The fourth installment of the Nashville Grand Prix was primed to be a gigantic disaster.
Established in 2021, ambitious changes to the event, which raced around the Tennessee Titans’ NFL stadium as a street race for the NTT IndyCar Series through 2023, would move it from its wonky layout to a new configuration resting right in the middle of downtown Nashville in 2024.
Set amid Broadway’s hottest spots for food and music, the race would serve as the championship finale and host city for an IndyCar celebration unlike anything we’ve seen in decades. The excitement for all that was meant to unfold was nearly unparalleled; announcements were made and promotions shifted into high gear.
And then a myriad of issues related to the building of a new Titans stadium destroyed the plans crafted by race promoter Scott Borchetta and his Big Machine team. By the middle of February, IndyCar’s downtown Nashville dream race was gone before it got started.
The party in Music City was being traded for Nashville Speedway and the doldrums of Lebanon, TN, where, despite multiple attempts to make IndyCar racing a thing from 2001-2008, locals near the oval positioned 40 minutes southeast of Nashville never quite cottoned onto open-wheel racing.
Poor attendance under its previous owner/promoter and a general apathy for anything that wasn’t NASCAR made Nashville Speedway one of many tracks that fell off IndyCar’s calendar. But with the circuit’s recent and energetic new owners in Speedway Motorsports Incorporated in charge of the facility and looking to increase its use, and Borchetta’s urgent need to deliver a successful event for IndyCar, he began searching for ways to transport the vibe of a city center street race to an oval that lacked the same natural charm.
Beyond simply saving the event, the true task was to overcome low expectations for its ability to thrive where IndyCar once failed.
“It’s been a massive undertaking, more than I honestly expected,” Borchetta told RACER. “It’s the education of repeatedly telling the audience where you’ve moved the race to, and we haven’t taken anything for granted. Just the other night, my wife Sandi and I were at dinner, and we’re sitting on the patio, and the table next to us, this 10-year-old boy was talking about what a big F1 fan he was, and he was showing his big sister and her boyfriend his Ferrari hat.
“And the parents were there, and they’re talking, and I turned to Sandi, and she goes, ‘Go talk to him,’ and so I went and introduced myself and talked racing, and I invited them to come out to the speedway because they had no idea it was happening there. So, I showed him a picture of myself and Lewis Hamilton, and just talked racing for a few minutes, and they’re coming out. And the story I keep going back to is, when you get young people early enough to see their first race, it’s like seeing your first concert.
“So that’s been part of the strategy. If we’re going to really build this, it’s a heck of a lot more than just having one successful event this year. We’ve taken this thing by the horns, and I’m proud of what we’ve done so far, but the job is not done. We have a few more days to keep grinding at it.”
So far, all of the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix’s premium ticket packages have been sold, and the focus has turned to selling more general admission tickets to fill vacancies in the grandstands.
“Every Club RPM ticket is sold, every Green Room ticket is sold, every Tower Suite is sold, every Champions Club seat is sold, and every pit lane hospitality is sold,” Borchetta said. “We’ve still got a chunk of tickets in the grandstand to get sold, but it’s going to look good. If we stopped selling today, it’s going to look good, but I want it to look great. So we’re pounding the pavement. I’ve got people out at high school football games telling them about it. I’ve got people down on Broadway handing out flyers. We’re we are not lifting until the green flag.”
Importing music acts from Big Machine’s large roster of stars to perform at Nashville Speedway, along with keeping the pre-event festivities planned for Friday downtown on Broadway, was the first significant change Borchetta made.
Billed as the ‘world’s largest album release party,’ country artist Brantley Gilbert headlines ‘Freedom Friday’ after six IndyCar teams hold a pit stop competition and the streets get filled with tire smoke with the ‘Burnouts on Broadway’ event that follows.
At the track, renowned DJ Diplo, and musicians Daughtry and Riley Green will perform this weekend as Borchetta tries to establish as much of what he had planned for the heart of Nashville in the new location where the race will be held.
“We had to bring the Music City to the Grand Prix,” Borchetta said. “When we made the decision that we had to move, and it absolutely was the right decision because we wouldn’t be racing had we tried to stay downtown, and I would have had mega egg on my face. I couldn’t blame it on past management. So I had to get the race moved out there to the speedway, but I wanted to keep the esthetic of Nashville very much intact.
“Let’s keep Broadway in the mix. Let’s have the pit stop competition. Let’s keep IndyCars on Broadway. So, mission accomplished there. So then, how do we bring Nashville out to the speedway? You have to make sure we have the right entertainment, and make sure that we get the message out to the fans that this is a very fan-friendly venue. It’s super easy to navigate. As much fun as street races are, they’re not easy to navigate.
“So from a fan perspective, the fan zone is right there in front of the speedway, and you’re going to see the big iHeartCountry Stage that’s going to star so many big artists. Daughtry is going to be playing on the front stretch, and then you’ve got Diplo doing his thing going into driver introductions. We had to keep the entertainment value really high, so the minute you get to Nashville Speedway, we’ve got DJs playing from the time you walk in, interspersed with our country artists, and it won’t stop.
“And the stage will be literally right next to Turn 1. It’s not going to stop. It’s going to go right through the race. We’ll have our own little mini–Snake Pit over there. It was super important to make sure that we stayed connected to the entertainment side, because it is the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix.”
It’s been rare to go more than 24 hours without seeing a new Music City GP promotional email, ticket deal offered, or social media post from Borchetta’s marketing team. The relentless efforts to inform and entice potential attendees reflects the music industry veteran’s approach to promoting dozens of acts for longer than most of the IndyCar drivers have been alive.
“It’s such a noisy world, and there’s a certain amount of repetitions you’ve got to hit with people, and you’ve got to hit the right message,” he said. “It’s not one message to send. There’s a message to that party-going college kid who wants to come and see Diplo and check out their first race. It’s a different message to the core race fan. It’s a different message to the family. It’s a different message to that young kid. And so we’ve really spent a lot of time, and I brought in some super marketing power, and we do a call every morning and go over all of our analytics, all of our creative, and we’re constantly making little adjustments.
“It’s like, ‘Okay, that isn’t working. Don’t do that anymore. And let’s go after this piece.’ It’s been an extraordinary education in marketing a product that has very little demand here. So, we’ve really taken on the task of creating demand and creating stakes. Thank God Alex Palou did not clinch the championship at Milwaukee. And once you have these kinds of stakes with a champion, Will Power, or Palou, being made at our race, it becomes a sports story and then you start to bleed into a different conversation.
“It’s exciting, because had he clinched last weekend, it’s like, we’re just going to have to tell people it’s going to be a great race. Yeah. You know, the fact that the Milwaukee race was really good, especially the Saturday race. We had really intense racing at Milwaukee and big audiences for the two races, which gives us a lot of encouragement. And it’s been great because a lot of things we do on the record side absolutely apply to promoting our speedway race, but I’ve learned new things just in the last few months that are now applying from the racing side back to my record business. It’s been incredible.”
Borchetta’s expertise would help IndyCar to draw bigger crowds at some of its underperforming events. He’s on a marketing committee formed by Penske Entertainment that also includes McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown, and by coincidence, the two hail from Southern California and grew up going to IndyCar races in the area, which established their lifelong passion for the sport.
Together, they’re trying to assist IndyCar in its quest to grow and become more popular, and if the relocated Music City GP is a hit, there could be a blueprint to establish and apply elsewhere on the IndyCar tour.
“Racing is such a big part of my DNA, and I’ve always been an IndyCar fan,” said Borchetta, who owns an extensive collection of historic Indy cars he loves to drive. “My first race was the 1970 California 500 as a very young boy. It’s been music and racing, and now it’s the responsibility of being the promoter. It’s one thing to be the sponsor with my company, but for the race to work, it’s my responsibility to make sure we bring everything we have to promoting the race, basically owning the race. And you don’t just show up and you’re invited into the circle. It’s decades of relationships with Chip Ganassi, with Roger Penske, who’s one of my heroes, and the Andrettis, and earning their trust that we can do this.
“We’ve got to put on a show where, when they leave the track on Sunday the 15th, they need to know that we did everything we could possibly do to put on the best show possible. We knew that there was a challenge to go out there where the speedway is, when you’re in the shadow of Nashville, and it’s almost unfair because everything pales in comparison to Nashville. So, I really took an ownership approach: This is my race. Psychologically, I wanted my marketing team to take ownership of this race.
“I’ve told everyone that if we do this right, we can make it so compelling that we don’t want to go back downtown, and that’s my challenge to them. We’re bringing the product. We’re going to make these guys stars. We’re going to push everybody. We’re going to push them hard. And when Zak Brown says, ‘Scott, I’m showing up, what can I do for you?’ When I’m walking through the paddock at the Indy 500 and Scott Dixon comes up to me, goes, ‘Scott, whatever you need. What can I do for you?’ When Dario Franchitti, when Tony Kanaan says, ‘What can I do to make this race work?’ There’s so many people that have locked arms to make this finale meaningful.”
The Music City GP is signed to a multi-year contract at the speedway, which means Borchetta has more than one shot at turning a long-forgotten venue for IndyCar into one he hopes people can’t forget for all the right reasons. His brain is working overtime on what the Big Machine team can do with more than seven months to prepare for this weekend’s event.
“The things that we’re proposing for next year, that I can’t get into, can really elevate everything that that we’re doing, and I love the fact that we’re going to be on FOX next year,” he said of the upcoming change to a full season of IndyCar broadcast on the FOX network. “Something I’ve been saying to NASCAR and IndyCar for years, in a friendly but challenging way, is I know every Sunday during football season, I turn the TV on at noon, and we’re kicking off. When I’m a NASCAR team owner and I can’t find practice and qualifying, ‘I’m like, OK, is it on USA? Is it on Peacock? Where is it? Tell me where it is. That’s not good for our product.
“So, the fact that we’re going to be, for Xfinity, on CW next year every time, I don’t have to search, I can just go and watch the race. The fact that we’re going to be on FOX next year, fantastic. We haven’t had this good of a TV package for 30 years and there’s so many positives, and I’m going to keep screaming it from the rooftops and keep pushing everybody to standardize the start times, so you know when to watch.
“You just don’t turn a battleship that quickly. I think the success of F1, and NASCAR, takes time to get there. There’s momentum with IndyCar, and we’ve got to, as a sport, seize this opportunity for the momentum that we have, recognize the challenges we have, and keep attacking those challenges and fixing these things. These are fixable problems, but we’ve got to address them. And if we have to do it independently, then then we shall. If we designate ourselves as leaders and we can lead for the better, then we will. And if Roger kicks me out because we went too far, I will say, ‘Well, I just did the best that I could.’”