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Christian Petersen\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\nA NASCAR Cup and NTT IndyCar series doubleheader weekend has occurred less than a half-dozen times in motorsports history, but it\u2019s something stock car racing\u2019s competitors would relish happening more often.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully, it can be the beginning of bringing new opportunities because I don\u2019t see why we shouldn\u2019t do it more often,\u201d Daniel Suarez said. \u201cWe are the biggest motorsports in the country, and I don\u2019t know who doesn\u2019t want to be racing with NASCAR. It\u2019s a no-brainer.<\/p>\n
Related Story<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe the fan base that they have is actually quite different than NASCAR. I\u2019m not saying that it\u2019s better or worse, it\u2019s just different. So, doing these double duties, I think it\u2019s 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.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Cup and IndyCar series first shared a weekend in 2020 on Indianapolis Motor Speedway\u2019s road course during the COVID pandemic. They repeated it 2021-2023. However, when NASCAR\u2019s Cup Series returned to the 2.5-mile oval for the 2024 Brickyard race, the doubleheader weekend was shelved.<\/p>\n
Christian Petersen\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
IndyCar drivers at Phoenix in 2018.<\/p>\n
This weekend the United States\u2019 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
After Ryan Preece finishes his obligations on Saturday, he plans to go atop the spotter\u2019s stand to watch the Indy Car race.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully, it can be the beginning of bringing new opportunities because I don\u2019t see why we shouldn\u2019t do it more often.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really interesting to watch how they get around the race tracks, how they approach passing or restarts or pitting,\u201d Preece said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of things you can take, I don\u2019t necessarily want to say learn for yourself, but you can appreciate how they\u2019re going about doing it.\u201d <\/p>\n
Perhaps the biggest issue the Cup drivers will face in the doubleheader is how the rubber laid on the track by the Indy Cars\u2019 Firestone tires will affect the handling of their stock cars, which use Goodyear tires. <\/p>\n
Related Story<\/p>\n
The NASCAR O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series race is sandwiched between Saturday\u2019s IndyCar race and Sunday\u2019s Cup event. Chase Briscoe says it will help that the Cup cars are on the track after the O\u2019Reilly cars, but still the Indy Cars lay down a tremendous amount of rubber because \u201cthey\u2019re pushed down so hard into the race track.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI 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,\u201d Briscoe said on Wednesday\u2019s The Morning Drive on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. \u201cIt will be interesting what that does to the top lane.\u201d <\/p>\n
Suarez notes the difference between the stock cars and open-wheel vehicles\u2019 speed will be quite noticeable at the one-mile Phoenix track.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey (Indy Cars) are super, super fast, especially on ovals. They are going to make us look like we are running in bicycles,\u201d Suarez said with a laugh. <\/p>\n
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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<\/a>, 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\u2019s sports feature category.\u00a0 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\u2019s editor for 10 years. In 2024 she was inducted into the NMPA Hall of Fame.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A NASCAR Cup and NTT IndyCar series doubleheader weekend has occurred less than a half-dozen times in motorsports…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,782,204378,784,1642,634,204377,82,183339],"class_list":["post-516334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-content-type-news","tag-contentid-e8dba68d-e84d-409d-9ae2-f8a2a992d61f","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-locale-us","tag-nascar","tag-shorttitle-drivers-want-more-nascar-indycar-weekends","tag-sports","tag-subsection-nascar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}