INDIANAPOLIS -- The Verizon IndyCar Series will no longer be last out of the gate among major auto racing series in terms of getting its season underway.
But IndyCar remains rigidly determined to end its championship prior to the start of the NFL regular season, so it has therefore crammed as many races as possible between April and August.
By adding a March 8 date in Brasilia, Brazil, the IndyCar Series will kick off 2015 one week earlier than the Formula One World Championship.
Yet where F1 and NASCAR continue to compete well into November, IndyCar teams will go into hibernation following a 2015 finale set for Aug. 30 at Sonoma Raceway.
The 2015 schedule features 17 races (down one from 2014) in just 15 markets. Houston has dropped off the slate, replaced by the new event in Brazil and the series' debut at New Orleans Motorsports Park. The Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix hosts the only doubleheader weekend, down from three the last two years.
With the season starting three weeks earlier, the duration of the campaign will actually increase from 22 to 25 weeks this year, despite having fewer races.
"We're pleased with this schedule, and we think that observers will see that we're making progress in implementing the strategies that we've laid out and have been talking about for well over a year now for the Verizon IndyCar Series," said Mark Miles, CEO of the IndyCarSeries' parent company, Hulman Motorsports.
"We think that this schedule will help us continue to grow our fan base, both through our broadcasts and digitally, as well as at the tracks themselves."
Miles insists that ending the season in August is a one-year aberration, and that the IndyCar Series will "own Labor Day weekend" in the future.
But that will require a new venue to step up to host a race on Labor Day weekend, because the biggest reason that the 2015 schedule was released so late was the difficulty the series encountered in trying to find a track willing to do so this year.
Auto Club Speedway in California ran a Saturday night race on Labor Day weekend this year that drew an extremely disappointing crowd, and the 1:30 a.m. ET finish to the event certainly didn't help television ratings.
"We're one week earlier on the end than we would normally plan to be, and plan to be in in 2016," Miles admitted. "To us [Labor Day] is a little bit like Indianapolis and Memorial Day weekend. We think that three-day weekend is a really great opportunity, in the right city. It should be a big market ideally, and hopefully it will be a market where everybody doesn't go to the beach, and they're ready to celebrate a fabulous holiday weekend in their city.
"We expect to be there in 2016," he added. "That would have been our preference for this year, but it just didn't work out with our existing portfolio of promoters."
IndyCar's insistence on ending the season before football starts is based on a report it commissioned from Boston Consulting Group two years ago. Fans of the series have forcefully expressed their unhappiness that the series is not racing in September and October via social media, but IndyCar appears to be tone deaf to their concerns.
Road America is often mentioned by fans, teams and drivers as the No. 1 venue they would like the series to race at, yet another year will pass without America's most challenging road course on the IndyCar schedule.
"It has our attention," Miles said. "There's been, I don't know, two, three times a year contact with George [Bruggenthies, track president] there. Maybe someday, I guess, would be my answer.
"We have to do our best to be in the markets that we believe will help us grow our total audience and the series itself optimally. Anytime we add a race, we're getting close to the point where if we add races, especially in the U.S. summer, we almost have to take a race out because, as you can see, it's quite full."
Indeed it is. The IndyCar Series is on track for seven consecutive weekends from the Grand Prix of Indianapolis on May 9 through the rescheduled Toronto race set for June 14.
Toronto's desire to shift away from its traditional mid-July date due to the city's hosting of the Pan American games set off a chain reaction of date changes. Auto Club Speedway will now host the MAVTV 500 on Saturday, June 27, while the Milwaukee Mile and Iowa Speedway own the only July dates.
Pocono Raceway's desire to vacate the July 4 weekend sees its 500-miler moved to Aug. 23, just a week prior to the finale on the Sonoma road course.
"The schedule provides a good competitive balance of street circuits, road courses and oval tracks at some terrific venues for our sport," team owner Roger Penske said. "We are excited to visit new markets in Brasilia and New Orleans, and ending the season at Sonoma Raceway will provide a great backdrop for the series championship."
"Sonoma is a great place to end what will be a very demanding season," added former Indy car champion and now team owner Bobby Rahal. "The addition of New Orleans as a new market is great, as well. Overall I am pleased with the quality of the circuits we have on the schedule."
Left unstated in the press releases praising the 2015 schedule was the widespread feeling that the IndyCar Series once again missed opportunities to return to classic tracks that shaped Indy car racing in its most successful era -- road racing circuits such as Road America, Laguna Seca, and Cleveland's Burke Lakefront Airport and ovals including Phoenix International Raceway and Michigan International Speedway.
Many observers also point out that the TUDOR Sports Car Championship drew respectable television numbers this year with tape-delayed broadcasts going up against the NFL in September and October, contradicting the main reason IndyCar cites for not wanting to compete in the fall.
IndyCar is spinning its truncated, reduced 2015 schedule by saying "less is more." But the reality here is that less really is less.