The thought of bringing back the oval on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has become a major talking point for NASCAR drivers off late. Even though the road course format was only introduced recently, it does not seem to have gained much favorable opinion from the drivers and teams.
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Meanwhile, as conversations progress and efforts resume to make the return of the oval possible, NASCAR Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt Jr. explained the significance behind the oval format of the track.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. reveals the importance of the Indy Oval
Speaking on Dale Jr Download, Junior mentioned, “Indianapolis Motor Speedway has over 100 years of history, the oval. This is basically where motorsports started in our part of the world. And when NASCAR, there was so much talk for two decades about getting stock cars, will stock cars ever run there? Could they ever run there?”
“Bill France Sr, Bill France Jr were having conversations with the speedway for decades about how to get there, how to get us there. And finally, in the mid-90s, there was a test. I remember how like, incredibly insane and hard to believe and beautiful it was that we were going to get to go there.”
“Before we ever saw a car on the track. Your imagination just ran wild. You couldn’t believe this, NASCAR at Indy?”
The Indy Oval format had been running since the dawn of the track but only for the Indy 500 event. The race ran with open-wheel racecars specifically developed for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, aptly named–IndyCar. Nearly a century since its inception, the cars have drastically changed but maintained the open-wheel format.
Junior recalls how every driver wanted to win the Indy Oval when it was introduced
Speaking further in the podcast, Junior added, “The test was massive. It was uh imagine that happening today right? Social media would have exploded with something like that. So it was a big deal. We go race there. And it was, everybody wanted to win that first race.”
“All the drivers that were, the next three or four or five years, you could tell immediately right out of the gate. They were winning a race that was as important in their resume to them as any race ever… This race, it came prepackaged as I hate this term, but a crown jewel.”
“It automatically became one of the top three most important races that any driver would want to win. Because of the track’s history and all that. When we move to the road course you lost that and almost entirely.”
The Indy Oval was only introduced in the 1994 season of the NASCAR Cup Series. So for a track that holds so much history, it was only natural for the drivers to be overwhelmed with emotions as they hoped to win a race at the venue. This very prestige of the event is what drivers like Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin have referred to in the last few weeks, demanding NASCAR to go back to the Oval.
