Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Doug Boles shared Friday that the speedway has had conversations about a return for NASCAR competition on the track’s signature 2.5-mile oval configuration. The IMS oval hosted the NASCAR Cup Series Brickyard 400 from 1994 until 2020, which was the speedway’s first major race outside of the Indianapolis 500.
As part of a schedule realignment combined with issues that had plagued the Brickyard 400, the speedway has held its NASCAR events on its road course configuration over the past two years and will do so again in 2023. However, Boles flung the door wide open for a return to the oval during an appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, citing driver preferences as well as the prestige of the oval.
“Those conversations have happened. In fact, they continue to happen,” Boles said. “… We never said we’re not gonna go back to the oval when we switched to the road course. We wanted to see how it worked. That’s why we started with Xfinity and then rolled it into Cup, and then we wanted to give it some time to really see how it worked instead of just one year.
“However, we’ve talked about the importance of the oval. And if you think about a lot of the drivers … Winning on the oval is special. So we do want to get on the oval at some point in time.”
The inaugural Brickyard 400 served as a major point of conquest for NASCAR, and the race quickly became one of stock car racing’s majors and one of the most prestigious the Indianapolis Motor Speedway had to offer. But over time, the race lost some of its luster and much of its popularity — particularly after a 2008 race that was marred by constant tire failures and noncompetitive racing — and its attendance suffered greatly, with swaths of empty grandstands serving as poor optics.
With the Verizon 200 at the Brickyard having rebuilt NASCAR’s equity at Indianapolis, Boles suggested that the speedway is grappling with the question of whether to bring back the Brickyard 400 permanently or have the speedway rotate its annual NASCAR race weekend between the oval and road course moving forward.
“We haven’t decided exactly how that looks,” Boles said. “I will tell you that I do think you’ll see that sooner rather than later. And then we’ll just figure out what the long-term looks like in terms of our cadence with the road course and the oval.”
The most recent Brickyard 400 in 2020 was won by Kevin Harvick, who leads all active Cup drivers with three wins at Indianapolis. The road course race the past two seasons has been won by AJ Allmendinger and Tyler Reddick.
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