The Verizon IndyCar Series recently closed a hectic 2014 season that started on March 30, featured 18 domestic races spread across 15 weekends, and concluded on Aug. 30 – a scant 153 days after it started.
IndyCar’s new 2015 schedule extends its season as promised, adding a single visit outside the U.S. to start its championship in Brazil on March 8. No mention was made of the missing Dubai street race that had been penciled in for a mid-February date.
With Brazil as the starting point, IndyCar has concocted another abbreviated schedule that follows its 2014 plan with its domestic opener on March 29 and season finale on Aug. 30. Although the span of the 2015 season has been moved out to 175 days’ worth of a media footprint due to Brazil, it’s almost identical once teams return home from Autódromo Internacional Nelson Piquet.
Within that 154-day span, 16 races will be held on 15 weekends, and there’s been plenty of movement with where events fall on the calendar. As a sidebar, Spring Training is set for a return to Barber Motorsports Park after Brazil where teams will have little time to test the brand-new aero kits that come into play after the South American trek. March is going to be an exceptionally busy month for IndyCar.
After Brazil and St. Pete (March 29), the next three rounds will have the IndyCar circus crisscrossing America on three consecutive weekends as teams race at NOLA Motorsports Park in Louisiana (April 12), sprint to the West Coast for Long Beach (April 19), and then hightail it back to the Southeast for Barber (April 26).
Teams will have a similar break between Barber and the Grand Prix of Indianapolis (May 9), yet with practice for the Indy 500 starting the next day (May 10) – just as it did in 2014 – teams are in for another tiring stretch with the GP of Indy launching seven weekends of action in an eight-week span.
Qualifying for the Indy 500 (May 16-17), the Indy 500 (May 24), the Duel in Detroit (May 30-31), Texas Motor Speedway (June 6), and the shifted Toronto (June 14) and Fontana events (June 27) will have IndyCar teams and drivers breathing a sigh of relief once they return from Southern California.
Fontana marks a tasty stretch for oval racing fans as it ushers in the first of three events after a short break. Milwaukee (July 12) moves up more than a month from its 2014 date, and Iowa (July 18) completes the oval trifecta.
Another slight pause follows Iowa as teams have almost two weeks to prepare Mid-Ohio (Aug. 2), and then an even bigger pause takes place before the final oval of the year at Pocono (Aug. 23) also serves as the penultimate round.
The IndyCar Series has held its championship finale on ovals since its inception as the Indy Racing League, yet the bold decision to move the 2015 finale to a road course has been made and Sonoma Raceway is the venue (Aug. 30).
Looking at the entire 2015 schedule, a few big items stand out.
2014 featured three double-headers, but with the loss of Houston and Toronto reverting back to a single round, only Detroit will host two rounds on the same weekend. Moving the championship decider from Fontana to Sonoma also comes with plenty of collateral adjustments.
IndyCar experimented with awarding double points at its three 500-mile races in 2014, and while that practice could continue next season, it leaves the series with some thinking to do on what to do with points for its new finale at Sonoma.
Double points at Fontana raised the stakes for such a long event, but with a more processional road course as the venue for its closer, IndyCar president of competition Derrick Walker told RACER the subject of points for Sonoma – and the season as a whole – is still being considered.
“The subject of championship points and manufacturer points is being worked on at the moment,” he said. “We have double points at the speedway races last year, but with a different configuration of the schedule next year that ends on a road course, we have to consider other points systems to fit the schedule. We’ll be announcing a different points system very soon.”
Fan turnout for the last three season finales at Fontana could easily be described as minimal, and with Sonoma Raceway’s sprawling circuit rarely filled for anything other than its annual date with NASCAR, IndyCar’s problem with thinly subscribed finales could continue.
“That’s going to be a 10-month campaign to grow awareness for the event,” said Sonoma Raceway President Steve Page. “We need to build excitement and awareness around the event, we’ve seen incremental growth each year with IndyCar, and things are growing rather than shrinking, which is important. It’s exciting for Northern California to have an Indy car season finale back – it’s been a while since that happened – and we’re prepared and IndyCar is prepared to make it a big event.”
The biggest imprint on IndyCar’s 2015 schedule is the continued avoidance of the NFL. Shutting the season down prior to September achieves the goals established by the Boston Consulting Group, but also sends the series into another long and quiet winter where NASCAR, Formula 1, the World Endurance Championship and the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship feed racing fans with months of additional content.
Breaking from the pack to try something different is always worth trying at least once. Time will tell whether locking IndyCar into its second rapid-fire season was the right move or the repetition of an ill-conceived experiment.
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