Pre-race show added to IndyCar finale

INDYCAR CEO Randy Bernard said ABC has added a 30-minute pre-race show to the IZOD INDYCAR World Championship on Oct. 16 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Last week, INDYCAR and ABC announced that they signed an agreement in which ABC will continue to be the exclusive network partner of the IZOD IndyCar Series through 2018. The extension is concurrent with the remaining years of the VERSUS (on Jan. 2 to be rebranded NBC Sports Channel) contract.

"I want to thank ABC for their commitment. I think it says a lot that they were willing to do a new deal for six years," Bernard said. "It is substantially better for us financially as well as we believe there will be a lot of new promotional ideas in this contract that will help INDYCAR."