People and Pop Culture
Closing Shot: Start your engines
The IndyCar Series kicked off its 2019 campaign with new title sponsor NTT, a fresh approach by NBC Sports, loads of cross promotion and an exciting race in sunny St. Petersburg.
Penske Racing’s Will Power led the 24-car field to the start, while teammate Josef Newgarden (below) took the Speedway-logoed checkered flags in the NTT IndyCar Series season opener.chris owens
Escaping the cold winter in the Midwest once again, the NTT IndyCar Series earlier this month opened its season under clear skies with warm weather on the streets of St. Petersburg, Fla.
However, while IndyCar has been launching its season there every year since 2011, much was new this year. NTT was kicking off its first season as title sponsor after it replaced Verizon, while NBC Sports was airing the race for the first time in years as part of its fresh, full-season media rights deal with the series.
Ticket sales by promoter Green Savoree Racing Promotions were up around 15 percent this year, according to IndyCar CEO Mark Miles. That would make this the third consecutive year that the event has broken its own attendance record, Miles said, with estimates this year of a combined 140,000 across the three-day weekend.
“It’s a great success story,” Miles told Sports Business Journal. “It’s the right event in the right place at the right time — a Floridian city that sparkles in March and happens during spring break, so kids are there and families and tourists are looking for things to do.”
joe skibinski / indycar
The March 10 race was won by Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden after his teammate, Will Power, qualified on the pole position Saturday. The most impressive drive of the day may have gone to Chip Ganassi Racing’s Swedish rookie Felix Rosenqvist, who finished fourth in his IndyCar debut.
Race day was a typically jam-packed one for fans, sponsors and media in attendance, with press sessions that included NBC Sports executives Sam Flood, Jon Miller and Jenny Storms, along with Miles. They discussed the new media rights deal and how NBC is working to grow both the series and the Indianapolis 500 specifically. True to its cross-promotional form, NBC Sports also arranged to have NFL analyst Tony Dungy serve as grand marshal, which meant he got to tell drivers to start their engines and take a two-seater ride around the track with Firestone ambassador Mario Andretti.
On top of the event being the first race for NTT, it also was the first for Speedway in its new role as the official fuel and convenience store of IndyCar. In addition to providing the fuel that teams used in their cars for the race, the deal also meant that Speedway’s logos were stitched onto the checkered flags that waved as Newgarden crossed the finish line.
St. Petersburg partially uses an airport for the racetrack and, therefore, doesn’t disrupt downtown businesses as much as other street races, which Miles thinks is one of the reasons the event is successful.
“Sometimes it’s difficult for street races to sustain political support because there is some disruption,” Miles said. “But this track is to a great extent on a runaway, so that doesn’t disrupt the flow of businesses, and yet also really it’s right there [in the heart of the city], so it just is very well-situated.”
