On Thursday afternoon, Nashville and INDYCAR officials announced that they’ve come to terms of a new contract to keep the NTT INDYCAR SERIES coming to the Music City for the foreseeable future. This time though, the race moves from the opening weekend of August to now mid-September landing as the season finale.

With that said, the elephant in the room is what does this do to Laguna Seca?

“WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca remains a beloved, historic venue for our teams, drivers and fans in an important and scenic market,” Miles said.

Ever since the series started coming back in 2019, the annual trip has been the championship decider. With Nashville already being tabbed as it’s replacement, where does Laguna Seca go?

Luckily, it seems as if it’s not going to be left off the schedule all together. Rumors are that this track will move up to fill that long early gap in the springtime portion of the schedule. With Long Beach in April, it makes the upmost sense to pair it with that street race for a California two-step keeping teams on the west coast in back-to-back weeks rather than coming back and forth. But, what does that in turn do to Barber and even Texas?

With IMSA announcing their schedule and Easter being on March 31, we have some dates to fill in already.

Easter is March 31, so we know that’s an off weekend. St. Pete is already listed on the Chamber of Commerce site for March 10 and I don’t see a scenario to where the series starts before that. So it looks like March 10 is the season opener for 2024.

Long Beach weekend for IMSA is April 19-20 which means the Grand Prix for the INDYCAR side is April 21. Detroit for IMSA is May 31-June 1 which means the INDYCAR race will be June 2. The GMR Grand Prix and Indianapolis 500 will take place on May 11 and May 26.

So, how does the rest look?

You have March 17 and 24 then April 7, 14, 28 potentially open for Texas, Barber and Laguna Seca to fill those gaps. Do you want to have a lot of races early and an open weekend at the end of April leading into Indy or do you prefer a busier month of April preceding the ever so important Month of May?

The most sense would be St. Pete (March 10), Barber (March 17) for two straight races, followed by two straight off weeks (March 24, March 31), then 3 races in a 4-week span between Texas (April 7), Long Beach (April 21) and Laguna Seca (April 28).

You could also do St. Pete (March 10), Barber (March 17) and Texas (March 24) to go three straight weeks to start before a couple of off weeks (March 31, April 7), then a California two-step of Laguna Seca (April 14) and Long Beach (April 21). The only thing I don’t like this was is leaving that open gap of two more off weeks before the GMR Grand Prix.

Nevertheless, the early portion is filling up some and Laguna Seca would be April 14 or April 28.

Let’s fill in some more dates.

Road America is on a multi-year deal but no word yet on if they stay around the same date for 2024.

Iowa is said to be back again in the same capacity.

Mid-Ohio, Toronto and Portland all need new contracts which each should honestly happen. You also have the Olympics July 26 through Aug. 11.

What about if NASCAR moves the Verizon 200 back to the oval? I’ve heard maybe this is where Milwaukee comes in to replace the second IMS road course visit.

You almost could go Milwaukee (Aug. 18), World Wide Technology Raceway (Aug. 25), Portland (Sept. 1) then Nashville to wrap things up which doesn’t make too much of a difference from this year’s schedule but more of those gaps filled too.