Borchetta counts up pluses and minuses from Big Machine Music City GP relaunch
Yesterday at 03:47 PM
Scott Borchetta had the look of a man whose body was confused. He was exhausted after half a year of sleepless nights spent trying to turn a forgotten piece of IndyCar's history — the moribund Nashville Speedway — into a success as the season finale after his grand downtown Nashville street race was nixed. And he also had the adrenaline coursing through his veins after a great show was produced with a first-time oval winner in Colton Herta (pictured above, with Borchetta) and a new champion in Alex Palou was crowned.
Tired and wired, Borchetta took a moment to digest all that had taken place in the hour or so since the checkered flag waved over the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix, and the finish line had been crossed on a crazy journey to give the IndyCar Series and its fans the farewell to 2024 they deserved.
Sitting in a small room within the speedway's media center, Borchetta looked down at his phone to see the flurry of congratulatory texts coming in, then spoke to the success produced by the event, which sold north of 20,000 tickets for IndyCar's first appearance at the 1.33-mile oval since 2008.
"A lot of great positives," Borchetta told RACER. "I was just standing out in the fan zone, talking to fans as they were leaving, and to a person they said, 'We had the best time.' Or, 'I’ve never been to a race like this before with all the music and entertainment,' so the feedback so far has been tremendous. I was walking out last night and one gentleman goes, 'Hey, let me tell you something. I go to F1 races all around the world. I go to this, that, and the other, and this is as good or better a experience' — he was up in our Champions Club — ‘than I’ve ever had at a race.'
"So I think the team gets an 'A' and we're very proud of what we’ve learned from a marketing perspective. All the Penske crew seem very complimentary. Mark Miles pulled me up on the podium to acknowledge us so that was great. So we’ll check the box and look at what worked, what didn’t, and see how we can improve for next year."
The specter of Hurricane Francine and the strong chances of bringing constant rain to Nashville Superspeedway was a concern during race week, but other than a mild interruption on Saturday, weather wasn't an issue. Nonetheless, Borchetta had to deal with worries over rain while trying to entice fans to come and give IndyCar a look in Lebanon, Tenn.
"Everybody worked their hearts out to create a great event," he said. "But everybody was asking, 'Should we cancel?' And I'm like, 'We’re not canceling anything. Unless it is a deluge, we’re not canceling anything.' Concerts are done in the rain all the time. Tried to remind everybody that this isn’t new. Saturday, we weren’t sure what kind of track time we'd get in. But we ended up getting qualifying in. They got practice, and then they came back later and practiced when we got the track back and got some more laps in. So it was great to rubber the track. And then today was beautiful, but the weather definitely hurt us.
"When I was just checking into the Penske Summit on Friday morning, I was talking to (Penske Corp. president) Bud Denker, and he says, 'We’ve had 40 people cancel because of the weather; some of them were travel-related issues where flights were canceled.' That’s just part of our new normal. The weather’s not going to be our friend, so we just got to do the best we can do. But it definitely, psychologically, hurt us a little bit. It just does so because if you’re not an avid fan, if you’re going, 'Oh, that looks like fun,' and it’s like, 'Well, now, rain doesn’t look like fun, we’re not going.' So the percentage loss is impossible to figure out because of it, but we had really strong walk-up sales today. The fan zone was overflowing. It was a huge line to get into the autograph session. People turned up."
Borchetta closed by expressing his appreciation for Nashville Superspeedway owners Speedway Motorsports Inc., run by Marcus Smith, who played a big part in making the rerouted downtown street race a positive story in its new oval home 30 minutes away from the heart of Music City.
"They’ve been great partners," he said. "And, you know, it’s opened my eyes to a lot of things that as a sponsor of the event before, I wasn’t worried about; it wasn’t my responsibility, but this year, with it being my responsibility as the promoter, we’ve learned so much about what works, what doesn’t, what’s missing, what IndyCar needs to be doing. So I think it really kicked the door open to, 'OK, this is the future here at the speedway if you want to step through this door.'"
