Heading into the final weekend of competition for the 2014 IndyCar season, most of the talk is about everything but the series championship. It’s all rumours and speculation about next year’s schedule.
As detailed in my previous blog, the Toronto event cannot be run at Exhibition Place in July next year due to the Pan Am Games, which will take place from July 10-26.
(As an aside, for those who gripe about the Indy traffic headaches, wait until you live through the Pan Am games traffic, and then tell me how you feel about the Indy!)
Complicating Toronto’s situation are these facts: Texas Speedway has already announced that they will host IndyCar on June 6th, which was one of the dates kicked around by Toronto Indy folks. Pocono wants out of the July 4th weekend slot that they’ve held for the last two years. The Houston double-header will not be back on the schedule next June, and it might not return at all. IndyCar normally runs at Iowa with the NASCAR Truck series in July, however NASCAR Trucks are scheduled for Iowa on June 19th next summer. It’s like a giant jigsaw puzzle with no corner pieces in sight to help solve the mystery.
IndyCar is looking at back-up plans if no suitable date can be settled on to run the race in Toronto. On Friday, Green Savoree Racing Promotions and Canadian Tire Motorsport Park management released a statement which included the following:
A Verizon IndyCar track inspector has completed a full track inspection at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park and has provided recommendations.
“Understandably, the Toronto 2015 Pan Am & Parapan American Games have forced us to consider alternative dates and venues for next year’s race. We have worked tirelessly to explore all options and are close to making an announcement regarding when and where we’ll be racing in 2015,” said Charlie Johnstone, president, Honda Indy Toronto.
“Kim Green and Kevin Savoree are friends within the motorsports industry and we will do whatever we can to help maintain an IndyCar date in 2015 here in Canada, given the challenges of the 2015 Pan-Am Games,” said Myles Brandt, president and general manager at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. “We’d be happy to help.”
While a solution may be on the horizon, it begs the question: should we really be in scramble mode at this point? Toronto was awarded the Pan Am Games in 2009, and here we are in the last week of August 2014 with no resolution to the problem.
In fairness, IndyCar has gone through several leadership changes over the years and the business focus and direction of the series has been adjusted several times throughout the past few seasons. The current brain trust wants the season to end by Labour Day weekend, which has added to the scheduling challenges.
But better long-term planning with the schedule is important for the future success of the series. For example, it was announced on Wednesday afternoon that NOLA Motorsport Park just outside New Orleans will hold the inaugural Grand Prix of Louisiana on April 12th next season. This date was chosen in spite of the fact that the French Quarter Music Festival wraps up in New Orleans on that same weekend. The festival drew just shy of 750,000 people last year. Will anyone in the vicinity be left to attend the race?
It’ll be interesting to see exactly what the 2015 IndyCar series schedule does look like when it does arrive. Seems like a lot of compromising has gone on and it will likely leave some people unhappy in the end.
Speaking of scheduling races …
IndyCar wraps up its 2014 championship this weekend with the 500-mile race in Fontana, California. I think it’s bad scheduling to have your season-ending race at 10:20 p.m. ET, leaving the series champion crowned in the early hours of the morning on the east coast. That way, you’re hiding your champion from half of North America. The entire return to Fontana has been handled poorly, beginning with the fact that the race has been staged on three different dates since returning three years ago.