IndyCar's 2027 schedule release is a complete slap in the face

IndyCar, in unusual fashion, released the first half of its 2027 schedule in early August as "phase one", before working to confirm the details of the second half, many of which were already publicly known, and then ultimately solidifying the entire calendar for next year.

The drumroll was about as anticlimactic as it gets.

Among the big changes: Nashville Superspeedway is gone, and there will be no return to Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, the first trip outside of the North American continent since the 2013 Sao Paulo race has been confirmed via a trip to Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Spain. Nashville will also notably not be replaced.

IndyCar dropped the ball, many times over

It's a 17-race schedule for IndyCar in 2027, down from 18 in 2026, and it's a schedule that leaves a lot to be desired. Bottom line, it's same-old, same-old when it comes to the series completely dropping the ball and missing out on a hauler-load of opportunities in terms of capitalizing on a season that saw massive growth across the board.

Amid rumors that Nashville would be replaced by Texas Motor Speedway, Nashville was not, in fact, replaced by Texas Motor Speedway, an oval casualty itself from post-2023. There are now just three non-Indy 500 ovals left on the calendar.

It was replaced by nothing but more promises that IndyCar remains allegedly committed to more ovals on the schedule, a promise that we've heard time and time again over the past decade and a half, yet nothing serious ever gets done about it.

Is that promise anything more than gaslighting? Does anybody really believe they're going to add more ovals, plural, over the course of one offseason?

I'm happy to be proven wrong here, but don't hold your breath. If attendance is truly the issue, say it out loud and stop pretending it's as simple as having a "massive priority" in light of a pretty obvious missed opportunity.

The goal for Nashville was always to get back to the streets of downtown Nashville, where the race was held from 2021 to 2023 before needing to be shifted to the Lebanon oval in 2024 due to construction on the new Tennessee Titans stadium.

Now they won't even be on the oval for the time being (if the street race does even return).

Because, of course, for a series whose fans tend to trash F1 as much as they do, the goal is to be... wait for it... you guessed it: F1!

The "Monaco of the South"! Wow! Who knew Nashville's much-maligned downtown street circuit has what it takes to measure up to (or down to, perhaps?) an event whose closest comparison these days is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade?

Maybe that's part of the reason for the Spain race, which is set to be the first European race since 2007; who knows? Maybe it's not just the success of five-time and four-time reigning champion Alex Palou, but a desire to F1-ize IndyCar.

To be clear, the Spain addition is a win for a sport aiming to expand internationally for years, and it comes at a great time. This isn't like the NFL, which has random international games that make very little sense from a standpoint of anything other than inflating Roger Goodell's increasingly oversized ego.

It's a net positive for the sport. But how many other potential net positives have been totally set aside?

It seems like whenever IndyCar actually does add an oval to the schedule, it's removed within a handful of years, with the main concern allegedly being attendance.

For what it's worth, if the priority were really more ovals, it wouldn't have taken the seemingly inevitable removal of a de facto placeholder in Nashville for that to suddenly become a priority. Think about it; if Nashville was always going to be removed after only a few years, IndyCar should have had at least one or two options lined up and ready to take its place.

Instead, there is one less race on the schedule. Naturally.

And think about this. Aside from the Indy 500, the oval schedule consists of the Milwaukee Mile, which was removed from the schedule itself post-2015, and Gateway. Phoenix Raceway is nice (after being removed post-2018 itself), but IndyCar is a sideshow for NASCAR on that weekend.

We've already been down that rabbit hole, and for as much as that actually proved to benefit IndyCar in 2026, it is indeed a weekend on which IndyCar is not the main event.

And it's not just ovals...

Then there's Washington, D.C. Everybody knew going into the Freedom 250 Grand Prix street race that it was designed to be a one-off, and there was very little chance of that ever changing.

We fully understand the fact that a lot of that event's hype and publicity had to do with where it was located and the 250th anniversary celebration. But it also proved that IndyCar is fully capable of promoting a big event other than the Indy 500.

And with that, the sport managed to set all kinds of records, from TV viewership to weekend attendance to merchandise sales and more that weekend. Tickets may have been free, but those two financial metrics told the real story, along with the record value of the media exposure.

There were plenty of fans who still would have come to that race even if they had needed to pay for it, and that's not to mention the many thousands of fans who couldn't even get tickets through the event's lottery selection. Add that all up, and you'd have still ended up with an absolutely massive weekend.

So naturally, there are no longer any races on the calendar in the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic regions. None.

I guess we're supposed to go back to thinking that those markets don't actually exist and there's no real fanbase there, even after what we saw in the nation's capital. It was all one big mirage, and Kyle Kirkwood's win didn't actually happen, right?

It's a complete embarrassment.

And for what it's worth, the fact that IndyCar has completely abandoned the region also completely invalidates any and all arguments that "attendance" is really the reason for the absence or removal of any particular track.

That argument is, without a doubt, the lowest of low hanging fruits on social media, when you consider the abandonment of a region which quite literally proved that attendance is not an issue when an event is put on properly.

All things considered, this schedule is about as unserious as it gets from the standpoint of pushing the sport forward.

Seeing as how the Barcelona race was really the only actual addition to the schedule in the two and a half months that followed the "phase one" confusion, the decision to wait this late into the offseason to solidify the calendar is an even bigger slap in the face. It's one thing if it's a Dale Coyne Racing driver announcement that takes forever and a day, but this?

Meanwhile, just as they've been for the past 12 years or so, races in Mexico and Brazil remain "close". Sure they are. Mark Miles already revealed his true colors on that in 2024, and there's no reason to believe anything else. Australia also gets mentioned, year after year, only for nothing to happen.

And what happened to the alleged plans for the streets of Denver to host a new race in 2027? IndyCar, again, proved they can have success with new events with the addition of Arlington in 2026. By the way, tickets were not free for that one, and that's the one that set the merchandise sales record that D.C. ultimately broke. Funny how that works.

Maybe 10 years from now Denver will be "close" too. Maybe Denver will even replace one of the few remaining ovals on the schedule.

Or maybe more ovals will still be a "massive priority".

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