Three tracks which host NTT IndyCar Series races have been busy with repaving efforts ranging from small to circuit-wide.
First on the calendar is the March 8-10 opening round on the streets of St. Petersburg, which has received attention from the city’s engineering and roads division at the problematic Turn 3, site of numerous crashes and attempted fixes over the years to rectify its bumpy surface.
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“St. Pete at Turn 3, where that bump was, it’s been repaved,” IndyCar president Jay Frye told RACER. “It was a great thing that the city were able to do that.”
The city of Detroit has made a similar improvement to the long stretch of road that serves as the braking zone into its Turn 3, which posed a significant challenge for drivers last year as cars routinely bounced over the undulations and locked their front tires. The sizable repaving effort put down 700 feet of new pavement in an attempt to resolve the matter ahead of the May 31-June 2 downtown event.
IndyCar’s July 5-7 race at Mid-Ohio is the location of the last major repaving project. Like Road America and Laguna Seca in 2023, the road course has undergone a complete repaving throughout its 2.3-mile, 13-turn roll through the hilly farmland.
“There’s been a lot of work done by our partner tracks this offseason that should make for some great racing,” Frye said.