NASHVILLE, Tenn. – IndyCar star Colton Herta, one of Nashville's newest residents, can see promotion of the season finale all around the city.
He made a joke that there are plenty of billboards around Nashville — Pato O'Ward complained two weeks ago the sign outside the Milwaukee Mile advertised a previously-held NASCAR event and not that days IndyCar race — and Herta stressed efforts have been strong to promote Sunday's championship-deciding race.
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“I think they do a really good job at promoting. They do a really good job of pooling money together and putting it in the right areas,” Herta said. “They’re committed to open-wheel racing and IndyCar as a whole. I love what they’re doing.”
Yes, the season finale was supposed to be through the downtown streets of Nashville and utilize the Korean War Veterans Memorial Bridge and portions of Lower Broadway. The event was such a success in its first three years that IndyCar moved it to the title-deciding finale — bumping Laguna Seca in California to a June race at a reduced sanctioning fee — in favor of what was sure to be one of the highlights of the season.
IndyCar and race organizers did so despite construction on the NFL's new Titans stadium that would force some course changes. On paper, the alterations looked fine and the event would still be a success.
But when Scott Borchetta, founder of the Big Machine Label Group and a racing enthusiast with a deep affinity for IndyCar, took a deeper look at the plans he discovered the ownership group had a “Pollyanna approach” to the construction disruptions. A change to the course was going to cause major inconvenience to local businesses and not be the same event it had been the previous three years.
Then Borchetta took a look at the books and found the Music City Grand Prix was deep in the red with outstanding bills to its vendors. Although Borchetta was a founding partner of the ownership group — which initially including NASCAR's Justin Marks and Dale Earnhardt Jr., as well as Justin Timberlake — the troubles facing the race took Borchetta by surprise.
“It got to a point, literally, where there was such a financial challenge that our options were bankruptcy or figure out how to save the race,” Borchetta told The Associated Press. “And for IndyCar, for Nashville, for the Big Machine brand, I wasn't going to bankrupt it. Big Machine didn't do anything to deserve that black eye.”
So in January of this year, Borchetta bought out the other owners of the Music City Grand Prix and did a deep dive on how to pull off the season finale. He saw that the plans to work around the Titans construction left no room for pits, no room to run the Indy NXT race, the downtown streets badly needed a repave, and there would be far too much disruption to local businesses.
“The reality of being able to run up Broadway with all the construction was not a reality,” Borchetta said.
Moving the race
Borchetta made a call to Marcus Smith, CEO of Speedway Motorsports, and asked him about the availability of Nashville Superspeedway. The Smith-owned track in Lebanon — about 35 miles from downtown Nashville — hosted IndyCar from 2001 through 2008 with Scott Dixon winning the final three events at the venue.
Smith told Borchetta he could rent the track and promote the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix at the a 1.330-mile tri-oval intermediate speedway. So Borchetta changed the location with a May announcement that pleased almost no one.
“It’s hard to say I wasn’t a little upset at losing the downtown race. It was really fun,” Herta said.
So, yes, it's a major disappointment that the ballyhooed race in downtown Nashville will instead be way out at the speedway, with a permanent seating capacity of 25,000.
But, if not for Borchetta, there would be no race at all and the season would have ended two weeks ago at the Milwaukee Mile with Alex Palou crowned champion for the third time in four years.
Just days after Borchetta announced he was moving the race to the speedway, the NFL released its 2024 schedule with a Titans game scheduled for Sunday.
“Had I not moved the race, the game would have definitely been the nail in the coffin,” Borchetta said. “There is no scenario in which we could have held a downtown race during a Titans game.”
So Borchetta has instead ensured a proper finale will still take place — and Palou will have to hold off Will Power on Sunday to wrap up the title — while also utilizing downtown Nashville as part of the weekend activities.
Downtown Nashville still in play
Friday had a packed downtown schedule that started early with a morning book reading of Nashville-native and two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Josef Newgarden's new children's book at the Adventure Science Center, a pit stop competition on Broadway, burnouts, hospitality parties and finally Borchetta's hosting of music artist Brantley Gilbert's “World’s Largest Album Release Party.”
Saturday has a full day of musical acts scheduled at the speedway, and DJ and music producer Diplo on Sunday is hosting driver introductions and riding in the “Fastest Seat in Sports” to lead the finale to green.
“It was very important for us to keep downtown Nashville heavily involved in the race even though the race has been moved. And it was important to retain many of the events and artists that make Nashville such an amazing city,” Borchetta said.
The Titans' new stadium is not due to be completed until early 2027, and, if possible, Borchetta would like to get the event back to a downtown street race utilizing many of Nashville's iconic landmarks.
But for now, he's focused only on ensuring a great season finale for a racing series he loves in the city he calls home. He's unsatisfied with IndyCar's “100 Days to Indy” docuseries because it ends after the Indianapolis 500 in May and the remainder of the season — including the title fight — is not covered.
“I grew up on the Indianapolis 500. I love racing. I love IndyCar, and so we're working very hard on this,” he said. "We've got to make it loud and have the stakes high. And we've got to make the series more than just the Indy 500 — which, by the way, is like Christmas for me.
“But we've got to make a lot of noise about the stakes for the championship and we're presenting some really high-stakes ideas to IndyCar. We will not lie down. We will not go quietly away.”
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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing