IndyCar Global Challenge

[KevinWI]

Per Racer.com, IndyCar management and its teams are openly discussing expanding to a more global schedule in 2015. Apparently, this worldwide tour would be run after the regular season championship ends (sort of a winter tour) and would be called the "IndyCar Global Challenge".

Brazil would stay in the 'regular season' where it is now (Walker stressed this) and apparently all the teams are in favor of this, including Andretti Autosport. They stopped going to Motegi because of the cost of teams traveling to Japan from North America, but now, all the teams are in favor of this because it would give them revenue during the winter months.

I have a few thoughts on it.

Obviously, more racing is good racing, especially if it helps teams stay in businesses. And I would love to see them to return to some of the great international venues, like Surfer's Paradise or Motegi (I definitely think they should return to Rockingham, England and EuroSpeedway, where CART put on two great races before never returning again).

That said, you could argue that all the dramatic F1-like venues are one factor that led to the split and downfall in American open-wheel racing in the first place. The series is struggling to fill seats in American race tracks aside from Indianapolis, so it is a good idea to try to put on all these crackerjack events around the world?

I guess I'm pro-to-mixed on the idea. Anybody have any thoughts?

 

[SuperTex14]

I read the Racer article too, and have mixed feelings same as you. Mostly because they seem to be back to driving the series into the ground, as they were before Randy Bernard got the ship turned around and finally started to show improvement.

They do need to make the season longer than Labor Day, there's still 3 months of good racing weather in the U.S. before the holidays. Get back to Phoenix, add a race in Mexico City with local hero Adrian Fernandez' promotional help, and get a foothold before F1 gets there (believe me, they know how many tickets were bought for the F1 race in Austin with pesos). They should try to succeed as a North American racing series before trying to compete in Europe and the Far East with established racing series, and I don't mean just F1. Exceptions being traditional international Indycar venues like Surfer's, and to a lesser extent, Motegi. The European CART races remind me of The Split.

The Racer story (or maybe in the comments) also mentioned racing at some of the current European F1 circuits during the Global Challenge. IMO that would be inviting criticism where they don't need it, with critics comparing crowd counts and lap times. I'm skeptical about them racing at COTA for the same reason, even though I think replacing Houston with a race in Austin is a no-brainer.

 

[FlyGuy]

This is pretty clearly one of the first impacts of the NASCAR contract. Indycar is committed to NBCSN for years and NBCSN now will be carrying tons of NASCAR races. I'm sure the pressure to end the season in August is largely driven by the lack of broadcast space on NBCSN. It's either going to be tape delay coverage, weird times, or eliminating overlapping races. It appears to be the latter. It basically sounds like this would take place when the NASCAR season ends at Thanksgiving and run through the Winter which is, of course, when NBCSN and others have limited programming, if they don't have Pro Football (NBCSN doesn't) and the College season is over and College basketball is not a Sunday sport.

 

[Zerkfitting]

More races are good if they can make it financially successful. I wouldn't call it preseason, they need to find a good name for the series of races. Grid girls might be expected for the overseas venues.

 

[FlyGuy]

I'm not sure it is really any different than GP2. I don't see how it would drive any attendance.