IndyCar missed out on a golden multi-year opportunity

IndyCar has not raced at Pocono Raceway since August 2019, Watkins Glen International since September 2017, or Richmond Raceway since June 2009.

The series reportedly had an opportunity to change that with a deal that would have seen a three-year rotation introduced for those three venues in the Northeast.

Instead, more than half a decade after IndyCar made its most recent visit to any of those three venues, none of them are on the 2024 or 2025 schedules.

And there hasn't exactly been much of a reason to believe that that will change for 2026, continuing he series' overall apparent lack of interest in tapping into that particular market.

Following the removal of Texas Motor Speedway, which had hosted IndyCar every year since it opened in 1997, after the 2023 season, there is only one superspeedway race left on the IndyCar schedule, and that is the Indy 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Superspeedway racing is objectively the most competitive form of IndyCar racing, yet aside from the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing", it has effectively become a thing of the past.

A return to the Tricky Triangle would certainly go a long way toward changing that, but has the window to do so come and gone?

The fact that not even one of these three tracks is on the calendar remains a travesty.

Pocono reportedly wanted to come back to the IndyCar schedule in 2020 after hosting a race for the seventh consecutive year in 2019, but after Richmond was added back for the first time since 2009, those talks dissipated and ultimately stalled out.

Then COVID-19 hit, the Richmond race didn't happen in 2020, and IndyCar didn't bother bringing the track back to the schedule in 2021, despite having agreed to a multi-year deal with the short track. It never got a proper chance.

So despite not being on the calendar for 2020, Pocono too technically got screwed over by pandemic-related restrictions that were, in hindsight, way too overbearing. Because in reality, Richmond not ending up on the calendar after all should have paved the way for a no-brainer Pocono extension.

Though everyone likes to point to Pocono as being "too dangerous", I'm pretty sure we all just watched Sting Ray Robb flip at Iowa Speedway and Santino Ferrucci get into the catch fence on the streets of Toronto, all within an eight-day period, in July.

Richmond is also set to lose one of its two NASCAR Cup Series race dates, which should, on paper, make things easier for an IndyCar return.

Unfortunately, that in itself is no reason for IndyCar fans to get their hopes up, based on recent history.

First of all, the 2025 IndyCar schedule has already been released, and venue-wise, there are no changes. The only modifications are that Thermal Club is now set to host a points race instead of an exhibition race, and the Milwaukee Mile doubleheader has been reduced to just a single race.

As a side note, does anybody else feel like "major changes" are promised to the schedule almost every year, then the only real changes come in the form of something like a race being shortened by five or 10 laps?

Any IndyCar fan who heard about the rumored addition of Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez to "either the IndyCar or NASCAR schedule" could have told you it wasn't going to be IndyCar. But I digress.

And then second of all, Pocono hasn't hosted two NASCAR race weekends since 2019, yet its reduction from two to one ironically coincided with its removal from the IndyCar calendar. A return there theoretically also shouldn't be too difficult, yet it doesn't happen.

We could say the same thing about Michigan International Speedway, another former IndyCar track that now hosts just one NASCAR race weekend instead of two. Again, it simply doesn't happen.

The calendar space is there, but the ambition to get a deal done simply isn't.

It was never sold out, but Pocono always drew more than a good enough crowd to warrant a return, especially in the latter part of the decade.

Plus, the Hy-Vee-sponsored doubleheader weekend at Iowa has been considered a major success every year since it was added in 2022, yet those grandstands are nowhere near full.

A great promoter does make things a lot easier, even if that means, whether we like it or not, that IndyCar effectively becomes a sideshow for a bunch of concerts. Because even though no one wants to admit it, that's exactly what Iowa is.

The same is true for a NASCAR-IndyCar doubleheader weekend; IndyCar is not considered the main event. That's just the way it is, and it's definitely better than nothing.

As for Watkins Glen, it returned to the schedule for the first time since 2010 back in 2016, but after wet weather scared a lot of the crowd away in 2017, it was removed from the calendar.

Thanks to a single rainy Sunday seven years ago, one of North America's most historic racing venues hasn't been back on the IndyCar schedule.

It's bizarre.

The fact that IndyCar can't get anything going in the Northeast is puzzling, and a three-year rotation featuring three unique venues would have been a perfect way to change that over the long haul.

It would have kept things fresh, it would have placed a greater emphasis on each individual event for local fans to attend, knowing they'd otherwise have to wait a few years to get back, and it would have kept the other two races relatively close by for fans willing to travel a distance – a relatively short distance at that, given where all the other races are now held.

It's not like it would be a rotation between Pocono Raceway, Auto Club Speedway, and Twin Ring Motegi.

Maybe there is some hope, however.

Milwaukee is back on the schedule in 2024 for the first time since 2015, and Nashville Superspeedway (which, despite its name featuring "Superspeedway", is set to utilize the short track aero configuration) is back in 2024 for the first time since 2008, giving IndyCar its first oval season finale in a decade.

Even Iowa returned in 2022 after it was removed from the calendar for the first time in its existence two years prior.

So it's not always "out of sight, out of mind" when it comes to old IndyCar venues.

This three-year deal isn't something that has been discussed for five years now, but as a contingent of fans continue to grow frustrated with IndyCar's apparent lack of ambition when it comes to scheduling, perhaps it's an opportunity that will resurface. All the pieces are already in place if the right parties take the right steps to make it happen.