The Thermal Club is making progress in its planning to host the return of the NTT IndyCar Series for a full championship event at the private road course in Southern California.
IndyCar made its first trek to the facility in the Coachella Valley in 2023 for pre-season testing, headed back in March of 2024 for a non-points exhibition, and is set to be hosted in 2025 for The Thermal Club IndyCar Grand Prix where the country club-style property will expand on its offerings from earlier in the year.
“IndyCar has been great to deal with and work with, so they’ve been really helpful with Jay Frye and his whole team,” Thermal GM Nicholas Rhoades told RACER. “We’re excited to be able to bring in a lot more spectators in next year. We learned a lot from things to make it work efficiently, so we’re gonna build off of that, try to bring in quite a few more spectators and make it make sense for us and hopefully fun for everybody. I think everybody last season really enjoyed it, the people that were here. We’re a little bit of a different vibe than your normal IndyCar weekend with more intimate settings. We’re not going to have Long Beach-size crowds.”
The non-points $1 Million Challenge was a first for Thermal in two regards as network television was brought to the facility to broadcast the event, and with the need to include IndyCar’s followers in the venture, the circuit opened its gates to fans for the first time by making a maximum of 2000 tickets available for purchase.
Initially listed at $2000 apiece, few tickets were sold, but weeks prior to the event, a 75-percent price drop was applied as new sales went for $500 per ticket; those who bought tickets at the full $2000 level were refunded the $1500 difference.
Although attendance figures weren’t provided, an estimated daily crowd in the low hundreds was seen at the event, and with plenty of lessons taken from the experience, Thermal is targeting the sale of 5000 general admission tickets which RACER understands could be set at $450 apiece for the Friday-Sunday event set for March 21-23. If all are sold, it would allow the club to generate north of $2 million and cover most of the sanction fee paid to Penske Entertainment and other event-specific operating costs.
“5000 is a manageable number, and then we can gradually ramp up from there as we do it in the future,” Rhoades said. “We want the experience to be better for everybody. But we don’t want to bring in too many people and not be able to deliver.”
Access to the paddock and the food trucks set inside the final corners of the 3.0-mile, 17-turn circuit will return as an option, and higher ticket tiers will also be made available for those who want to spend the three days in more exclusive settings on the property.
“We’re going to have a little bit different hospitality; it’s going to be a little closer to where all the spectators are. We’re going to have more spectators in that area where it overlooks the entire track up on the berm,” Rhoades said of the Turn 15-17 complex.
“We’re going to have more grandstands in that area, so there’s better viewing because you can see the cars go by four or five times there. It’s not just seeing them go by once like most tracks, so the fan experience will be better.”
One item that won’t be returning from the 2024 event is the meme-generating podium that was universally panned by IndyCar teams.
“We tried something a little different, and it didn’t seem to work very well on TV,” Rhoades said with a laugh. “We’re working with IndyCar on doing something different.”