Whether it's an intentional strategy or not, the 2016 Verizon IndyCar Series schedule is being revealed on a race-by-race basis.
It was announced earlier this month that Indy cars will return to the popular Road America circuit in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, for the first time since 2007. The June 24-26 event will include the full Mazda Road to Indy support series that showcases up-and-coming open-wheel racers.
However, that news was tempered by the subsequent announcement that the IndyCar Series will not return to Auto Club Speedway next year after drawing fewer than 10,000 fans to the southern California venue in June. Oval track attendance continues to be a major problem for the IndyCar Series, with even stalwart tracks like Texas Motor Speedway drawing far fewer fans than in decades past.
Phoenix International Raceway appears ready to give IndyCar another shot after more than a decade's absence. PIR president Bryan Sperber told the Arizona Republic that "this is the closest we've been in ten years," with a 250-mile race tentatively slated for Saturday, April 2. Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, an Indy car venue from 1983 to 2004, has also reportedly been engaged in talks with IndyCar management.
Phoenix would join St. Petersburg (March 13), Long Beach (April 17), Indianapolis (May 14 for the Grand Prix and May 29 for the Indianapolis 500), Detroit (June 5), and Road America as tracks with confirmed dates for 2016.
Other circuits expected to remain on the schedule with similar dates to 2015 include Barber Motorsports Park, Texas, Iowa Speedway, Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course and Sonoma Raceway. Toronto will likely return to its traditional mid-July date after running a month earlier this year due to the city's hosting of the Pan-Am Games.
A new event that has been announced for downtown Boston on Labor Day weekend may or may not be the season finale.
Meanwhile, NOLA Motorsports Park is expected to be dropped after a rainy, financially disastrous inaugural weekend. Pocono Raceway, site of this weekend's ABC Supply 500, is on the fence about continuing with IndyCar, as the track is grappling with the economics of the event.
Championship winning driver and car owner Bobby Rahal said that creating the schedule was the most difficult aspect of his short tenure as the temporary CEO of the CART-sanctioned Indy car series in 2000. The man in charge these days, Hulman Motorsports CEO Mark Miles, has discovered 15 years later that the task isn't any easier.
Miles cited more than a dozen factors that go into making the schedule, including the length of the season and in which months it takes place, travel considerations and operating costs for teams, geographic proximity of races, date equity, quality of racing, demands from television broadcasters and sponsorship and marketing needs.
He's confident the series can produce a schedule that can mostly satisfy all of its constituents and addresses complaints about the crippling six- and seven-month long offseasons that have become the norm for the IndyCar Series in recent years.
"I think the length of the schedule is a fundamental issue; we've been saying that for some time," Miles said. " We do not expect to have a five‑month schedule, nor was that ever the goal. The idea was not shorter and less, it was to see if we couldn't slide the schedule while actually growing it earlier in the year to be in a more ideal or beneficial television period.
"The model we have been pursuing has been seven months, with 16, 18 or 20 events," he added. "More events is not necessarily better -- it has to work on the calendar against many of these factors."
Miles' desire to end the season in early September so that IndyCar does not go up against NFL football on television in the fall has been controversial to say the least. Consequently a much greater focus has been placed on filling the early months of the calendar so that the series is not out of the spotlight for so long during the winter.
In major racing, the IndyCar Series has been last to start and first to end for the last several years. Hopes of adding an international race or two in February and March were dashed last year, and a race in Brazil set for early March was canceled. Focus on a warm-weather venue for an early 2016 race has shifted to the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City, a venue used by the CART series from 2002-07 which is being substantially upgraded right now for this November's Formula 1 Mexican Grand Prix.
"I think we're going to have some good options at the beginning of the year," Miles said.
While the 2016 schedule is still far from being set in stone, the most encouraging thing is that Miles and his regime finally seem to be listening to the IndyCar Series' most important constituents.
Moving the St. Petersburg race forward a few weeks from its traditional late March/early April date is a step in the right direction, and that event could be run even earlier: The inaugural 2003 race sanctioned by CART was held on Feb. 23.
Drivers, fans and teams also reacted positively to the return of Road America, something they have been calling for since 2007. To the relief of many, both sides finally yielded a bit and were able to work out a deal to bring Indy cars back to the fastest and most daunting natural terrain road course in America.
"I have said several times that Road America is the one track in this country that needs to be added to the Verizon IndyCar Series schedule immediately," said IndyCar Series championship leader Juan Pablo Montoya. "Elkhart Lake is a racing town. The people there love what we do and they really supported the series when we ran there in the past.
"It is exciting to see the schedule fill out a bit for 2016," Montoya added. "This has been a great year for our series and I am confident that the 2016 season will be as well."