The lone doubleheader weekend of the season is upon us. The doubleheader format in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES first started in 2013. Only two times has someone swept both races in the same weekend. Scott Dixon did it in Toronto in 2013 and Graham Rahal at Belle Isle in 2017.

This format started with three races (Belle Isle, Toronto, Houston) in 2013, fell to Belle Isle and Houston in 2014 and just Belle Isle as the standalone from 2015 through 2019. During the 2020 season, due to COVID, we had it in Texas, Road America, Iowa, World Wide Technology Raceway, Mid-Ohio and on the IMS road course. In 2021 it was back to Belle Isle again as well as Texas before moving to Iowa the last two years.

With that said, this weekend will look vastly different than the other 16 on the schedule.

Friday was the only practice time of the entire weekend with the drivers hitting the track for a 90 minute session from 4:30 p.m. ET until 6 p.m. ET.

On Saturday morning, they’ll qualify for BOTH races. How this works is, Lap 1 will be your qualifying time for Race 1 and Lap 2 will set the lineup for Race 2.

“Yes, you’ve got to try to balance qualifying versus getting race work done in that one practice we have,” Will Power noted. “Pretty important to roll off the truck in a good spot, which I can’t see why we wouldn’t.

“That’s the advantage of testing. You’re going to turn up and just go straight out of the box and do a quality run on a new set, whereas we’re going to waste a set of tires just getting up to speed. And you need your tires because you’re limited because you’ve got two races.

“Yeah, that’s — yeah, that’s the disadvantage of not testing, but I expect the car to be good out of the box.”

The qualifying order is based off entrant points going from worst to first. Which means the likely quicker times could fall later due to more rubber being put down. However, going earlier is in cooler weather too so there’s a balance there.

Plus, practice was taken place in the heat of the afternoon with qualifying in the morning. You’ll likely want to have your car setup for race trim later but track position also means something so there’s a balance to be had either way.

“You have to see, because I thought about that,” Power told me. “You have to see how cool it is at the beginning because, yes, if it is a sudden temperature rise — I don’t know where the steepest slope of temperature rise is in the morning, but cool conditions does help, I’ll give you that.

“The qualifying line goes through pretty quickly because two laps — it’s going through pretty quick. So maybe the rubber does mean more, maybe going last or later helps.

“I think, if you’re in that top ten, you’re pretty good. You always like to go after your teammates because you get the info, but yeah, so I’m at a bit of a disadvantage in that respect. I’ve got two teammates who can learn off of what I did, but it’s a couple of quick laps right there. It’s straight out of bed into the car. Try to drive around that track wide open, it’s pretty straight out of the box, no practice, turn up, and go. So, yeah, pretty hard.”

From there on, they’ll only race. But with track position meaning so much here, it’s a slippery slope.

“At the end of the day, qualifying, it doesn’t really matter,” Josef Newgarden said. “When it comes to choosing between that and a race, you have to have a good race car. You’re going to be stuck with it for 250 laps versus two.

“So, yeah, you’re going to be putting the race car setup on. You might sneak in a little bit of an adjustment for trying to get a decent run in qualifying.

“But to be honest, it’s a terrible condition setup. We’re going to be qualifying at 8:30 a.m. It’s going to be 12 degrees cooler, and then you can’t adjust the car for when it’s the middle of the day.

“I don’t personally love that. I think you’re going to be bottoming a lot more when the conditions are super cool. The car is just going to be stuck.

“So I kind of wish we had that setup differently where we could adjust at least ride heights or front wing or something like that. The way the rules are written in impound, you’re going to basically put your race car on, and hopefully it’s not too aggressive for qualifying.

“I mean, I want to make it sound more impressive than it is, but you are basically just putting your race car on and trying to not bottom too much. So you’re not — there’s not anything too tricky that we can do.

“I think mostly, at least on our team, it would be much more preferred if we could just make a few adjustments because I think everybody going to fight that.

“At the end of the day you’re putting your race car on, and you’re going to try to set your ride heights, and that’s about it. It’s nothing too crazy.”

Power says that the cars that are mired back in the field have to use too much of their tires to hold on because they’re in so much dirty air. Those up front can be easier on their tires and as a result, run longer stints – hence track position being a very important aspect of this weekend.

“That is the advantage of starting up front is the fact that you’ve just been running in clean air and not degrading tires,” he says. “There’s so much more grip to be out front in the clear. So when you get to that traffic, they’ve been running the heaviest traffic at the very back so their tires have degraded significantly more. And the fact that they’re at the back is usually they haven’t got as good of a car unless something happened in qualifying.

“Yeah, so you get to the first few pretty easy. Obviously the further up you get, the harder it gets. Yeah, that’s the challenge of that place. You’ve got to work the traffic well while covering the guy behind you who’s attacking you. Yeah, good fun. Very, very good fun race and track.”

Saturday will be a 250 lapper at 3 p.m. ET with the green flag at 3:06 ET where Sunday will see a 2:30 ET green flag.