NASCAR and IndyCar on Friday either postponed or canceled multiple events, ending their bids to hold races over the coming weeks without fans. With both citing the fluid nature of the coronavirus situation, NASCAR said it will postpone its next two event weekends at Atlanta and Homestead-Miami, while IndyCar is canceling its season through April. That means IndyCar has canceled races at St. Petersburg, Circuit of the Americas, Barber Motorsports Park and the Grand Prix of Long Beach. NASCAR, IndyCar and UFC had been the lone holdouts in sports to not cancel their respective weekend activities.
NASCAR was considering packing all three national series races into Friday and Saturday as part of a revised schedule sent to teams Friday morning, but it later reversed course and canceled the event entirely. On an afternoon conference call, IndyCar CEO Mark Miles said he would not cite one specific thing that led IndyCar to switch from holding a spectator-less event to canceling, but he did cite President Trump’s forthcoming statement to the nation, along with Disney World closing and the PGA Tour canceling The Players Championship last night as contributing events.
Miles said that IndyCar is now fully moving its attention toward pulling off its May festivities, including the Indianapolis 500 at the end of the month. He refused to entertain hypotheticals about rescheduling the race, but IMS in a statement noted that there are close to 60 days before the event and that it is monitoring the coronavirus situation closely.
