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When NASCAR and INDYCAR announced a mutual date at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) next year, it cemented the knowledge that NASCAR, in particular, is changing how it approaches its standing at the pinnacle of American motorsports.<\/p>\n
The NASCAR Cup Series has been the most popular of all US-based racing series for decades, helped by the heroic driving of, in particular its three seven-time champions: Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt and Jimmie Johnson. In different eras, these three racers stood above their peers, primarily racing on paved oval circuits. And rarely sharing space with any other series as the Cup series grew in popularity.<\/p>\n
That changes in 2021 and, by far one of the bigger changes in Cup Series scheduling are the moving of the legendary Brickyard 400 from IMS\u2019 historic 2.5-mile oval to the 2.439-mile infield\/oval road course where Formula 1, MotoGP, INDYCAR and the NASCAR Xfinity Series have all performed. NASCAR\u2019s Cup Series will, as the Xfinity Series did this July 4th, share the race weekend with the NTT INDYCAR Series.<\/p>\n
This announcement was part of NASCAR\u2019s 2021 scheduling updates, which removes both Kentucky and Chicagoland\u2019s speedways from the touring schedule, includes six road racing venues (including IMS and the debut of Circuit of the Americas) and even places a clay covering on Bristol Motor Speedway\u2019s bowl of an oval to see Cup cars racing on dirt for the first time in 50 years. Bristol\u2019s dirt race is set for March 28th; the Circuit of the Americas contest marks the first road race of the year and occurs on May 23rd.<\/p>\n
NASCAR will be different in 2021; no doubt of that.<\/p>\n
Indianapolis Motor Speedway showed its excitement at the prospect of having The Brickyard Weekend filled with open- and closed-wheel competition August 13-14 of next year, following the sharing of the Brickyard\u2019s two major circuits during the July 4th weekend this year, as both INDYCAR and NASCAR aimed to revive fortunes following the COVID-19 shutdown. The shift to the road course in 2021 marks the first time, after 27 consecutive years on the oval, that NASCAR\u2019s top tier turns left and right in central Indiana.<\/p>\n
Team Penske\u2019s Joey Logano and Rahal Letterman Lanigan\u2019s Graham Rahal were on-hand to help IMS president J. Douglas Boles introduce this new race format for NASCAR\u2019s 28th Cup Series race at the Brickyard, and its first in tandem with the track\u2019s original occupant, INDYCAR.<\/p>\n
For Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the decision to put Cup cars on the road courses made easier after the July 4th weekend that had both INDYCAR and Xfinity on the 14-corner circuit. \u201cI do think it was an easier decision when we saw how well the Xfinity cars raced on the road course, and I think the Cup cars will race really well there,\u201d Boles said. For those drivers that have always preferred the 2.5-mile oval, the good news is that they will \u201cstart and finish on those Yard of Bricks, and they\u2019re racing across the same front stretch that we\u2019ve raced here since 1909.\u201d<\/p>\n
Logano, who was on-site but didn\u2019t race during July\u2019s Xfinity race acknowledged that he, like most NASCAR Cup Series regulars was \u201cglued to our TVs\u201d watching the Xfinity race. He recognizes that tire wear will play a large part: \u201cOur cars were slipping and sliding, which as a driver that\u2019s a lot of fun. You want to see tire wear. You want to see the penalty of running too hard, that strategy [that] comes into it, especially on road courses, what are tires worth, and it\u2019s challenging to get through the field.\u201d<\/p>\n
Winning this inaugural road race at IMS would be special for Logano. \u201cIf you can win the first Cup race on the road course that would mean a lot. Any win means a lot,\u201d he said, \u201cbut doing that would be something that you\u2019d remember forever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rahal, who\u2019s been runner-up twice on Indy\u2019s road course since the speedway began running Indy cars in 2014, believes it\u2019s \u201ca tremendous thing for everybody to race together. It\u2019s great for the Speedway; it\u2019s great for NASCAR; it\u2019s great for INDYCAR; it\u2019s great for the fans.\u201d Rahal recognizes that many in the Cup garage are good road racers, citing Jimmie Johnson\u2019s desire to work with competitor Chip Ganassi Racing once his Cup Series ends at the close of this season. But others have raced successfully at Daytona International Speedway in the IMSA-sanctioned Rolex 24 at Daytona, so the adjustment won\u2019t be too difficult for many.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese sports,\u201d Rahal said, \u201ccan help lift motorsports together, and hopefully that can happen. A weekend like this is a great opportunity to do so.\u201d Logano piped in: \u201cA racer is a racer, as Graham said. We all want to be in the car as much as possible. We kind of want to know [what] each other\u2019s
\ncar feels like. it\u2019s funny, \u201cLogano mused. \u201cWhen I talk to the iNDYCAR guys at Team Penske, they all want to know what a Cup car drives like. And all of us Cup guys are like, I want to know what all that grip feels like and how hard they can drive into the corner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boles noted the fans who were unable to watch in-person for all IMS races held thus far (some fans will be allowed during this weekend\u2019s INDYCAR Harvest GP doubleheader) will be able to witness two very different disciplines on the same track. This event might lead to cross-pollination for fans as well as drivers. And some of the biggest fans on site for these two August races could easily be the drivers, who will get to see how the other series works on the same circuit. \u201cThe biggest win is the fans,\u201d Rahal said. \u201cPeople that want to come and see both and have really dreamt about that opportunity are going to have it. It should be a great weekend for everybody involved.\u201d<\/p>\n
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When NASCAR and INDYCAR announced a mutual date at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) next year, it cemented the knowledge that NASCAR, in particular, is changing how it approaches its standing at the pinnacle of American motorsports.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":75125,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,3470,22],"tags":[5614,4008,712,127,41,1632],"class_list":["post-75123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guest-column","category-news","category-event-coverage","tag-anne-proffit","tag-guest-column","tag-indycar","tag-nascar","tag-news","tag-racing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/2021-Brickyard-logo-min-1-e1601581938185.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-jxF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75123"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75126,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75123\/revisions\/75126"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}