A NASCAR Cup and NTT IndyCar series doubleheader weekend has occurred less than a half-dozen times in motorsports history, but it’s something stock car racing’s competitors would relish happening more often.
“Hopefully, it can be the beginning of bringing new opportunities because I don’t see why we shouldn’t do it more often,” Daniel Suarez said. “We are the biggest motorsports in the country, and I don’t know who doesn’t want to be racing with NASCAR. It’s a no-brainer.
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“I believe the fan base that they have is actually quite different than NASCAR. I’m not saying that it’s better or worse, it’s just different. So, doing these double duties, I think it’s fun because you bring these two different fan bases together to watch NASCAR and IndyCar. I enjoyed it when we did it back in Indianapolis. I thought it was a lot of fun.”
The Cup and IndyCar series first shared a weekend in 2020 on Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s road course during the COVID pandemic. They repeated it 2021-2023. However, when NASCAR’s Cup Series returned to the 2.5-mile oval for the 2024 Brickyard race, the doubleheader weekend was shelved.
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IndyCar drivers at Phoenix in 2018.
This weekend the United States’ top open-wheel and stock-car racing series reunite, but for the first time ever they will share an oval at Phoenix Raceway. It also marks the second-straight weekend NASCAR and IndyCar will race at the same track. The previous weekend, NASCAR’s Craftsman Truck Series made its street course debut at St. Petersburg, Florida, the day before the IndyCar event. That marked the second time those two series have shared race weekend billing. Their inaugural appearance together was at Texas Motor Speedway in 2000.
After Ryan Preece finishes his obligations on Saturday, he plans to go atop the spotter’s stand to watch the Indy Car race.
“Hopefully, it can be the beginning of bringing new opportunities because I don’t see why we shouldn’t do it more often.”
“It’s really interesting to watch how they get around the race tracks, how they approach passing or restarts or pitting,” Preece said. “There’s a lot of things you can take, I don’t necessarily want to say learn for yourself, but you can appreciate how they’re going about doing it.”
Perhaps the biggest issue the Cup drivers will face in the doubleheader is how the rubber laid on the track by the Indy Cars’ Firestone tires will affect the handling of their stock cars, which use Goodyear tires.
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The NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race is sandwiched between Saturday’s IndyCar race and Sunday’s Cup event. Chase Briscoe says it will help that the Cup cars are on the track after the O’Reilly cars, but still the Indy Cars lay down a tremendous amount of rubber because “they’re pushed down so hard into the race track.”
“I saw a video from when they were testing there about a month ago and actually sent it to (crew chief) James (Small) and our entire engineering group just because the track was so black from the rubber they laid down,” Briscoe said on Wednesday’s The Morning Drive on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “It will be interesting what that does to the top lane.”
Suarez notes the difference between the stock cars and open-wheel vehicles’ speed will be quite noticeable at the one-mile Phoenix track.
“They (Indy Cars) are super, super fast, especially on ovals. They are going to make us look like we are running in bicycles,” Suarez said with a laugh.
A North Carolina native, Deb Williams is an award-winning motorsports journalist who is in her fourth decade covering auto racing. In addition to covering the sport for United Press International, she has written motorsports articles for several newspapers, magazines and websites including espnW.com, USA Today, and The Charlotte Observer. Her awards include the American Motorsports Media Award of Excellence, two-time National Motorsports Press Association writer of the year, and two-time recipient of the Russ Catlin award. She also has won an award in the North Carolina Press Association’s sports feature category. During her career, Deb has been managing editor of GT Motorsports magazine and was with Winston Cup Scene and NASCAR Winston Cup Scene for 18 years, serving as the publication’s editor for 10 years. In 2024 she was inducted into the NMPA Hall of Fame.