Rinus Veekay Pitstop at Texas Motor Speedway. Note the empty grandstands. Media Credit: Penske Entertainment: Chris Jones
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IndyCar: Penske wants more ovals despite long history of failures

Posted by AR1 staff

IndyCar and IMS owner Roger Penske told Racer “If we can get the right event in the right location, I would lean more towards adding ovals than I would road courses or street courses because that’s the differentiation for us from any other form of racing,” Penske said. “The diversity in our schedule with street courses and road courses and ovals, I want to maintain that mix for the future.”

Penske is firm on wanting to keep the Texas Motor Speedway oval on the calendar after a great race was produced in March. However, the IndyCar fans voted with their wallet and very few people showed up for the race.

Attendance has fallen for 10 years straight, and this year you could shoot a cannon into the grandstands and not hit anyone.

Christian Lundgaard gets service during the Xpel 375 at Texas Motor Speedway. Note the sparse crowd. Media Credit: Penske Entertainment

“The great thing about it is that I’ve told our people that we’ve got to stay there because we now know we can race there,” he said. “The fact that the drivers pushed to have that 30-minute session where we could run up high, that paid off, so let’s get more teams to do that. The racing there was as good as we’ve seen in a long time, and we used to have a big crowd there. Well, we’ve got to do it again. IndyCar, our sponsors, and the track owner all need to promote this event and get incrementally more people building it up. It’s one of the greatest markets in the world, and we need to be there.”

Scott Dixon gets service during the Xpel 375 at Texas Motor Speedway. Note the sparse crowd. Media Credit: Penske Entertainment

Failed IndyCar ovals races include:

  1. Atlanta
  2. Charlotte
  3. Chicagoland
  4. Disney
  5. Dover
  6. DuQuoin IL (Dirt)
  7. EuroSpeedway, Germany
  8. Fontana
  9. Hanford, CA
  10. Homestead
  11. Hoosier 100 (Dirt Indiana)
  12. Kansas
  13. Kentucky
  14. Langhorne
  15. Las Vegas
  16. Michigan
  17. Milwaukee (twice)
  18. Motegi
  19. Nashville Oval
  20. Nazareth Paved Oval
  21. Nazareth Dirt Oval
  22. New Hampshire
  23. Ontario
  24. Phoenix
  25. Pike Peak, Co Oval
  26. Pocono (twice)
  27. Rafaela, Argentina
  28. Richmond
  29. Rio de Janeiro
  30. Rockingham England
  31. Sacramento, CA (Dirt)
  32. Sanair
  33. Springfield, IL (Dirt)
  34. Trenton
  35. Texas World Speedway
  36. Texas Motor Speedway (it’s failed, Roger just won’t admit it yet)

With all the failed oval races, it’s clear that if IndyCar fans really liked oval races, they would attend them.

As Albert Einstein once said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Mark C. reporting for AutoRacing1.com