I want to start this thing out by saying firstly that this is the best IndyCar season I’ve seen, top-to-bottom, in my lifetime.
The parity of winners, action on the race track, growing ratings, a new TV deal, and the most kickass Indy 500 since Dan Wheldon crossed the line in first – Note: I’m biased there.
But IndyCar is in a great spot, probably one that is as good as I could have thought at this point in the season when the year started in April.
With this huge break – which isn’t helping momentum of course – I wanted to take the time to do some schedule speculation. I’m weird like that.
This is in part a dream schedule of mine, but also in part of a schedule that is somewhat possible to happen. Now don’t take any of this and say ‘yeah there’s some momentum here with this track.’ There isn’t – this is just my choices of tracks and dates on a perfect schedule in my mind.
It probably won’t come out like this.
But alas or whatever the big J’s say, I’ll post it below and explain my thinking to the big changes:
18 Races
April 10 | St. Pete
April 17 | Barber
April 30 | 600 miler at Texas
May 14 | Indy Road Course
May 29 | Indy 500
June 11 | Detroit 1
June 12 | Detroit 2
June 26 | Mid-Ohio
July 03 | Road America
July 09 | Night Race at Iowa
July 17 | Toronto
July 31 | Nashville
Aug. 06 | Night Race at Gateway
Aug. 14 | Milwaukee
Aug. 27 | Night Race at Richmond
Sep. 11 | Portland
Sep. 18 | Laguna Seca
Sep. 25 | Long Beach
I’d like to see the season start on the first off-Sunday that NASCAR has. So long as the Cup Series runs a Saturday night race at a place like Martinsville (which has lights now) or Richmond, It’d be cool to see IndyCar take center stage to open the year at St. Pete.
If not, Sunday before a Cup race works just fine but for the love of god please stop intersecting the time slots of Indy and NASCAR.
The second race at Barber remains the same, but I’ve done away with the Texas doubleheaders. Just race one big 600 miler like we used to. That was a fun night race to have and with that goop all over the race track at TMS, I don’t see any reason to doubleheader the weekend.
The month of May stays the same. Got a week off after the 500. Doubleheader after with another week off for drivers to rest a bit following Detroit. I then moved Mid-Ohio up to May and Road America stays on 4th of July weekend.
The next race of course, should have been pretty obvious if you saw my name in the headline.
I want to see Iowa back on the IndyCar schedule on a Saturday night under the lights – and spare me on the Knoxville weekly Saturday night action, Indy was the best racing product of the year outside of the Knoxville Nationals.
I know I’m biased, but I called it consistently the most entertaining race on the regular IndyCar calendar outside of the 500 when it was still around. Hope we haven’t seen the last of our beautiful track.
Toronto and this badass looking Nashville street course return to the schedule as Rounds 11 and 12 before a three-race oval swing.
I think IndyCar on ovals is amazing, and I can’t help but think about what they would look like at Richmond. I moved up Gateway to Round 13 of the series and am pushing for Richmond and at least one more oval we haven’t seen in a while to make a return.
IndyCar and Jimmie Johnson will be testing at Homestead soon, but I haven’t seen anything material that would tell me the series wants to race there again.
I rounded it out with the same three road courses that end this season’s schedule, avoiding opening day Sunday of the NFL as well as the first Saturday of College Football.
Hope you enjoy this look of what I think is possible but probably won’t happen. Just don’t blame me for jinxing it.
