Don’t Expect Many Changes To 2023 NTT IndyCar Series Schedule

The official announcement of the 2023 NTT IndyCar schedule is still a few weeks away, but two high-ranking officials of Penske Entertainment have confirmed the same venues will be on the schedule for next season.

Both Penske Entertainment CEO Mark Miles and Penske Entertainment Vice President Michael Montri told me there are no new venues next season and no tracks will be taken off the schedule in 2023.

In fact, both indicated the schedule will look virtually the same next season.

What remains is tweaking the schedule in terms of race dates to fit with television partner NBC schedule.

This year, 14 of the 17 races on the schedule were televised on NBC. Two more races – the June 5 Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix and the August 20 Bommarito Automotive Group 500 at World Wide Technology Raceway are on USA Network.

The July 17 Honda Indy Toronto was streamed on NBC’s Peacock streaming service.

“We always shoot to have the schedule by the finale and that is what our intention is,” Miles said.

When asked if there would be a new venue, Miles said, “I doubt it.”

Montri was much more forthcoming on discussing the schedule for 2022. He is in charge with negotiating race dates with IndyCar’s partner tracks.

“We’ve said all along we like date equity, we like the markets we are in, we like the partners we have on the promoter’s side so 2023 will look similar,” Montri said. “There might be some shifting of dates, but it will look similar.”

Drop-offs and additions?

“Sitting here today, I don’t think so,” Montri said.

A few weeks ago, there had been rumor of targeting Pittsburgh for a potential street race, but Miles flatly said there was nothing to that rumor.

“It’s like someone looked at a map of the United States and said, ‘IndyCar needs a date in the Eastern United States’ and threw a dart at the board and it landed in Pittsburgh,” Miles said. “We have had no discussions with anyone involving a race there.”

IndyCar owner Roger Penske believes in today’s economy, a 17-race schedule works best for IndyCar and its teams. The size of the paddock has grown in recent years and on any given IndyCar weekend, there can be as many as 27 or 28 cars on the starting grid.

Most of those entries are sponsored and with an increase in spectator attendance on site and on television, more companies have discovered IndyCar to be a good spend to promote their brand.

Penske prefers to take a cautious approach to expanding the schedule and that is why the 2023 IndyCar schedule will look very similar to this year.

Of the tracks on the current schedule, the trip to Texas Motor Speedway on March 20 created some concern for IndyCar. Despite a beautiful day, the combination of an early race start (11:30 local time) combined with what appeared to be lack of promotion brought out an embarrassingly small crowd.

When Texas Motor Speedway hosted its first IndyCar Series race in 1997, the grandstands were packed with an announced crowd of 129,000.

On May 20, it appeared there were 5,000 spectators on site and that might be a generous estimate.

Roger Penske, Miles, and Montri all expressed concern in working with the track to increase promotion and draw a bigger crowd.

The NTT IndyCar Series desperately needs ovals on the schedule and the 1.5-mile Texas Motor Speedway is one of only two “big ovals” on the schedule. The other is the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

This was the first race where Eddie Gossage, the longtime president and general manager of Texas Motor Speedway, was not in charge of promoting the contest. He announced his retirement last year and was replaced by Rob Ramage as General Manager.

On Thursday, Speedway Motorsports, Inc. announced that Ramage has been promoted to Speedway Motorsports Senior Vice President of Government Relations and Deputy Counsel.

He has been replaced by veteran AEG executive Mark Faber, who joins TMS after serving as Senior Vice President of Global Partnerships at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.