The 2024 NTT IndyCar Series schedule has been released but that doesn’t mean it’s entirely complete.
For one, there is still the potential for an event next fall in Argentina, one currently conceived as a non-points race that is still being discussed and negotiated. Such talks have taken place since last November when Agustin Canapino and Juncos Hollinger Racing turned demonstration laps at Rio Hondo in Santiago del Estero and the Oscar y Juan Galvez Circuit in Buenos Aires.
IndyCar president Mark Miles says such a race could still happen despite not showing up on the provisional schedule.
“Not a week goes by, including this week, where we don’t have great ongoing conversations to try to work out the details to race there in the fall of 2024,” Miles said during a Monday press call. “So it’s not done yet, but we continue to make progress.
“It’s something we’re very interested in, as are the authorities in Argentina, and hopefully we can get it over the line.”
Miles says the biggest obstacles to overcome in scheduling such an event are logistical considerations and the state of inflation to the Argentinian economy.
End of an era at Texas Motor Speedway … for now
Unlike Argentina, there is no chance for Texas Motor Speedway to appear on the 2024 schedule after decades of being part of the championship dating back to the track’s inaugural season in 1997. NASCAR and track operator Speedway Motorsports are expected to move the lone Cup Series event at the track to the spring and that made an IndyCar date untenable.
That television partner NBC has the Olympics to broadcast in July and August gave IndyCar few options for an alternative date according to series owner Roger Penske.
“We’ll be back at Texas hopefully in another year but these Olympics really kind of threw a rock in the middle of the scheduling this year,” Penske said.
To that point, Miles was adamant that no doors closed for the longer term future.
“I think there’s an opening and it certainly doesn’t mean that we’re not going back, the fact that we’re not there in 2024,” Miles said. “I think everybody understands we have basically zero flexibility after the Olympics next year, and with NASCAR’s move into the spring there, there really wasn’t an opportunity from TMS’s perspective for us.
“So okay, there’s a great relationship there, and we’ll double back and see what’s possible in the future.”
Ovals and NASCAR companion races
Losing Texas means there no more intermediate tracks on the schedule, once the bread and butter of the old Indy Racing League, which is now the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, street courses in Nashville, Detroit, Long Beach and Toronto combined with the legacy road courses that have made up Indy car racing for decades.
But what about the future of oval racing.
The Milwaukee Mile is back for two races on Labor Day weekend as the penultimate event prior to the championship race on the streets of Downtown Nashville. There is another short oval doubleheader at Iowa Speedway in July and a single Saturday night race at Gateway on August 17.
It’s ironic in a sense because all the D-shaped 1.5-mile tracks were built in the late 90s and early 2000s to accommodate both NASCAR and IndyCar. For a time, these were the least exciting tracks on the Cup schedule and they have also become decreasingly viable for IndyCar to the point no more remain on the schedule.
For the races at Iowa to take place, it took a strong financial commitment from Hy-Vee grocery stories as the title sponsor. These tracks are all owned by NASCAR or Speedway Motorsports but Miles says all parties continue to have healthy conversations over future schedules.
That includes the possibility of event weekends like Indianapolis where both the Cup Series and IndyCar Series raced side-by-side on the same cards.
“I think we have a really good relationship with NASCAR,” Miles said. “There are intermittent conversations about the possibility of doing more together. I think the spirits are willing, and then you get into all the complicated difficulties of laying schedules on top of each other or side by side and making that work.
“I think there will probably be more in the future, but I can’t tell you right now where that may happen.”
Will Milwaukee Mile stick?
The Milwaukee Mile has always been synonymous with Indy car racing history.
There was a time from 1949 to 2009 that the race in West Allis, Wisconsin was the immediate follow-up to the Indianapolis 500, overall hosting 114 races across the various Championship Car sanctioning bodies over the century.
However, over this past decade and a half, IndyCar has struggled to make Milwaukee make business sense and it’s fallen off the schedule on two different occasions. It fell off the schedule in 2010 but came back in 2012 before not coming back for the 2016 schedule.
There hasn’t been a race since then so how will IndyCar, which is co-promoting the event, succeed where Andretti and Green Savoree Promotions recently failed? For one, both Penske and Miles point to the financial commitment that the Fairgrounds has made towards updating the race track itself.
Penske says he has confidence in his team at Penske Entertainment to make the races viable when combined with the efforts made by the Wisconsin State Fair.
“We’re looking at opportunities to have entertainment,” Penske said. “We have the opportunity here with an entertainment here at the fairgrounds, and maybe Saturday night we can have some music. We haven’t committed that yet.
“A number of sponsors we’ve touched base with are very interested to be part of this. We haven’t announced anything at this point, but I think it’s our experience — as you know we were in the speedway business for a long time with Michigan and California and all over the country here, and then to come here and put this under our control in conjunction as a partnership with the Wisconsin Fair Board, I think it works out.
“We’ve got the capital to do it, but even more important when we step back and you look at the track and the money that’s been allocated by the state funding in order to take it to the next level from a safety perspective and also for a fan, I think we’re doing that also. Those are all things that had to happen before we could come here and say it’s going to be sustainable.”
In typical Roger Penske fashion, the longtime racing personality walked every inch of the facility to point out what the Fair Board needed to focus on to set the event up for success.
“We found ourselves walking the track and looking at every linear foot of wall or SAFER barrier or where there might be SAFER barrier and fencing and restrooms and all the rest of it, and honestly laid out a vision you would expect from us about the level of quality upgrades that would need to be made to make it appropriate for us,” Miles said.
“At every turn, the state was there, interested in helping make that happen. There’s some state funding. At the same time, the State Fair Board welcomed the opportunity and is really embracing it, and I don’t know that that was that true last time around in Milwaukee.”
All roads lead to Nashville
A redesigned street course in Downtown Music City will now serve as the championship race.
The new layout is 2.17-miles, across seven turns, that will still make use of the bridge over Cumberland River but also make use of Honky-Tonk Row.
The layout will take drivers directly past the Country Music Hall of Fame and will run through an entertainment district that is home to bars owned by the biggest names in country music, such as Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Luke Bryan, Garth Brooks, Eric Church, Alan Jackson, Miranda Lambert, John Rich and Blake Shelton.
Event CEO Matt Crews says showcasing the city in this way is the key facet of the event.
“Well, Nashville is such a great big event city to start with,” Crews said. “Hospitality is our DNA, so obviously want this to be a great race. But the hospitality element, what Nashville can show, has been phenomenal.
“We’ve had so many teams already in town looking about how they’re going to entertain and how they’re going to culminate the season, but to truly use some of the rooftops of our most iconic honky-tonks I think will set our race apart. We’ve got a package with the Four Seasons rooftop and the Four Seasons pool deck overlooks the racetrack.
“Some really, really unique hospitality to start with, and then a great racetrack. I think Tony Cotman has done a phenomenal job with some big long straightaways. Really looking forward to the racing as well.
“So I think it could be a best of all worlds, but to really sit on the rooftop of a Hard Rock Cafe and watch cars at 150, 160 miles an hour, and again, in the best big event city in America, I think the welcome mat is out, and we can’t wait for IndyCar and the IndyCar fans to be here to close out the ’24 season.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.