NASCAR Cup drivers will race IMS road course for 1st time
Shift from the Brickyard oval is unsettling, say some NASCAR competitors.
INDIANAPOLIS – Of all the driving he does every year, those couple of hundred yards into one of the tunnels surrounding the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and then back up again with the Pagoda and the grandstands firmly in view is on Kevin Harvick’s short-list. It’s not so much about being on IMS grounds or the view itself, but the oval track battle he’s about the embark upon and those that have come before him for more than a century in cars so different from his present-day stock car.
There’s history there – way more than even the IMS Museum can hold – and that’s partly why defending his Brickyard 400 title a year ago (just the third NASCAR Cup Series driver to have done so) was so special. He made history on a 2.5-mile patch of asphalt he so deeply reveres.
To not have the opportunity to be the first driver to win three straight is something Harvick has yet to come to terms with.
“I can’t imagine driving backwards on the frontstretch and driving the road course in the infield,” he said. “It’s an oval thing for me.
“I’m sure I’ll get over it as we start practice and realize it’s just another race, but for me, it’s going to be a difficult hurdle to overcome.”
Harvick’s far from alone in that sentiment, as the NASCAR Cup Series prepares to run for the first time on the IMS road course this weekend in the Verizon 200. After a decades-long battle by stock car nation for the honor to join American open-wheel racing on the oval at the “Racing Capital of the World,” Tony George obliged in 1994. Victories from the series’ titans at the time – Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt and Dale Jarrett – firmly secured the Brickyard 400 as one of NASCAR’s annual “crown jewel” events, one that at its peak attracted more than 200,000 fans on race day, by far the biggest crowd on the calendar.
At the time, the belief was this: NASCAR would always have Daytona and its seasondeciding playoff race, but the Brickyard 400 was something to cherish. But over time, through rule changes, numerous setup packages, rising summer heat and Goodyear’s tire debacle, not only did crowds wane – down below 40,000 in recent years – but a realization from track and series personnel set in: The racing wasn’t good, hadn’t been good in some time and wasn’t feasibly getting better.
Four-time Brickyard 400 winner Jimmie Johnson told The Indianapolis Star he does, in fact, remember a day when not all, but many, stars aligned for NASCAR on what the stock car community commonly refers to as a “flat rectangle.” But when NASCAR reined in the rules package to make the series more competitive across the board, it made actual competition – i.e. passing without being the result of one driver’s slip-up – nearly impossible.
So just months into his tenure as the new owner of IMS, longtime NASCAR team owner Roger Penske decided he’d kick the can down the road no longer. As a trial run of sorts, IMS hosted NASCAR’s Xfinity Series on the road course last July, in what was largely considered the most exciting race of the weekend, even with IndyCar and Cup on-hand.
“If I take my driver hat off and put my race fan hat on and watch the Xfinity race last year, along with the Cup race last year, Xfinity was more entertaining for me to watch,” Team Penske driver Joey Logano told IndyStar in a recent interview. “That’s the bottom line.”
Drivers split on massive change
Logano firmly sits on one side of a somewhat divisive fence inside the Cup Series garages: those who enter the rebranded summer IMS race for NASCAR with some amount of excitement, intrigue and glasshalf-full attitude and those who can’t get past what was lost. For the latter, such as Harvick, it wasn’t so much about what the racing showed, but what it meant. Is losing all that really worth grabbing a couple tens of thousands of fans who may only be intrigued at the novelty of it all and who may drift back into the shadows when that’s gone?
“We lost a crown jewel when we don’t go to the oval there,” said Richard Childress Racing’s Austin Dillon. “I don’t think the road course will ever be what the oval history has, so I’m kind of disappointed we don’t get to race on the oval.
“I wouldn’t mind going twice and doing it two different ways. If we have to run the road course, we still want to be able to run the oval because of the history and legacy there. Everybody wants a real Brickyard trophy. I feel like this weekend, when you win there, it’s not going to be like winning on the oval.”
Part of the mixed feelings exist in how to look at a track that wasn’t entirely lost in the first place. It’s certainly not as if NASCAR is no longer running at IMS at all because the situation was seen as completely untenable. Stock cars will run half the south short chute, as well as nearly the entire front straight, crossing over the famed Yard of Bricks – albeit in the wrong direction.
Stewart-Haas Racing’s Aric Almirola sees that as “weird.” Chip Ganassi’s Ross Chastain and Team Penske’s Austin Cindric see it as an opportunity to put on a better show, which, when it comes down to it, is what they believe NASCAR does better than anyone else.
“The value of having NASCAR running at IMS is the value of having NASCAR at every weekend,” Cindric told IndyStar. “It’s the close racing. It’s the hard racing, the hard battles. It’s the unique show that no other racing series has. And if that’s on the oval or the road course, I don’t know that it’s any different.”
Already seeing the Brickyard 400 as the stepbrother of the Indianapolis 500, the Team Penske driver doesn’t see the harm in NASCAR simply becoming a better version of itself.
“I think what makes this place special is the Indy 500,” he continued. “But any time you can bring our race cars and run them on a new track with a new package, it gives the fans something exciting to look forward to.”
Xfinity Series cars paved the way in 2020
Cindric knows that truth well, having taken part in the riveting, down-to-the-wire five-car battle in the Xfinity race on the IMS road course a year ago. Chase Briscoe snuck by to take the lead with two laps to go in the midst of a backand-forth duel at the front between A.J. Allmendinger and Cindric, who wound up taking fourth and fifth, respectively. Justin Haley (second) and Noah Gragson (third) joined Briscoe on the podium.
Part of what allowed that race to be so good, and what local race fans can look forward to heading into this weekend, is precisely the way in which stock car racing differs from IndyCar – the bumping, the rubbing, the fender riding and banging, at a level that would leave open-wheel cars parked for the rest of the day.
Where IndyCar drivers can try to outbrake their competitors heading into Turn 1 – which can set up a wild battle all the way through Turn 6 as well as Turn 7 on the back straight in the infield – stock cars’ passing in those zones can turn into a full-fledged shoving match. Xfinity cars, with their composite bodies, prove kings of this type of racing because they can take damage and either pop right back into place or, if nothing else, not cut tires like a metal-bodied Cup car is more prone to. But the latter comes with more grip and higher aerodynamic capabilities that can keep the cars closer in the first place.
The battles may not be near as rough, but there may be more of them.
“In Xfinity (on the road course), five guys could win (in 2020),” said Chastain, who finished sixth in that race a year ago. “Now in Cup, you have 15 guys that can win on the road course. On the oval, you might have had 20, but if you get cycled back to 20th or so, you might get stuck (at IMS). If you restart back there on the road course, and you have enough laps, you can get back to the front.”
Johnson added that, while the makeup of the stock cars alone allows for some more hard racing, if and when tempers flare, that action has a chance to skyrocket in ways IndyCar simply can’t without the blatant and, frankly, dangerous, wrecking of enemies. In NASCAR, that on-track retaliation crops up frequently.
“How you were wronged determines the retaliation,” Johnson said. “The braking zones are the best spot. The slower the corner, the rougher you’ll get with somebody, unless you’re just fuming mad.
“After driving that track, I feel like there will be some aggression diving into Turn 1, and that Turn 4 line is pretty wide where you can be really aggressive.
“In (Turn) 7, Indy cars are already all over the curbs, so that means the NASCAR guys will be in the grass.”
Is the change worth the loss?
Now, is the prospect of all that, in a year when NASCAR has upped its road course count to seven, worth it? You could argue – and those in the Harvick camp might – that a stellar road race at IMS now just makes it one of more than a half-dozen. It’s neither unique nor historic, beyond the 2021 race being the first on the course. Others might say that a great race anywhere on the grounds that Tony Hulman saved in November of 1945 is better than a boring, uncompetitive one on the oval.
As has been the case throughout the several decades since the idea of running stock cars on the IMS oval first was brought to life, not everyone will ever be happy with this arrangement. Though he’s no longer racing in NASCAR, seven-time champion Johnson finds a measured approach somewhere in the middle.
“There’s nothing like racing on the oval, and the pageantry and prerace and all that goes into it, but I hope fans can appreciate this race and support it,” Johnson said. “Not every car fits every circuit perfectly, and I’m proud of NASCAR saying, ‘We’re going to try something different and give something better to our fans.’
“And if that doesn’t work like everyone thinks it will, I’m sure we’ll go back to the oval, but it doesn’t hurt to try.”