The final year at MIS for the IRL?
"We've had trucks here for this race weekend in the past, but the trucks were a home run here in June," said Brett Shelton, MIS president. "When you've got three race weekends, you try to get them all filled. We had several things we were looking at for this weekend, but schedules just didn't allow.
"I think it's just one of those things. It's not necessarily in your plans to say: 'Let's see what an IndyCar weekend will do by itself.'
"It's just one of those things that it's the way it worked out."
Last July, the track paired the Infiniti Pro Series developmental series with the IndyCar race on Sunday and had a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race on Saturday of race weekend in Brooklyn.
The International Race of Champions (IROC) series has also spent time on the MIS schedule in July in years past.
"A lot of racetracks, this is what they do all the time," Shelton said of the one-race weekend. "It's not unusual; it's just a little bit unusual for us."
The last stand-alone open-wheel race weekend at MIS was the Michigan 500 on Aug. 2, 1986 — a Saturday.
The Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) series returned to MIS for the Pepsi-Cola 250 on Sept. 18. That race was supported by an American Speed Association (ASA) event.
Even the one-time try at a 500-mile open-wheel race in May, the U.S. 500 in 1996, was supported by the Indy Lights developmental series. More at MLive.com [Editor's Note: This is not a show of faith in the IRL by ISC. Gone from Phoenix, no support at Michigan, a questionable future at Fontana (given horrible attendance figures), we suspect that ISC has lost faith that the IRL can deliver big race crowds for them and has decided that NASCAR is pretty much the only game in town. We always said that the France family would squash the IRL like a bug once they were finished playing Tony George like a fiddle to destroy open wheel racing in America by having him split the sport and destroy it.]
07/25/05 Interesting answer from Curt Cavin regarding the future of the IRL at MIS:
Question: What's going on at Michigan this year? Why are there no other races, not even the Menards Infiniti Pro Series? I have not seen this scenario before for the IRL: qualifying on Saturday afternoon and then NO final practice that day, until Sunday morning. (John from Columbus, Ohio)
Answer: The schedule is indeed ridiculous. The Indy cars will be the only show on the track. To me, that's not enough. I predict a very small crowd and the final year for the IRL at MIS, especially if Chevy is leaving. We'll see if that plays out. Indy Star