The Big Machine Music City Grand Prix on the streets of Nashville have put on a show over the past several years for IndyCar.
The 11-turn 2.170-mile street circuit made its debut in 2021 and featured one of the coolest tracks any racer has ever driven on. The course saw the Indy cars racing over the Korean War Veterans Memorial Bridge, speeding down Broadway and circling around the Tennessee Titans home stadium. The course included some tight turns and drivers struggled for grip, causing so many accidents in the street course's three events that IndyCar drivers jokingly dubbed the event "Crashville."
Despite the carnage, or perhaps because of it, the Music City Grand Prix held plenty of excitement, so much so that IndyCar planned the event to be its season finale race for 2024. However, thanks to uncertainty in and around the area over construction of the new Tennessee Titans football stadium, IndyCar has moved its season-ending race from the streets of Nashville to the Nashville Superspeedway oval.
"Nashville Superspeedway is ideally suited to our highly competitive and extremely intense style of racing, and we look forward to adding a Speedway Motorsports track to our schedule," Penske Entertainment president and CEO Mark Miles told motorsport.com. "Our fans will eagerly anticipate watching a championship be decided on a high-speed oval, with NBC providing a must-see network telecast to viewers around the country. Scott [Borchetta, founder and chairman of Big Machine Label Group, the event's title sponsor] and his team will do a terrific job organizing our finale weekend, and I'm incredibly appreciative of their efforts to pivot and find a fitting venue for our fans, drivers, and teams."
The sport makes a return to the Nashville Superspeedway venue for the first time since 2009. The track played host to IndyCar races from 2001-2009. Scott Dixon was the last active IndyCar driver to win at the 1.33-mile concrete oval, which is located in Lebanon, Tennessee, about 30 minutes outside of Downtown Nashville.
While the event is moving venues, Big Machine will continue sponsoring it.
"Nashville is a world-class sport and entertainment market that loves its racing," Borchetta said. "In its first three years, the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix successfully established itself as a major event in Nashville, and it has tremendous potential for growth, so I couldn't be more excited to make this statement regarding its future. With construction set to begin for the new Titans Stadium, the Grand Prix operations team knew they'd be faced with new challenges, knowing that the course used for the first three years would have to change dramatically for 2024's race."
With the season finale now at Nashville Superspeedway, IndyCar will be ending its championship on an oval for the first time since 2014. Six of IndyCar's final eight races on the 2024 schedule will be run on oval tracks, including double-headers at Iowa and Milwaukee and a race at Worldwide Technology Raceway in East St. Louis.
With so many oval races on the back end of the schedule, the IndyCar championship chase is likely to be wild and exciting with enough mayhem and unpredictable finishes that the 2024 IndyCar champion may not be decided until the final lap of the season.
