IndyCar doesn’t go to many ovals anymore, but Texas Motor Speedway should be cherished, Andretti says

Count legendary IndyCar driver Mario Andretti among those who feel IndyCar should keep its presence at oval tracks such as Texas Motor Speedway.

The subject has been debated for decades now. Some feel ovals are outdated and fail to produce the desired excitement for today’s fan. Some feel they’re too dangerous for the open-wheel racing series, pointing to drivers who died racing on ovals including Justin Wilson and Dan Wheldon.

For Andretti, though, the foundation of the sport is in ovals. After all, the signature event for the series is an oval race — the Indianapolis 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“I think it’s very important for IndyCar to maintain presence on the ovals,” Andretti told the Star-Telegram during a recent telephone interview. “They are slowly disappearing from the series, but I think you have to go back to the roots and maintain that as well. That’s been what the series has been all about.

“Ovals are very important. They must be maintained and must be cherished by the series.”

However, that mindset doesn’t appear to be shared by IndyCar brass.

The 2021 schedule features only four oval races at three different tracks — a doubleheader at Texas Motor Speedway next Saturday and Sunday; the Indy 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on May 30; and a race at World Wide Technology Raceway (formerly known as Gateway Motorsports Park) on Aug. 21.

IndyCar noticeably left out Iowa and Richmond from its 2021 schedule, and has dropped races at Chicagoland, Kentucky, Milwaukee and Kansas in the past decade or so.

Quite simply, the oval races outside of the Indy 500 usually don’t draw as well compared to street courses such as Long Beach and St. Petersburg.

However, as far as Andretti is concerned, tracks such as Texas need to stay in the rotation. The track hosted a number of memorable open-wheel races in its early years, but it hasn’t lived up to that in recent years.

This year is another question mark about what type of show IndyCar will bring with drivers expressing concern about running the high-groove lane between Turns 1 and 2. Following a recent test at TMS, drivers said the area between the turns remain slippery from a leftover rubber compound called PJ1 Track Bite from NASCAR races run in the fall of 2019.

“Unfortunately, the dark black stuff is, from the data we got, is about 20% less grip than the bottom lane-and-a-half, so it’s still going to be a no-go zone,” veteran driver Graham Rahal said following the testing session. “I think we’ll be able to put on a better show than what we had last year or the time before that. I’m sure when they repaved the track [in early 2017], they thought it was going to be the perfect combination. … Everybody here has done a great job to try to adjust to that and make it racy again. I think it’s getting closer.”