2024 Detroit Grand Prix

Does indycar still have the stupid time limit thing? I haven't seen that in a loooong time I know they changed some things regarding that.
 
Beware, Ferruchi is near you Dixon. Be careful.
 
Michigan International Speedway (MIS) is a 2 mi (3.2 km) moderate-banked D-shaped speedway located in Cambridge Township, Michigan, approximately four miles (6.4 km) south of the village of Brooklyn. Situated on more than 1,400 acres (5.7 km2)[2] in the Irish Hills area of southeastern Michigan, the track is 70 miles (110 km) west of the center of Detroit,
 
Well, that was interesting, to say the least. Pretty much all the major IndyCar tropes were covered today - Ferrucci will piss someone off, race control will have one abnormally long caution to sort the order, Herta will look very promising early and then screw himself, and Dixon will win by virtue of saving fuel and not stepping on his own dick.

Graceful? No. Entertaining? Yes.
 
Mispeedway15 said:
I don’t know what folks had against that race. Absolutely fantastic racing today!
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If you split the race into thirds, the first and third were honestly really good green flag racing, and the middle was unbridled chaos. It seems like we’re usually good for one or two of these each year - a couple of times it was Nashville, last year it was Laguna, etc. Good to keep things interesting every so often, and I’d much rather have one like that than St. Pete or Thermal.

Very nice to see the Marcuses end up on the podium after some brutally early 500 DNFs.
 
I’m catching up and watching the race now, I have 20 to go. I don’t hate it so far, in fact I’m highly entertained and enjoying what has been unfolding. Typical Dixon, smartest driver since Rick Mears. He lets everyone beat themselves, his crew utilize strategy and he brings it home. Absolute GOAT. Hate today for Herta though, I wanted him to win. Also… Santino is a grade A idiot.
 
I went on Sunday: It was what it was. I was generally entertained as I always am, but yeah, of course it could have been better. Some of that is the circuit, some of that is the drivers basically losing their minds, some of it was race control. The end with Ericsson actually making a go of it reminded me of Mid Ohio in 2022 (?) which I also attended.

re: Belle Isle - I'd love for it to come back, but the locals deserve their park too. The race also provided funds to really update a lot of things, fix up the fountain, etc. I accept that it isn't returning. I went to Belle Isle in 2018, 2019, 2021, and 2022: never had a bad time there. Saw some excellent races, in fact. I watched Pato and Newgarden bang wheels on the long straight away battling for the win. Great stuff!

re: MIS - I would love to see Indycar at MIS. You know who owns MIS? NASCAR owns it. NASCAR's relationship with Indycar is such that they tried to buy out the Long Beach Grand Prix and has stated repeatedly that they will not even entertain the notion of an Indycar race at their tracks without it being a rental. They have used Indycar to gain access to certain sponsors and taken them. They basically told SMI that the Spring Indycar race date was now a NASCAR one and SMI was not in a position to negotiate this and never will be because of TV revenue, and that led to TMS leaving the Indycar calendar in spite of Indycar trying very hard to find an alternative date.

But more than that: Indycar has not raced at MIS since 2007 because attendance was miserable regardless of how exciting the events were. NASCAR moved one of the MIS NASCAR dates off the track, and also pulled down more than half the seats, meaning that their annual attendance for races is probably somewhere around 1/3-1/4 what it was in the late 90s/early 00s. I will also remind people that it was not until 2012 that Indycar moved the post-500 date to Belle Isle, and during the long stretch of time between 1996 and 2012 (for which the entire split occurred and ended), the race after Indy being an oval race made no difference whatsoever to the interest level for the sport after Memorial Day.

Could you resuscitate the Michigan 500 and make it a big success? Yes, it is theoretically possible. Is that realistic? For two of the core players - GM and NASCAR - this is not something they value and don't have any desire to support it. Having actually been there and not just being someone at home on TV, I could see lots of corporate hospitality stuff in Detroit, and none of it is getting moved to Brooklyn, MI. If it was, you'd see it at the Cup events, and it ain't there either. Would it keep the momentum from the Month of May going? Not unless you had a media partner that wanted to push the heck out of Indycar in June opposite the NBA finals/NASCAR/MLB, and even then, there's no guarantees because the media landscape is very fractured.

I accept that the Detroit GP is staying put and just hope they can make some adjustments here and there to improve the quality of the racing. Some of these like virtual safety cars could be helps across the entirety of the series. But it isn't going away unless the region has no race at all, and it is a whole lot of cope to argue to the contrary.
 
One other thing too since I'm sure I exceeded 5 minutes: this is the most diverse crowd at an Indycar race in the country because it is in the middle of Downtown Detroit. And that's a good thing. You're not going to get thousands of African Americans to drive themselves through former sundown towns to the crumbling remains of the Irish Hills for an Indycar race. You're not going to get young people who live in Hamtramck or Corktown or Midtown to the Irish Hills for an Indycar race. That event is going to be a graveyard for old fans and people seeking nostalgia unless you did something really spectacular around it to justify it as an experience for people in the region. That's why it failed all the way back in the 2000s when there were vast swathes of empty seats. Again: possible, but not realistic.
 
Once Dixon was leading toward the end I knew he'd win. The announcers tried to get us excited about the 2nd and 3rd place drivers but they weren't going to catch him.
This track is terrible. The best thing about it is the unique pit section and all the room there is but Newgarden managed to create drama there too.
 
Tony_K said:
Once Dixon was leading toward the end I knew he'd win. The announcers tried to get us excited about the 2nd and 3rd place drivers but they weren't going to catch him.
This track is terrible. The best thing about it is the unique pit section and all the room there is but Newgarden managed to create drama there too.
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Ericsson absolutely gets to him if there’s one more lap to go. He closed the gap on the final lap by almost 2 seconds once he got past Armstrong.

I actually like the track quite a bit. It’s sort of ironic it’s the closest to our house but we never go. Indy is an expensive and exhausting weekend, to go to another race the following week is just overwhelming
 
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