INDIANAPOLIS — Another revision to the 2020 NTT IndyCar Series schedule was unveiled on Thursday afternoon. That comes one week after series officials confirmed that the original season opening race on the streets of St. Pete would be able to be staged on the opposite end of the schedule on Oct. 25 to serve as the season finale. A day after that, it was revealed that Toronto wouldn’t be able to host the series on their annual July race weekend.

Now, a week later, more changes have been made. But, just look at clues that are being given to us in these alterations. Everything is getting clearer at least on one front.

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Toronto has now been canceled for the 2020 season. That move was made official on Thursday. No surprise there with that being a street circuit and our Canadian friends up north would have a hard time setting up a street course while also abiding by social distancing rules. We knew July would be tough for the race to be run with fans anyways, so now the race is gone.

A second race is gone too – Richmond. IndyCar also announced that the first race back to the Virginia race track would have to wait a while longer now. The Commonwealth is under strict guidelines and would pose a threat to hosting fans any time before the middle of July. With the race on the .75-mile, D-shaped oval supposed to take place on June 27, they’d have to do so without any race fans in mind. That’s why NASCAR has said no thanks to their spring date on the same track and would run at Martinsville in the same state next month without fans.

Another change though is Road America will move back from their June 21 date to fill the void left now from Toronto. To make up for it, they’ll add a second race on the 4.014-mile Elkhart Lake facility and race on Saturday as well as Sunday. That means we really only lost one race from the April 6 updated plan.

Here’s the kicker to why Road America moved — they hope to host race fans. I mean, if hosting fans according to how things stand today, there’s no reason to think that they couldn’t in two months.

“Our vast 640-acre outdoor facility is widely regarded as ‘the safest place to watch a race’ because fans are not dedicated to a seat and can roam freely around the property to find their favorite viewing location,” said Road America president and general manager, Mike Kertscher. “Above all else, we appreciate everyone’s support and flexibility as we made schedule adjustments caused by COVID-19. We also extend our thanks to IndyCar for embracing this new doubleheader schedule to give our fans and our frontline heroes a memorable experience that they have patiently been waiting for.”

We know also that it sounds like the July 4 GMR Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway can run with fans. If Road America can too, it’s a win-win. Next up after that is a doubleheader weekend at the Iowa Speedway, with all hopes of hosting those races with fans too. Iowa lost all their other race weekends for 2020, so it’s vastly important that they can get both races in with fans coming through the gates.

While the schedule is going to be very condensed between July and the end of August, fans are in the equation to get going through the meat of their schedule. It’s not all too surprising on that front either.

IndyCar isn’t like NASCAR in terms of their TV package. They don’t receive the millions upon millions of revenue per season on that front. In turn, they can’t share money with the tracks like NASCAR can. That’s why NASCAR isn’t having a hard time of racing behind closed doors. For IndyCar, racing behind closed doors is a huge loss of revenue for all parties.

So, if you can push races back to time ranges that fans may be able to attend and eliminate the ones that can’t have fans there, it’s an odd season, but one that can still be somewhat profitable or even minimize the losses.