On Thursday afternoon deep inside the heart of Tennessee state capital of Nashville, the NTT INDYCAR SERIES and city as well as state officials announced that not only was a new contract agreed upon to keep the series coming to Music City USA for the future, but the race would get an even bigger boost on the schedule too – the season finale.

Beginning in 2024, Indy Car will end their season on the streets of Nashville. However, it’s not going to be on the same track as they utilize now. In fact, it will basically run the opposite direction than what we’ll see this weekend.

The 2.17-mile track that races over the Cumberland River and around the Tennessee Titans stadium, will become another 2.17-mile track but run through the west side of the Cumberland River into the downtown streets on Broadway instead.

MORE: 5 things I’m watching for Sunday’s Big Machine Music City Grand Prix

This was a gigantic task to take on, but both sides got this deal done rather swifty. Before you get to the now, you have to rewind to the later to see how this came to fruition.

Nashville Started With A Dream a Decade Ago

A decade or so ago, city officials felt like they wanted racing back. INDYCAR had run on the Nashville Superspeedway oval from 2001-2008 but wondered, what if they could bring the race to the fans downtown.

NASCAR was long gone as the 1.33-mile track couldn’t find a spot on the Cup schedule and off went their feeder divisions after the 2011 season.

They didn’t want to give up on racing altogether, so why not try the city streets?

“The dream of the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix started about 10 years ago, that was four mayors ago here in the city of Nashville,” said Matt Crews, CEO of Big Machine Music City Grand Prix.

One mayoral candidate led to another, then to another, then to…John Cooper. The buck stopped on his desk. He wanted to make this happen just as badly as the rest, but had the forth sight to get it done.

They worked hard over the years to find a way to pull it off. They thought they did, but it never truly got off the ground. Then came a new mayor in 2019, John Cooper.

“Our current mayor really saw the vision and because of him we have a race here. He truly believed in it, and made it happen,” Crews continued.

Initially, the track was to run on the east side of the Cumberland River but it was Mayor Cooper is who brought the bridge to life.

“Helio Castroneves yesterday said the bridge is iconic, the bridge is what Nashville will be famous for forever. We didn’t have use of the bridge until Mayor Cooper called me one night and said, Why aren’t we using the bridge?

I said, Well, all of your predecessors told me no,” Crews continued.

“So literally the next day, with the help of Tony Cotman, we had a track design using the iconic bridge.”

The Big Machine Music City Grand Prix circuit would consist of 1,659 feet of bridge which truly is the face of this race.

“It’s one of those things, it’s a signature thing that everybody thinks about,” said Dario Franchitti before the inaugural race. “I think it’s cool. It’s nice to have a signature for the circuit. That’s going to be Nashville’s signature, is that bridge.”

They presented this design to INDYCAR and off this race went.

The series announced two summers ago that they’d be showing up in 2021 for the inaugural Big Machine Music City Grand Prix that featured racing over a bridge. It was a three-year deal taking them through the 2023 season.

The race was met with eagerness and anticipation, but the main question was, how long could this race stay on the schedule? Most street races don’t make it past the first contract.

Could Nashville stick out from a field of other past failed endeavors on street courses and become along the lines of Long Beach and St. Pete instead?

See, putting on street course racing is hard. You do get a lot of support but also get a lot of people not in favor of the road closures in such a highly congested areas. I mean, street course racing is done in big metropolitan areas in order to gain the most exposure. These races are like downtown carnivals in a sense as the series hopes to gain attention for ticket sales of people that normally wouldn’t come to an INDYCAR race but chose to do so because it’s a main attraction in a downtown area.

On the flip side, it costs a lot of money to make these races survive too. Between sanctioning agreements, permits, setup, etc, you better have a lot of backing to pull it off.

You can have droves of fans coming in, but can the revenue outweigh the expenses? Street course racing has a lot of expenses. You have to have everything aligned perfectly to make it stick.

Baltimore showed up in 2011 but was gone after 2013. Houston came in 2013 but was gone after 2014. Boston was going to have a race but it never got off the ground. Same for China. Brazil once had a race but they’ve not been able to make it work to come back.

It’s extremely hard to make it work for a second contract. The fight is keeping the levels of these two from dipping year over year. It’s like trying to save your tires over a long green flag run at Darlington. There’s going to be a drop off, it’s natural, but can you minimize the drop off and sustain and good atmosphere?

Most street course races can’t. The attention dies down over the years and the obstacles grow too hard to keep the race around longer than a couple of years.

Nashville didn’t.

For the inaugural race, the direct spend on the Nashville economy was estimated at $24 million. A year later, it was still north of $20 million. Last year’s race saw tickets sold across all 50 states. It had 3.1 million views over race weekend across all platforms.

As a result, donations to local charities topped over $3 Million. This race was a hit for which Nashville didn’t want to let it go. INDYCAR didn’t either.

Titans Stadium Led To A New, Better Path

The problem coming up was, the contract was up for renewal for 2024, but in April, the Tennessee Titans got approval to build a new stadium. The place for the venue?

Right across the street from the current one. That’s the place that houses the paddock. If INDYCAR was to come back, changes needed to be made to the layout.

“We had the situation where I think necessity is the mother of invention, the situation where the Nissan Stadium developed,” Miles continued.

That type of snag could have been the nail in the coffin for this race moving forward. However, they didn’t give up. They had something bigger in mind.

“They came to us with a plan that just blew us away,” said Miles of the new situation. “The only question for us was, Can you do it? Can you actually pull all these things together right here in this hallowed ground for this host city? I think it might be the best big event city, the best entertainment city in the United States. The epicenter of it is right here on Broadway.”

Vision Was Always For Championship Race

With a race of this magnitude and a sleepy season finale now, a race of this magnitude meant a better placement on the schedule.

“When we thought about the possibility of our race being here, we said, What was the idea about the finale? This is going to deserve that,” said Miles. “It’s going to be a phenomenal event that will take the INDYCAR finale to a whole ‘nother level, along with our celebration of that finale. It means that it will be in September. It means that our champion for the year will not only be celebrated here, but if past form holds, will be decided here in this race. So it comes down to that.”

Ironically enough, the local and state officials had already dreamt that. They thought all along they wanted to be the final race of the season. They wanted to be the season finale. Even before the drop of the first green flag, they felt like this could be bigger to decide a title here.

INDYCAR felt then like they needed to see more to decide if Nashville was worthy. Those numbers showed yes they were so here we are.

“Here’s the story. This is why we’re really here tonight from my perspective. We’ve had two great years having this event here. It’s well-established as a fan favorite, driver favorite. The paddock loves being here,” Miles said.

“From the very beginning, actually before the first race, the leadership of the promoter group was bugging me about the idea of this being the finale. Nashville ought to have the finale. Right, just run a race first and let’s see if it works, let’s grow into the opportunity. I just sort of dismissed it, to be honest with you, the first two, three years that it would come up.”

“When we thought about the possibility of our race being here, we said, What was the idea about the finale? This is going to deserve that. It’s going to be a phenomenal event that will take the INDYCAR finale to a whole ‘nother level, along with our celebration of that finale. It means that it will be in September. It means that our champion for the year will not only be celebrated here, but if past form holds, will be decided here in this race. So it comes down to that.”

Which leads us to where we are now, the final race on the current layout with a much larger anticipated race for 2024 and beyond.

More than 250,000 fans are expected to converge on downtown Nashville for the 2024 Big Machine Music City Grand Prix, which has quickly become one of the sport’s marquee events since its debut in 2021 and will become a championship-crowning celebration watched by viewers across the globe.

The new 2.17-mile, seven-turn circuit will continue across the iconic Korean War Veterans Memorial Bridge and route directly past the Country Music Hall of Fame. The racecourse will run through the city’s honky-tonk district, home to bars owned by the biggest names in country music, including Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Luke Bryan, Garth Brooks, Eric Church, Alan Jackson, Miranda Lambert, John Rich and Blake Shelton. Each day of racing will culminate with a takeover of Broadway and a massive street party that only Nashville can throw, featuring live performances by many of music’s biggest artists.

“It really has become the Monaco of the South,” said Scott Borchetta, CEO of Big Machine. “That was always the vision, the goal. You plug into a great party city like Nashville, you bring a fantastic race with some of the best race car drivers in the world, the best technology, the best Fortune 500 companies that support everything that we do, you bring in the power of Penske Entertainment, and guess what, we have a mega, knock-down drag-out rock’n roll party in the streets.

“I’m proud to announce that we’re going to continue this race for a long time to come.”