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Thousands of fans are expected to converge on Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday for the Brickyard 400, which is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its first running. Jeff Gordon, who moved to Indiana as a teen to get his start in racing, won the inaugural Brickyard as a 23-year-old in 1994 in the first of his five victories in the race.
Sunday’s race will be the 28th edition of the Brickyard 400, with competition returning to the famous oval. For the past three years, NASCAR has run its annual race at IMS on road courses as the Verizon 200 at the Brickyard.
Weekend activities also include the Pennzoil 250, a NASCAR Xfinity Series race, on Saturday and practice on Friday.
IBJ spoke with IMS President Doug Boles about expectations for this year’s races and the challenges of scheduling around other major events, the possibilities of hosting IndyCar and NASCAR races on the same day, and attendance expectations. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
With this being the 30th anniversary of the Brickyard race, what is the atmosphere at the speedway as the race returns to the oval?
I think everybody’s pretty excited about it. We had the road course the last three seasons, and back in 2020, we had the road course for IndyCar and the Xfinity series, while the [main NASCAR race] was on the oval, so it’s been four years. The team seems excited and our group, internally, is ready … this is one I think we’ve looked forward to for a long time.
We started talking about, when we go back to the oval, if not for a longer period of time, to at least rotate back and forth between it and the road course, probably two years ago—when could we get there? We realized soon after that it might be great to do it with the 30th anniversary, so we’ve been looking forward to it since then.
How will not having an IndyCar race during the weekend influence interest—and attendance—in the race?
I’ve always been a big proponent of having a weekend where you have IndyCar and NASCAR together, and I don’t necessarily mean it has to be here [at IMS]. I’ve just really felt like for IndyCar and for NASCAR, finding a venue where they could run together on the same weekend is a great opportunity to allow fans of each series to see the other. It’s great for motorsports when you put those two products together.
So, not having IndyCar here on Saturday is a little bit of a bummer, just because I enjoyed that so much and I think it was good for the sport. But I also think it’s probably good for IndyCar, because they’re here for the Indy 500 and they’re on the road course here [for the Grand Prix of Indianapolis]. I think had we continued to keep them here for more than one race on the road course, I would like to have seen us think about a different layout for the road course, to make it a little bit different.
Because we wouldn’t run IndyCar on the oval, what it does for us, is it helps our team not have to convert the racetrack from road course to oval, back and forth, throughout the weekend. So there’s definitely some savings in terms of just personnel stress from that standpoint, It allows us focus on some things like camping in the infield.
Our Sunday ticket sales this year are significantly up over last year, which I think is really just about people wanting to see the cars back on the oval, as this generation of car hasn’t been on our oval yet. Saturday is down, which you would expect without IndyCar. I think we’re going to be somewhere in that 70,000 range [on Sunday], and the weather forecast will help us get there. It should be a really strong day for for the Brickyard. It’s a significant, sort of sold-out NFL crowd number, so I’m excited about that.
Has the National Eucharistic Congress event in Indianapolis this weekend, which is expected to draw as many as 60,000 people, shaken things up for the race?
If you would have asked a year ago, I think we felt like it was going to have a bigger negative impact, on us than it really has. We were worried about the teams and people traveling in to be able to get any hotel rooms, and as we’ve gotten closer to the event, it feels like some of that’s loosened up a little bit. It isn’t nearly difficult as we thought it might be.
We do know that we had three or four hospitality partners and sponsors that would typically bring groups in that were unable to find hotels with enough rooms to accommodate those groups, so they passed on this for this year. But I think it’s important to the city to have big events like that, and one of the challenges we have in this day and age is we don’t know our NASCAR schedule far enough in advance to be able to help the city plan, so that we’re not on top of each other [with scheduling]—especially the last few years where we’ve bounced around so many days. We were on July 4 one year, and we’ve been on Labor Day weekend, and we’ve been just all over. Hopefully, we can get ourselves where we’re on a traditional weekend going forward, to make it easier for the city to plan.
Is IMS hoping to lock in a date or at least a weekend window moving forward with NASCAR for future events?
For us, it certainly would be easier. We try to be really flexible … as NASCAR has looked at a lot of different things in their schedule. They’re trying to move their schedule around enough to add some new, interesting things, so we’ve said all along, if we can be a partner and help you make some of those things happen by moving our date, we’re happy to participate.
As we’ve done that, I think it’s probably hurt a little bit in terms of people just being able to count on when our events are going to be. It certainly makes it hard for the city, because a lot of those conventions that they have are scheduled three to five years out. So, I think if we can get on a schedule where we’re in the same window—plus or minus a week every year—that’d be fantastic.
You mentioned that if IndyCar were to do a second road course race, you might want to create an alternate route for them to use. Is that something that has been considered in recent years, and how feasible is it to outfit the track with a second layout?
The beauty of the road course we have here is we can get pretty creative with it without too much trouble. The easiest way would be to skip turns 12, 13 and 14 and keep cars on the oval on Turn One heading onto the front stretch, similar to how Formula One used to do it.
We have the inner loop in the infield that we could use if we wanted to go that route, as well. So there’s a lot of different ways we could do that. When we first redid the road course [in 2013], we did a lot of testing and we actually went in opposite direction with IndyCar.
We wanted flexibility in the road course, because not necessarily even with public racing, like an IndyCar or NASCAR coming in, but most of the activity we have here the 140 days of the year, they like to use different parts of a road course. And the flexibility we have makes it attractive to people, because they can change things around and test out different scenarios.
IndyCar since 2014, when we started having the road race in the month of May, has run the same layout every year with a couple of just subtle changes in curving. When Moto GP was here, they ran an opposite direction using different parts of it, and when we’ve had sports cars here, we’ve had them running the inner loop.
Has IMS had conversations with the folks across 16th Street, at IndyCar, about maybe jumpstarting conversations and switching things up?
No, I think the only way we would have switched it up is if we were running the second [road] race here. I think for now we leave the road course as it is. But if we ended up having that second race, I think the thing I would like to have seen is the use of one of those different configurations. But in terms of where we’re planning going forward, we’re just going to run the course we have.
What comes next for the Brickyard?
We’re trying to do everything we can to just build the Brickyard again. If all goes well, this will be the highest-attended—or close to the highest attended—Sunday [NASCAR race] that we’ve had since 2017. The Brickyard has either been flat or slightly down in attendance, so for us to be able to have it grow a little bit is is fantastic, and then we just have to use that as foundation to continue to build it.
If that growth comes, how do you hope to use it to catapult into future success?
I think the excitement of being back on the oval helps us … it’s just the beginning. It starts with our fans, and then everything else is secondary. We have to give them a good product. We’ve tested these cars, but I don’t think with any more than three cars at a time being on track since testing began in August.
So, I think we’ll see how that goes. We’ll learn from Sunday’s race, and we’ll discuss alongside NASCAR, how to make the competition better and that’s what we’ll do. We’ll just continue to try and grow it. We’re going to work our tail off to make it more successful and keep it growing.”
Weekend schedule
NASCAR CUP SERIES
Brickyard 400
Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Schedule: Friday practice, 2:35 p.m.; Saturday qualifying, 1:05 p.m.; Sunday race, 2:30 p.m. (NBC).
Race distance: 160 laps, 400 miles.
Last year: Michael McDowell dominated the 200-mile Cup race on the 2.439-mile road course, leading 54 of 82 laps in a Ford before holding off Chase Elliott’s Chevy by 0.937 seconds.
Fast facts: NASCAR resumes racing on Indy’s iconic 2.5-mile oval for the first time since 2020 after three years on the road course.
NASCAR XFINITY SERIES
Pennzoil 250
Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Schedule: Friday practice, 1:05 p.m., Saturday qualifying, 12:05 p.m., Saturday race, 3:30 p.m. (USA).
Race distance: 100 laps, 250 miles.
Last year: Ty Gibbs started fourth and dominated by leading 28 of 62 laps on the road course, including the final 17 to win by nearly eight seconds over Sam Mayer with pole winner A.J. Allmendinger third. The race featured 10 lead changes.
Fast facts: The series returns to IMS for the first time since Kyle Busch won from the pole in 2019 and led 46 laps in a Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.
NASCAR TRUCK SERIES
TSport 200
Indianapolis Raceway Park
Schedule: Friday practice, 3:30 p.m., qualifying, 4:05 p.m., race 8:30 p.m. (FS1).
Race distance: 200 laps, 137.2 miles.
Last year: Ty Majeski started second and ran away with the race after seizing the lead on lap 40, leading the final 161 circuits for his lone victory last season. Christian Eckes and Layne Riggs were next in Chevys.
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Great job to Doug Boles! He is the man!