The NTT IndyCar Series is making headway on holding a race in Argentina.
“It’s a serious work in progress,” Penske Entertainment CEO Mark Miles told RACER. “It’s conceivable for 2024, but all the pieces are not yet in place.”
RACER has confirmed a post-season appearance at the Autódromo Termas de Río Hondo road course, which hosted a recent demonstration run by Juncos Hollinger Racing, is where the series has focused its attention.
“It is highly likely that it would be post-championship race, a non-points race,” Miles added. “I do think if we go, it will be an enormous event pulling in fans from much of South America. And it’s in a pretty good time zone from a U.S. television audience perspective. So it has a lot offer and we’ll see if we can get it done.”
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Juncos, the Autódromo Termas de Río Hondo circuit which has hosted the MotoGP series numerous times, local government, and private investors are working together to assemble the promotional funding package to bring the event closer to reality.
“The intentions are there,” Juncos said. “We had a great visit from Mark Miles and IndyCar and they were actually very impressed; it’s a top-level facility that holds big events like MotoGP so when you analyze the data and how they promoted it, how they do VIP for all these big motorcycle manufacturers with a high level of requirements, there is no doubt that IndyCar would be perfect for us.”
IndyCar’s only Argentinian team owner is also confident an event would draw fans from other countries.
“I know the fanaticism we have and we are growing the fan base of IndyCar with Latinos because not just the Argentinians are gonna be there; they come from Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil,” Juncos added. “So we are working on the funding for this and looking for more partners to get it finished. If we can get it done, it would be a race after next year’s championship, then see how that goes, and if everybody is happy, then we’d like to make it a regular championship race. Nothing is 100 percent, but the progress is good.”
