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Schedule:

03/13/2016 - Streets of St. Petersburg - Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg - ABC
04/02/2016 - Phoenix International Raceway - Phoenix Grand Prix - NBCSN
04/17/2016 - Streets of Long Beach - Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach - NBCSN
04/24/2016 - Barber Motorsports Park - Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama - NBCSN
05/14/2016 - Indianapolis Motor Speedway | Road Course - Angie's List Grand Prix of Indianapolis - ABC
05/21/2016 - Indianapolis 500 Qualifying - ABC/ESPN3
05/22/2016 - Indianapolis 500 Qualifying - ABC/ESPN3
05/29/2016 - The 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race - ABC
06/04/2016 - The Raceway at Belle Isle - Chevrolet Indy Dual in Detroit - ABC
06/05/2016 - The Raceway at Belle Isle - Chevrolet Indy Dual in Detroit - ABC
06/11/2016 - Texas Motor Speedway - Firestone 600 - NBCSN
06/26/2016 - Road America - NBCSN
07/10/2016 - Iowa Speedway - Iowa Corn 300 - NBCSN
07/17/2016 - Streets of Toronto - Honda Indy Toronto - CNBC
07/31/2016 - Mid Ohio Sports Car Course - Honda Indy 200 - CNBC
08/21/2016 - Pocono Raceway - ABC Supply 500 - NBCSN
09/04/2016 - Streets of Boston - Grand Prix of Boston - NBCSN
09/18/2016 - Sonoma Raceway - GoPro Grand Prix of Sonoma - NBCSN

Confirmed Teams & Drivers:

Looks like IndyCar is on track for a race at Gateway Motorsports Park in 2017.


Miles working with ISC on some other venues in the future.


Pocono's contract will be on a year-by-year basis currently.


Iowa's race is on a Sunday due to NASCAR racing the night before at Kentucky.

Miles said he isn't optimistic on a return to Milwaukee in 2017.

Phoenix's race will be named the Phoenix Grand Prix, race distance hasn't been announced but I would assume it would be a 250 lap race
http://www.phoenixraceway.com/Articles/ ... EDULE.aspx

Naming an oval race a grand prix is a bit unusual. Has that been done?

Nazareth in the late 80's and 1990's
the first few years that Homestead was on the CART & IRL schedules
there might have been 1 or 2 more but I can't remember

Still can't believe we won't have Fontana as season ender, really really frustrated, I hate the end of a season at Sonoma. The Saturday nights with that 500 miler was my favourite time of the year for any TV event.

Gateway Motorsports Park is now approved by IndyCar for testing
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/other/ga ... 32abd.html

Might see a race there even this year, if that Boston race doesn't happen.

What a beautiful article with well thought out and intelligent points being made. Too bad nobody will listen.

http://www.motorsport.com/indycar/news/ ... -warning//

Can't say I know much about Rick Mears, but he makes a compelling and lucid argument. The same applies for F1, tbh - it's a touch ironic that NASCAR is blazing a trail in this area.

So many valid points in that article.

I agree though nobody will listen unfortunately.

Don't want to start that discussion again, but I remember reading an article after Fontana, in which Bobby Unser said with the current aero package is like throwing a fistfull of pebbles in the air and see which one falls first.

I'm wondering if people would be satisfied with the product in the end though... People are so used to pack racing these days (or even the pack-lite stuff you saw at Pocono and Indy). Seen plenty of people bitch in certain forums about how boring certain Indy oval races were that weren't pack style.

For me, it would be nice to see more of a CART like spec, which would be a heavier car (shouldn't take off as much) with more horsepower that didn't rely so much on aero downforce. I don't mind the pack-lite racing of Pocono and Indy personally but, like the Hanford racing of old, it is a bit "artificial excitement" in a way. (Like restrictor plate racing in NASCAR, the old IRL pack racing style we saw at Fontana is too much for me.)

You cannot please everybody all of the time, boxing off the car and relying on the wings only to produce downforce, would go a long way to achieving what Meats wants, instead of the silky smooth aerodynamics monster the cars are today.

Indy 500 was pack racing? Maybe you should go watch the whole thing again more closely. Whenever there was a long green flag run, there was a breakaway group. You even saw it in the last 15 lap run with JPM, Power, Kimball and Dixon. In the end it was a two car fight for the win. Hondas and Chevrolets were scattered throughout the field (starting from Rahal in 5th).

Nobody's ever had trouble making a slipstream pass at Indy.

Iowa had a similar breakaway group. At the end the two lead Ganassi cars broke, Penske lost their advantage and dropped back, leaving Newgarden and RHR to duel for the win several seconds clear of the next car. The field was almost entirely single file during long green flag runs. Milwaukee... weren't we all marveling at Bourdais driving into the distance?

I think the "pack racing" thing is almost entirely a legacy of the old IRL days, and because Fontana bucked the trend away from that for one race, everyone suddenly panicked because of the bad juju associated with it (Las Vegas 2011). Team Penske were the most vocal about it, which doesn't surprise me since it eroded their equipment advantage as well.

To equate Phoenix with Fontana is misleading at best. It has very modest banking and never had pack racing at any time, IRL included. I'm all in favour of more hp on the speedways, because judging by Mears' comment there wasn't enough even when he was racing (the flat out comment about Phoenix).

No, it's "pack lite". Compare it to the 1980s / 1990s Indy 500s. It's definitely not the IRL style (MHO) boredom where a bunch of cars travel in a big pack for lap on lap, with little change. Or even the Fontana style which was an IRL pack where they could move around some. It's more like the Hanford device races of the late 1990s at Michigan and Fontana -- for several laps after a bunched up start you get a lot of passing and dicing and no one really dominating due to the big hole the Hanford punched in the air.

It's definitely *not* like the old Indy races. I'm inferring Rick is wanting to return towards specs more in those days, where you had to lift at tracks like Indy.

I understand that *some* of this "Handfordish" effect is probably unavoidable unless you get rid of the wheel guards and other extra stuff, one of the causes of the current racing style is that the DW12 punches a pretty darn big hole in the air. But I imagine the other part of the issue, is that I'm pretty sure the cars go flat out now even at Indy. Back in the 1990s / early 2000s they went flat out at Michigan and Fontana too, but at Indy I'm pretty sure they had to lift in the corners. Now I believe they go flat out around Indy too.

I think Mears's point about Phoenix was more that if you're running flat out around there, where's the challenge?
He took some of the downforce off and dammit, he was having FUN again.

And he's right, if we show up there next year, run flat out on a track where you can't get a tow off the guy in front, how exactly do we expect people to pass?

Mears is exactly right, this high downforce low power crap has blighted this racing since day 1 of the IRL.
I have no idea why they went in that direction, maybe they wanted to make sure their "product" was better than the other side in the split so dumbed it down to the point where side by side racing was guaranteed and the fans would switch to their side, but whatever, that was 20 years ago now and its time that thinking was nullified. It's the main reason I was so gutted the wrong side won the war, at least Champcars, even the DP-01 were a driving challenge with more power than aero grip.

For whatever reason both NASCAR and Indycar have gone through this high downforce phase because they think they know better than the drivers, engineers, media, team owners and fans. Whether its a misguided notion of safety or for "the show", it's wrong on both fronts and has held back this sport from the true spectacle it can be.

/rant

_________________
RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

one Moore tribute for that guy who became a legend wearing those red gloves and raced fast whenever he could

RIP Greg, is been 16 years and we still miss you

_________________
Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

Yes, yes we do. #99

Promoter test schedule at Phoenix on February 26-28, testing rules for 2016 announced as well
http://www.indycar.com/News/2015/11/11- ... 6-released

the mayor of Boston has given IndyCar and the GP of Boston promoters 2 weeks to get everything signed, it appears.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_ ... to_indycar

Toronto's contract has been extended to 2018. Might be a doubleheader if Boston falls apart.
http://m.thestar.com/#/article/autos/20 ... atter.html