Round 1: revised calendar. Genesys 300 at Texas Motor Speedway, June 6.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Round 1: revised calendar. Genesys 300 at Texas Motor Speedway, June 6.

After a very long wait, the 2020 season opener will finally take place this Saturday, with the Genesys 300 at Texas Motor Speedway. Saturday's race would have been Round 9, of the 2020 season, before the calendar was revised due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As a further measure because of the Covid-19 virus, IndyCar will run a condensed schedule with practice,
qualifying and the race itself all taking place on Saturday. The event will be conducted without fans in attendance and the race length reduced to 200 laps, or 300 miles (482.803 km).

However, before the green flag flies, there were a number of major developments in the off season. The most significant has been the Covid-19 pandemic, which has greatly affected the 2020 IndyCar season, with a number of races being dropped from the calendar. A revised calendar is now in place, with the 104th running of the Indianapolis 500 taking place on August 23. Fortunately no teams have been adversly affected by the virus.

Apart from the Covid-19 pandemic, there was the sale of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the NTT IndyCar series and IMS Productions, by long term owners Hulman and Company to the Penske Corporation.

There were also major changes regarding some of the teams and drivers. McLaren Racing and Schmidt Peterson Motorsports announced a partnership, competing as Arrow McLaren Racing SP, which lead to the unexpected dismissal of popular Canadian driver and 6 times race winner,
James Hinchcliffe, who had been with Schmidt Peterson Motorsports since 2014. Another surprise was long time campaigner Dale Coyne, who let go of former 4 time in a row Champ Car driver's champion, Sebastien Bourdais and announcing a partnership with Super Formula Championship entrant Team Goh, to run Álex Palou for the full season. Meyer Shank Racing announced a full season program with Jack Harvey. Andretti Autosport announced they would field a fifth entry for Colton Herta, in partnership with Mike Harding and George Michael Steinbrenner IV, formerly of Harding Steinbrenner Racing, now competing as Andretti Harding Steinbrenner Autosport.

This year's race will also see the debut of the Aeroscreen cockpit safety device, built by Red Bull Advanced Technologies, that underwent extensive testing during the off season.

Race History:
This will be the 24th consecutive year Texas Motor Speedway has held this event. On June 7th 1997, the Indy Racing League held the "1997 True Value 500", the 6th round of the fledgling
series at Texas Motor Speedway and it was the first night race in the history of AOWR. It was won by Arie Luyendyk, driving a Panoz G-Force-Oldsmobile for Treadway Racing. Since then it has been a perennial event on the IndyCar series calendar.

From 1998-2004, the track hosted a second race in October and in 2007, the race distance was increased from 500 to 550 km. In 2011, the 'Firestone Twin 275s' were held, made up of two 275km races, separated by a "halftime", with half points awarded for each race. The grid for the second race was decided by a random draw, which proved so unpopular the twin race format was scrapped the following year. In 2014, the race was further extended to 600 kilometers.

In 2001, CART added the "Firestone Firehawk 600" at TMS for April 29th, to their calendar. However, after practice and qualifying, the race was cancelled as drivers reported vertigo like symptoms and vision problems, after sustaining high lateral forces of 5.5G, while driving in excess of 230 mph or 370 km/h on the 24 degree banking. TMS sued CART, after it
emerged CART officials had ignored repeated requests to test their cars before the race. This resulted in a legal settlement, estimated to have been around $5–7 million, which CART paid to TMS. Many pundits have cited the law suit and settlement as a key reason for CART's demise.

Some Trivia:
Driver with the most wins, 4.
Hélio Castroneves: 2004, 2006, 2009, 2013.
Team with the most wins, 10.
Team Penske: 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2017, 2019.

Track Layout:


Length: 1.5 Miles (2.4 km)
Turns: 4

Lap record:
Paul Tracy April 28 2001. 0:22.542, 239.552 mph (385.521 kmh)
Team Green,
Reynard 01i-Honda HR-1 V8t,
CART FedEx Championship Series.

Last Year's Race:
This year I haven't written any race reports, as it is quite time consuming. However, I have included a link that will take you to the motorsport.com website, which has the relevant race report.

https://www.motorsport.com/indycar/n...Bvalue%5D=2243

Pole:
Takuma Sato, two-lap time of 47.0738 sec. Average speed 220.250 mph, (354.458 km/h)
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
Dallara IR18-Honda HI19R Indy V6

Last year's winner:
Josef Newgarden,
Team Penske
Dallara IR18-Chevy IndyCar V6

Laps: 248
Distance: 372 Miles (598.676 Km)
Time: 1:55:09
Average speed: 186.084 Mph (299.473 km/h)
Fastest lap: Takuma Sato, RLLR, lap 69. 23.5657 sec, 219.981 mph (354.025 km/h)

Cautions: 3
Laps 22: 135-142, 219-225, 229-235

Race broadcast: NBC, 8:00pm ET.