2011 IndyCar Schedule Announcement Tomorrow

After returning from a trip to Europe and numerous meetings with prominent foreign car manufacturers, IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard will announce the 2011 IZOD IndyCar Series schedule tomorrow at the Milwaukee Mile.

The location of the announcement and the presence of recent Mile winners Ryan Briscoe and Scott Dixon (not to mention IndyCar legend and four-time Mile winner Johnny Rutherford) seem to indicate that the track will return to the IndyCar schedule after a one-year hiatus necessitated by outstanding fees owed to multiple sanctioning bodies.

Meanwhile, all four tracks owned by the International Speedway Corporation that hosted or will host IndyCar events this year - Kansas, Watkins Glen, Chicagoland, and Homestead - look to be off the 2011 schedule. Watkins Glen president Michael Printup confirmed the rumors, although he was optimistic about a return in 2012.

In their place will be the aforementioned Milwaukee event, a return to the New Hampshire Motor Speedway, a new street race in Baltimore, and - if all goes to Speedway Motorsports Inc. CEO Bruton Smith's plan - a season finale at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, though negotiations are still ongoing about that event.

Smith, whose company also owns IndyCar tracks New Hampshire, Kentucky Speedway, Texas Motor Speedway, and Infineon Raceway, has replaced ISC as the series' top promoter. The addition of Las Vegas to the schedule would give SMI five events (six if you count Texas' doubleheader as two races). However, if Bernard and Smith cannot work out a deal, the series has an outside chance of returning to the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California, which would then be the lone ISC track on the schedule.

Like this year's schedule, the probable 2011 event list is almost broken up into "quarters" that will allow teams to focus on a single discipline of racing. This year, the series began with four road course events, switched to four ovals, went back to five road courses, and is finishing up now with four oval events. Once again, IndyCar will start with four and four in 2011, but the road courses will be split into blocks of three and two with the addition of Loudon to the schedule.

SpeedTV.com insider Robin Miller reports that the schedule will be as follows:

March 27: Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, Streets of St. Petersburg
April 10: Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama, Barber Motorsports Park
April 17: 37th Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, Streets of Long Beach
May 1: Sao Paulo Indy 300, Streets of Sao Paulo
May 29: 95th Indianapolis 500, Indianapolis Motor Speedway
June 11: Firestone Texas Two-Step, Texas Motor Speedway
June 19: TBA 250, Milwaukee Mile
June 25: Iowa Corn Indy 250, Iowa Speedway
July 10: Honda Indy Toronto, Streets of Toronto
July 24: Honda Indy Edmonton, Edmonton City Centre Airport
August 7: Honda 200, Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course
August 14: TBA 200, New Hampshire Motor Speedway
August 28: Peak Antifreeze Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma County, Infineon Raceway
September 4: Baltimore Grand Prix, Streets of Baltimore
September 18: Indy Japan 300, Twin Ring Motegi
October 2: Kentucky Indy 300, Kentucky Speedway
October 16: TBA 300, Las Vegas Motor Speedway

The new schedule vacates the Independence Day weekend, moving up the Toronto date a week to better spread the series through the month of July. However, date-wise, the schedule remains very similar to this year's, with the only key difference being that the season will start and end two weeks later. Sao Paulo, which opened the season, moves to Kansas' old race date; Las Vegas is tacked on after the Kentucky event, which has been moved back a month.

Bernard has also had talks with Phoenix International Raceway, though a return to the desert probably will not come to fruition for 2011. Meanwhile, a handful of tracks and promoters have set their sights on 2012 race dates, including ex-CART/Champ Car hosts Michigan International Speedway, Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, and Road America; street race promoters in Calgary, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, and Quebec City; and a possible race at a proposed 400,000-seat oval in China. (It should be noted here that Champ Car attempted to stage a race at the Zhuhai circuit in China, but that event never took place after three years of failed attempts.)

Opinion: Schedule Realignment Scary, But No Series Killer

Tonight's Peak Antifreeze Indy 300 at Chicagoland Speedway will probably be one of the most exciting races of this IZOD IndyCar Series season, just because Chicagoland races usually are. Remember Sam Hornish Jr.'s win in 2002 over Al Unser Jr., to this day the closest victory in IndyCar Series history? Helio Castroneves coming from last place in 2008? Ryan Briscoe over Scott Dixon last year?

Unfortunately, it may also be the last Chicagoland race for the IndyCars. A track staple since its opening in 2001, this race may go away after nine years, as has been discussed to death on many other fine blogs.

In case you've missed it, though, a key reason why Chicagoland may lose its IndyCar date has to do with schedule realignments in NASCAR. Chicagoland is owned by the International Speedway Corporation, which has strong ties to NASCAR. The Sprint Cup Series will now run the first race of its playoffs at Chicago in September, and the second-tier Nationwide Series will run at the track on June 4 - the week after the Indianapolis 500. To run that weekend would be to go against the series' deal with Texas Motor Speedway, owned by ISC rival Speedway Motorsports Incorporated, where that track hosts the first race after Indy every year.

In fact, most of the ISC tracks on the IndyCar schedule this year - Chicago, Homestead, and Watkins Glen (a race I normally attend) - may be gone next season, though Kansas will probably remain. Former races at Richmond, California, and Michigan are gone as well. Relations between ISC and IndyCar are not bound to be the finest anyway, as ISC clearly has NASCAR priorities, and also hired longtime Indianapolis Motor Speedway employee Joie Chitwood to run their flagship track at Daytona.

Meanwhile, an alliance between SMI and IndyCar, much like the one that existed in the sanctioning body's formative years, continues to get stronger. The new race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway is bound to be popular with fans and drivers alike, even if partially serving as a surrogate for the Milwaukee Mile. Las Vegas will be a welcome addition and a wonderful series finale, if CEO Bruton Smith's plans come to fruition. Races at Texas and Kentucky are always fun to watch, and Infineon Raceway actually put on quite the show this year.

Randy Bernard said in IndyCar's Loudon press conference, speaking of Smith and SMI, "If you hang out with champions, you become a champion." Hitching a ride to SMI is one way to do that, especially when Smith is showing a strong willingness to work with the series, much in the way IZOD has been on the sponsorship front. A stronger IndyCar-SMI partnership also opens a gateway for returns to Atlanta, which only has one NASCAR race weekend next season, and Charlotte, now that Humpy Wheeler is gone and the track's 1999 incident is a distant memory, could follow as well.

ISC could lock IndyCar out of some of the top ovals in the United States, sure, but only Chicago, Kansas, California, and Michigan are really suited for IndyCar racing. The first two are 1.5-mile ovals that could be replaced by SMI tracks, while the latter two haven't really hosted IndyCar races in recent memory anyway.

While Watkins Glen will be a great loss as well, it's not as if IndyCar can't return to some of the other top road courses in the country. Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca tops the list of road courses that currently don't have events, and promoters in Cleveland, Houston, and Quebec City have expressed great interest in bringing IndyCar to their cities. In fact, the original plan for the Cleveland event was to run a doubleheader weekend, with one race on the old Burke Lakefront Airport road course layout and another on a new oval layout. That event would be one of the coolest on the schedule, and also serve (in a general sense) the midwestern market.

Yes, we could be losing a fantastic race in Chicagoland for next season, and as such, we ought to be savoring every moment of tonight's event. But while scary, the proposition of some new venues on the IZOD IndyCar Series schedule is not going to set the series back, or send it into a death spiral. As long as the powers that be make smart and strategic choices, bringing the series to the right markets, we can do just fine without.