IndyCar weighing several changes for 2024 schedule. Here's what's on the line.

IndyCar brass is in the closing stretch of finalizing a 17-race schedule for 2024, according to Penske Entertainment Corp, president and CEO Mark Miles. Sunday morning, Miles divulged what he could about several opportunities IndyCar has been approached with to revamp its schedule for next season and beyond. Here’s what we learned:

IndyCar weighing two options for postseason non-points race in 2024

For the first time since 2008. IndyCar officials are considering a non-points-paying post-season exhibition event, according to Miles, with Argentina and one other “even more promising prospect” in the running – one not named Brazil.

Last fall, Juncos Hollinger Racing ran an exhibition event in team owner Ricardo Juncos’ home country of Argentina. Then prospective IndyCar hopeful and current rookie Agustin Canapino was in the cockpit of the Indy car shipped to South America for an event attended by tens of thousands of Argentines energized by the presence of the recently restarted IndyCar program.

The event would take place at the Autodromo Termas de Rio Hondo circuit -- which has hosted Moto GP -- should local political and investment officials land the financial package required to properly host the series, pay the travel fees of series teams (as has been typical for international series events outside Canada and Mexico) and offer the prize for the race victor, given it not playing into the championship race.

“Argentina is a developing conversation that could be promising,” said Miles, who made a trip to the country in late-March this year with Juncos, PEC vice president Michael Montri and Tony Cotman, the longtime race course designer IndyCar has leaned on for various projects in recent years. “We get a lot of ‘incoming,’ but a lot of them don’t make sense for us, when you think about our current thought that (such an international race) ought not to be during the championship. And when you take, say Europe, when does it work in which western European countries, weather-wise?

“Never does six months go by that somebody or someone on behalf of somebody doesn’t reach out (from a new entity looking to host a race).”

And that’s precisely the type of casual, one-sided, premature stages that any prospect of IndyCar returning to Brazil are in, according to Miles, despite reports suggesting the series was in serious talks about holding a late-June race (so as not to conflict with Le Mans) as early as 2024 at Interlagos.

The course has, for years, hosted Formula 1’s Brazilian Grand Prix and will in 2024 see a return of the World Endurance Championship in July.

“I wouldn’t say we’re in a (far along conversation) with Brazil like we are with Argentina,” Miles said. “It may be because we just haven’t really connected yet, but we have not engaged in any substantive conversations there.”

Roger Penske, who was walking through IndyCar’s RV command center at the time of the conversation, did not confirm he’d engaged in some level of talks with Australia, to which Miles declined to acknowledge with any more than a sheepish grin. Later on he did say, regarding decisions around a late-year non-points-paying event: “There may be yet another more promising prospect (than Argentina), and we may be choosing between the two for next year, or it could be just the one, or none.”

Milwaukee or not, '24 championship won't go beyond 17 races

Miles reaffirmed IndyCar’s long-held belief that 17 races remain a healthy, sustainable number amid the current financial landscape. Should an event like IndyCar’s possible return to the Milwaukee Mile or a trek to series star Pato O’Ward’s home of Mexico develop, another event on the calendar would have to fall off.

In a brief overview of IndyCar’s current stops, it’s entering Year 2 of a multi-year agreement with Texas Motor Speedway. Toronto hasn’t announced a new deal in some years but long felt like an important market for the series. Laguna Seca announced a new multi-year deal during IndyCar’s 2021 visit that secured it at least through this September. Back in 2020, Portland announced a new three-year deal that appears set to expire at the end of this season.

Iowa Speedway could also theoretically drop one of its two oval races during the doubleheader weekend, like Detroit did after 2021, though Iowa’s extra day of racing certainly bolsters the event and allows for two more big-name concerts that helps to build out the major weekend on the calendar and round out the investments PEC and Hy-Vee have put into it since its return in 2022.

The obvious choice would seem to be IndyCar’s second visit to the IMS road course, currently paired with NASCAR’s Brickyard weekend that also runs off of the oval for the time being, though Miles said, “I’m not going there,” when asked if that IMS road course date for IndyCar could be in jeopardy of being dropped.

A couple weeks ago, after he’d visited Milwaukee before making the drive over to Road America, Penske told IndyStar that The Mile still required various safety upgrades necessary for IndyCar to make its first return since 2015. Since first visiting the track two years ago on a covert mission to ascertain its fitness for a future date, Penske said Sunday the track had done “more than I’d expected” in terms of upgrades in recent months.

“Our answer hasn’t changed,” Miles said Sunday. “There are things still to work out, but it’s an interesting conversation.

Interjected Penske: “We do have interest to run there.”

Roger Penske: Milwaukee Mile has 'a pretty big step to take' for IndyCar safety standards

Miles: Future Nashville plans could rival NASCAR's Chicago buzz

As is the case every four years, IndyCar schedule-makers have to contend in 2024 with the Summer Olympics, scheduled to start July 26 and end Aug. 11. Considering IndyCar’s current schedule, it would force a switch of the second IMS road course date – which again, may not be around in 2024 – as well as Nashville’s Big Machine Music City Grand Prix that has fallen on the first weekend of August during its first three years.

That the Olympics also fall in a year in which IndyCar is considering some schedule changes – for a series that craves ‘date equity – doesn’t pose any major issues, Miles said.

Though he declined to provide any details, Miles did emphatically say that what Nashville’s street race looks like in 2024 he hopes will be the foundation of the event moving forward, despite the current Olympics conflict and the ensuing construction of the Tennessee Titans’ new stadium set to begin in early-to-mid-2024 in the footprint of the current IndyCar paddock for race weekends.

Put simply, Miles said the vision of current race organizers, IndyCar officials and city stakeholders is to create “an event better situation” that’s not just a placeholder until the new stadium is complete in 2027, but something permanent starting next year.

Changes for Music City GP: New Titans Stadium to force altered track, paddock footprint starting in 2024

“The people in Nashville think big and really like the event,” said Miles of the Nashville race which is yet to announce a new deal beyond the current one that expires after this August’s event. “The political, civic and business leadership all want to find a way to make lemonade out of lemons.

“There’s different options, and we’re not done yet, but what we have now is so interesting that we wouldn’t think about moving back (to the current track configuration and paddock area). We’re not going to find a place to park until we can make it back, and we’d like to get a handle on answering everything specifically by the time of their race this year.”

When asked what IndyCar might be able to generate a buzz remotely similar to what NASCAR built around its inaugural visit to the streets of Chicago this past weekend, a race weekend that took the mainstream motorsports world by storm, Miles pointed to what he believes Nashville could soon be.

“What we’re thinking about doing with Nashville could rise to that level. I already think Nashville is a big impact, but there may be a way to really amp it up further,” Miles said. “And there’s one other market we’re talking to about an event that, if we could pull it off for 2025, it could have the same kind of impact.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar weighing several changes for 2024 schedule; what's on the line