IndyCar has confirmed this year’s 104th running of the Indianapolis 500 has been postponed to August 23rd.
The preceding round of the championship, to be held on the road circuit at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, has also been postponed due to the global pandemic, will now take place on July 4th. It will form part of a double-header event with NASCAR’s race on the oval the following day.“The month of May at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is my favourite time of year and, like our fans, I am disappointed that we have had to reschedule the Indianapolis 500,” said IndyCar and IMS owner Roger Penske.
“However the health and safety of our event participants and spectators is our top priority, and we believe that postponing the event is the responsible decision with the conditions and restrictions we are facing.”
Other races have also been rescheduled as a result of the Indianapolis 500 date change. The Mid-Ohio round, which was originally due to take place on August 16th, has moved forward one week to August 9th. The Gateway round has been moved back eight days to August 30th.
The IndyCar season is now due to begin with the double-header event on the Belle Isle street circuit in Detroit on May 30th-31st.
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Euro Brun (@eurobrun)
26th March 2020, 19:25
Postponing was not a surprise, and it makes a lot of sense to announce this sooner rather than later, but what surprises me the most about the rescheduling is the Indy Car / NASCAR double header!
Surely this is unheard of before?
And to mix the road circuit and oval in the same weekend will be interesting to see, with the track rubbering in differently in different parts, and of course them running the opposite direction to one another!
It will be interesting to see the weekend schedule, cos they can’t both run fully compacted into one day each, so there must be some overlap.
George O'Donnell (@georgeod)
26th March 2020, 20:20
@eurobrun It had been previously announced that the second level NASCAR series (Xfinity) would run on the road course on July 4 (now same as Indycar) in support of the Brickyard 400. It’s was planned as a bit of an acid test to see whether the NASCAR Cup cars could move off the oval too since NASCAR races very poorly on the Indianapolis oval. Tony Stewart is coming out of retirement to try out the road course.
It will be very interesting and exciting! Indycar and NASCAR have never run together before. This is a decent compromise since Indycar and NASCAR aren’t running on the same configuration at the same time so can’t be compared against each other.
Corey
26th March 2020, 20:20
A doubleheader is unheard of in regards to the NASCAR Cup and Xfinity series. The NASCAR Truck Series have been on the IndyCar undercard for years at various places.
HUHHII (@huhhii)
26th March 2020, 19:33
Let’s hope this oval-racing nonsense will be postponted until 3020 at the very least.
mfreire
26th March 2020, 22:15
Have you ever even seen IndyCar race on an oval? I much prefer road racing any day but oval racing is far from nonsense. It’s actually some of the most exciting racing you’ll ever see.
Bill
28th March 2020, 14:40
“Oval-racing nonsense?” Ever heard of this little race called the Indy 500? It’s only the oldest, largest race on earth. It’s actually OK to watch F1 and IndyCar. Double your open wheel fun.
NS Biker (@rekibsn)
26th March 2020, 22:14
By then we can expect to see some new Head-Lines…..
“McLaren protested due to out of range inertial dampers and Mag-Lev suspension software hacks. Cars lapping slower than in 3019 so total race time will be over 90 minutes.”
“Alonso coming back for one-more-try.”
For now we are stuck in the Turn-Left and weak beer with “Hot-Dogs” world. Submit, resistance is futile.
Look on the bright side, we get a double dose with NASCAR going the opposite direction so your neck muscles have a break.
Phylyp (@phylyp)
27th March 2020, 2:02
@rekibsn – LOL, thanks for that laugh :)
KaIIe (@kaiie)
27th March 2020, 5:37
Didn’t they say just a few days ago that the event will definitely not be postponed? Shows how quickly things change.
Mark Zastrow (@markzastrow)
27th March 2020, 7:36
@kaiie, no they simply said their objective was “to see if it’s possible to do it as scheduled mid-May”. Clearly, it wasn’t, and it didn’t take a genius to see that even then, but I guess they wanted to get a solid plan B confirmed before making the announcement.
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
27th March 2020, 9:22
I won’t be surprised if there’s a huge backlash about this from that countries head of state downwards.
They’ll consider moving it from their Memorial Day weekend to another date completely unpatriotic. Hopefully it won’t cause too much grief for the owners/managers.