INDIANAPOLIS – The schedule for the 2020 NTT IndyCar Series season was unveiled on Sunday afternoon. One noticeable change was apparent – Pocono was dropped while Richmond was added as its replacement.

This has been a track that race fans in the area have been wanting back. If you look at the TV numbers for each Indy Car race, Richmond is always near the top of the list. But, that wasn’t always the case.

After a one race stint in 1946, open wheel racing really started coming to the Richmond area in 2001. The nine year history wasn’t a smooth one. The racing package in those days wasn’t ideal for a track like Richmond.

See, back in those “IRL” days, the high speed, hold the throttle wide open type of racing was good on tracks at 1.5-miles and length or bigger, not short tracks. When everyone is going the same speed, how can you pass?

The 2009 race, the final one for Indy Car and Richmond until next year’s race, saw just three lead changes. It was as if they got booed out of there. No one wanted the series to return for 2010. So they didn’t. When the green flag waves next June, it will have been over 4,000 days since the series last raced on the .75-mile Virginia oval.

“Well, for one it relieves a lot of pressure with fans around here,” track president Dennis Bickmeier said. “I’ve been here since 2011. Questions I get asked a lot, When is IndyCar coming back? The other one is, When is the Truck Series coming back?

“We’re delivering both of those to the fans around here in 2020. I feel good about that.”

He as well as most associated with the series today feel like the racing in 2020 will be a heck of a lot different than what we saw in 2009. The reason?

Low downforce.

“I think we came here the last year we had too much downforce,” Tony Kanaan said on Tuesday afternoon via a conference call. “Everybody was running the same lap time. Once you got a back marker, you couldn’t do anything about it. That was a combination of a lot of things probably. I don’t think I can point out one thing that made the race like that.

“I remember back here, we came back, we were going flat out, like full throttle around this little place. Then you go to a race, you’re only a 10th, 10th and a half from each other. You can’t pass.”

Kanaan, said that with less downforce now compared to then, the race the proof is already in the pudding. Plus, throw in tire degradation and you get a win-win.

“I think we need the tires to go off, you need less downforce, you need the cars to slide, then you’re going to see some passing,” Kanaan continued. “I even think the side-by-side, I’m not sure, I don’t think we had a lot of side-by-side this year, people want to see passing as well. I think the passing is the most important thing.

“The year we were here last time, it was just too much downforce.”

His former Chip Ganassi Racing teammate in Scott Dixon agrees.

“I think that’s the ultimate goal,” Dixon said of improving the racing. “I think a lot of that is the tire. Even Iowa, my race, and many others, too, this year, you’re searching a lot of the time, right? You find something that works. By the next stint it changes. It’s because the tire is pretty highly stressed and you’re constantly having to maneuver for the change.

“I think three and four will be a lot easier to run side-by-side. Definitely tightens up a little bit out of two, the banking pulls off. I think that will create opportunities to dive underneath somebody.

“Tony kind of touched on it. I think tire deg is really a big thing for great racing. We see that on road, street and ovals.”

One thing that Richmond is being compared to is Iowa. They’re both similar shaped and have similar size. But, Kanaan warns that Richmond could be even better due to the track surface at Richmond compared to Iowa.

“We ran around the track, it’s extremely smooth,” Kanaan said. “That is actually quite remarkable. If you go to Iowa, it’s completely the opposite, extremely bumpy. I think it will be easier to run side-by-side here just because the bumps obviously make the grip go away.

Bickmeier, says that in order to get this race well attended, they need to turn it into an event. They want constant cars on the track and think that even if Indy Car’s support series’ aren’t added to the weekend schedule, they can work around it.

“I’ll say from our point of view we really, really, really wanted to focus on the IndyCar piece of this, getting it right. Getting it right right out of the gate. We’re really focused on a lot of on-track with these guys, practice, qualifying, racing.

“We’re going to build a celebration of speed around this that’s going to launch Friday night, Friday evening, when they’re out practicing. Then, like I mentioned, there’s going to be a lot going on on the racetrack itself. Really kind of building a real festival around this.

“I got to tell you, Richmond, Virginia, is a very festival-centric town. That’s the approach we’re going to take to this race weekend as well. I think that’s what’s going to attract, whether you’re a long time IndyCar fan, casual IndyCar fan, you just want to try it out, Richmond loves their festivals. We need to build the next big festival here in Richmond. That’s what we’re going to do.

“Might be a little different, I don’t want to speak for IndyCar, might be a little different than what they’re doing at other racetracks. Our focus is the IndyCar Series and building that base back here.”

Jay Frye of IndyCar said that they will have a compacted schedule. They’ll practice once Friday then comeback on Saturday to practice again, qualify after and race after that.

“One of the things we’re going to try here next year is a little different schedule formula. We’ll come in Friday night, practice from 7 to 9-ish, I would say, is the goal. Saturday we’re going to come in and practice, qualifying race. It will be a bam-bam-bam type thing to try that cadence, formula, to see how it’s going to work.

“I think as Dennis was saying, there’s going to be IndyCars on the track a lot. The schedule would be somewhat condensed. There will be lots of activity.”