IRL at MIS just a "blip on the radar"
7/25/2006 2:42 PM
All by themselves
Schedule once again calls for only one race at Brooklyn track
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
By Mike Pryson
Danica Patrick, Sam Hornish Jr., Marco Andretti, Bryan Herta and the rest of the IRL will spend the weekend by themselves at Michigan International Speedway.
The series is making a stop in Brooklyn, and it will mark the second one-race weekend in as many years for the Indy Racing League at MIS. Prior to that, the last stand-alone open-wheel weekend at MIS was in August 1986.
The setup means no Thursday or Friday practice or qualifying at the speedway. The track will open at 9 a.m. Saturday. Practice sessions will be held beginning at 10 a.m., with qualifying set for 2:45 p.m.The race is Sunday at 3pm
Last year, track president Brett Shelton called the one-race weekend "a blip on the radar." Now, Shelton and his crew can call it two blips.
"This issue is, what do you put with it?" MIS spokesman Bill Janitz said.
The open-wheel weekend has shared the stage in recent years with the IRL's developmental Indy Pro Series (2002-04) and the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series (1999-2004). The International Race of Champions all-star series was also frequently paired with the open-wheel weekend at MIS between 1974 and 2001.
The trucks ran this year at Michigan in June. The ARCA stock-car series ran at MIS in June and returns as part of a three-race August billing that includes the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series and the NASCAR Busch Series.
"The long-term plan was always to move the Craftsman Truck Series with the NASCAR weekend, because of the desire to make that Saturday stronger," Janitz said.
The thing that makes Michigan a tough sell for support races is that it is one of few superspeedways on the IRL schedule.
"It's a 2-mile oval," Janitz said. "It's not like Milwaukee last weekend, where they have a 1-mile oval and can run the USAC Sprints and Midgets. There's just a limited amount of series that you can run on a 2-mile oval."
The International Race of Champions was a popular event at MIS as a support race, but the current NASCAR schedule works against a marriage of IROC with the July race at MIS.
"This is NASCAR's only off-week between now and the rest of the season," Janitz said, "and the drivers who are in the IROC series don't want to give up that week off."