The final race of the 2024 IndyCar season will not be held in Downtown Nashville as planned, but at the Nashville Superspeedway
Just under a month before the season opener, the race calendar for the 2024 IndyCar Series season has undergone a change. The season finale scheduled as the 17th points race on September 15 in Nashville (Tennessee) will be moved from the street circuit in downtown Nashville to the Nashville Superspeedway, which is located just outside the city. This will be the first time since 2014 (then Fontana) that an IndyCar season finale has been held on an oval.
Located around 50 kilometers southeast of downtown Nashville near Lebanon, Nashville Superspeedway is not actually a superspeedway, but an intermediate oval with a length of 1.33 miles and a concrete surface. It is currently part of the NASCAR calendar and has also been part of the IndyCar calendar in the past.
The latter was last the case in the 2008 season. Scott Dixon, who is still active in the IndyCar series, won back then. In total, IndyCar racing cars have raced at the Nashville Superspeedway eight times between 2001 and 2008. The first winner in 2001 (then IRL) was Buddy Lazier.
The fact that the 2024 IndyCar season finale has now been unceremoniously moved from Downtown Nashville, where a new layout of the street circuit was planned for this year, to the oval is due to logistical challenges.
“The proposed new track layout and question marks surrounding the construction of the new stadium present significant challenges. Therefore, the decision was made to move the Grand Prix, which had included the stadium site for three years, to the Nashville Superspeedway for 2024,” said Scott Borchetta, founder and chairman of Big Machine, the race’s title sponsor.
The football stadium of the NFL team Tennessee Titans mentioned by Borchetta has served as the centerpiece of the Nashville city course for the past three years. With the new stadium construction announced for 2024, it was decided in summer 2023 to use a different layout of the street circuit from 2024. However, this will not happen after all
Notwithstanding the move of the IndyCar race from the city center to the oval, the record label Big Machine, founded by Borchetta, will remain on board as title sponsor of the race. The race will continue to be called the official Music City Grand Prix. The move will increase the number of oval races on the 2024 IndyCar calendar from six to seven, while the number of city races will be reduced from five to four.
The 2024 IndyCar calendar:
10.03. St. Petersburg (street circuit)
24.03. Palm Springs (circuit) *
21.04. Long Beach (street circuit)
28.04. Birmingham (circuit)
11.05. Indianapolis GP (circuit)
26.05. Indy 500 (oval)
02.06. Detroit (street circuit)
09.06. Elkhart Lake (circuit)
23.06. Laguna Seca (circuit)
07.07. Mid-Ohio (circuit)
13.07. Newton 1 (oval)
14.07. Newton 2 (oval)
21.07. Toronto (street circuit)
17.08. St. Louis (oval)
25.08. Portland (circuit)
31.08. Milwaukee 1 (oval)
01.09. Milwaukee 2 (oval)
15.09. Nashville (oval)
