00 p.m. ET start time on a Sunday afternoon, and it happens to be the the same 1:00 p.m. ET window when the 2020 NFL season is scheduled to kick off.

I know for a fact that many of us still plan to watch that second race, even those who only use one screen. But in terms of the big picture, it’s hard to see ratings going up, and it’s not hard to see why.

IndyCar deserves a ton of credit for getting this doubleheader back on the calendar, just as they do for everything else in terms of constantly working to make the 2020 schedule better through unprecedented times.

It’s just unfortunate for them in terms of viewership that this race had to be placed at this particular time on this particular day, especially since the Saturday race was able to slot into 4:30 p.m. ET successfully.

The good thing is that this should be the final conflict between IndyCar and the NFL until the IndyCar season finale on Sunday, October 25, which is Week 7 of the NFL season. That race is set to be broadcast live from the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida beginning at 2:30 p.m. ET, however, making it far less of an issue.

Another good thing is that even NASCAR and Formula 1 fans won’t have to worry about these conflicts much. NASCAR doesn’t have a Sunday afternoon race during the NFL season until Week 4 (Sunday, October 4), and Formula 1 won’t have any start times that conflict with football due to the fact that they canceled their trip to the Americas this year due to the pandemic.

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Tune in to NBC Sports Network tomorrow afternoon at 4:30 p.m. ET for the live broadcast of the first race of the Honda Indy 200 doubleheader from Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, and tune in to NBC on Sunday afternoon at 1:00 p.m. ET for the live broadcast of the second.