The Thermal Club 2025 IndyCar Grand Prix

Tony_K said:
Now that we're back......I want to know how Indycar makes any money at this race. There aren't a bunch of grandstands full of fans. I think I saw one small one.
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I've also seen that grandstand and it's like one fifth full.
FLRacingFan said:
IndyCar already got the sanctioning fee from the Club. The Club opened up 5,000 general admission passes for this event, a lot more than for last year’s edition. Enough to cover the fee and all associated expenses? Not my business, but something tells me they’ll be okay either way.
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I mean the club is like 300 billionaires, right? They could afford to host 5 F1 races a year.
I guess most IndyCar drivers couldn't afford a house there.
 
Very good race, imo. Tire strategy was really intriguing and led to some great movement up and down the order. You just can’t beat Palou.

I have no idea what their plans are for this place, whether it’s just a placeholder for Arlington next spring, annual spring training venue, or another points race, but I wouldn’t mind if they kept coming back. Though I suspect the series will want them to keep incrementally opening up more ticket sales if they do.
 
How long has this track been around? I had never heard of it until this race was coming up. Interesting course layout and they appeared to be no grandstands.
 
MRM said:
How long has this track been around? I had never heard of it until this race was coming up. Interesting course layout and they appeared to be no grandstands.
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2012 is when the Club opened...not sure about the track.
 
MRM said:
How long has this track been around? I had never heard of it until this race was coming up. Interesting course layout and they appeared to be no grandstands.
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The first loop was completed in 2014 and the complete track in 2017.

It's usually a private facility where billionaires can drive their hypercars, similar to the Ascari Race Resort in Spain.
 
The slow first sector with multiple hairpins was where Palou and Lundgaard had their late battle. Not sure I’d like moving away from that from a racing quality perspective, but they have other incentives to change up the track layout.

To welcome more fans, and treat them—along with the drivers—to a more dynamic event, Rhoades wants to delete some of the less compelling sections on the first half of the lap and make use of a different configuration that would introduce faster turns which would push the track out to 4.2 miles.

“There’s a whole extra part of the track we don’t use for the IndyCar layout that we would want to go to because there’s a lot more room to put grandstands, and there’s a lot of new houses being built out in that section,” he said.
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racer.com

IndyCar, Thermal weighing options post-race for 2026 return

Senior executives from Penske Entertainment and The Thermal Club met on Saturday to determine how they’ll approach the possibility of having IndyCar return in 2026, and both parties agreed the best…
racer.com racer.com
 
How about working on the electrical infrastructure first, then worry about the layout? It doesn't matter how fast they go or what track segments are used if we can't see it.
 
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