IndyCar driver Colton Herta, who recently moved to Nashville, has noticed the heavy promotion for the season finale all over the city.
He joked that there are many billboards in Nashville, unlike the situation two weeks ago when Pato O’Ward pointed out that a sign outside the Milwaukee Mile was promoting a past NASCAR event instead of that day’s IndyCar race. Herta emphasized that there has been a strong effort to promote Sunday’s championship race.
“I think they do a really good job at promoting. They do a really good job of pooling money together and putting it in the right areas,” Herta said. “They’re committed to open-wheel racing and IndyCar as a whole. I love what they’re doing.”
Originally, the season finale was planned to take place through the downtown streets of Nashville, including the Korean War Veterans Memorial Bridge and parts of Lower Broadway.
The event had been so successful in its first three years that IndyCar decided to make it the title-deciding finale, moving the Laguna Seca race in California to June and reducing its sanctioning fee to make room for what was expected to be a highlight of the season.
Despite construction on the new NFL Titans stadium that would force some changes to the course, the event was expected to succeed.
However, when Scott Borchetta, founder of Big Machine Label Group and a passionate IndyCar fan, reviewed the plans, he found that the construction would significantly disrupt local businesses and change the event from what it had been in the previous three years.
Borchetta also discovered that the Music City Grand Prix was facing financial troubles, with many unpaid bills to vendors. Although Borchetta was a founding partner of the ownership group, which initially included NASCAR’s Justin Marks and Dale Earnhardt Jr., as well as Justin Timberlake, the extent of the financial issues came as a surprise to him.
