UPDATE 2 8-11-2023: Chase Briscoe, Alex Bowman and Ty Gibbs are scheduled to take part in a Goodyear/NASCAR test Monday and Tuesday on the oval at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Next season marks the 30th anniversary of the inaugural Cup race at Indianapolis, and NASCAR is expected to return to the oval in 2024.
— NBC Sports —
AND: “We’ll make a decision later this summer on what 2024 will look like,” [IMS President Doug] Boles said. “Once they test, that will be a good time to sit down and talk about ‘Do we come back to the oval or do we keep this weekend format’.”
Boles added that they would “get those things solved in the next few weeks.”
Boles speculates that if they return stock car racing to the IMS oval that it will effectively kill the NASCAR-IndyCar doubleheader format as it would likely not work out logistically to switch between the road course and the oval.
—- WIBC —
UPDATE 8-6-2023: It has felt inevitable all year, but Denny Hamlin said with near certainty on Saturday at Michigan International Speedway that the NASCAR Cup Series will leave the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course after the season and return to the historic super-oval next year.
Translation: It’s the return of the Brickyard 400.
— Sportsnaut —
ORIGINAL POST 7-14-2023: Goodyear will conduct a tire test on the oval at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a sign that the Cup Series likely will race on the there next year — the 30th anniversary of the inaugural Brickyard 400 — instead of on the road course.
Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing, confirmed the test this week on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. The test is scheduled to take place the Monday and Tuesday after the Indianapolis road course race on Aug. 13.
“We just feel like there’s enough discussion around potentially going back to the oval in the future,” Stucker said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio about the reason for the test. “Let’s go ahead and take the opportunity to get on that racetrack, the oval configuration with the Next Gen car. We haven’t run the Next Gen car on the (Indy) oval.”
— NBC Sports —