IndyCar and Penske Entertainment are eyeing a late-summer trip for next season after initially planning in April, which may have included a NASCAR doubleheader.
After initially eyeing a spring date for its first visit south of the border in nearly two decades, Penske Entertainment has shifted the target of its hopeful IndyCar trip to Mexico City toward the back half of its 2026 schedule, multiple sources told IndyStar, possibly replacing the Iowa Speedway.
Although no deal is finalized, IndyCar's target for a race at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, the permanent road course in the heart of of Mexico's capital city, follows the completion of next summer's FIFA Men's World Cup — the championship for which is slated to be played July 19, 2026. IndyStar understands that Penske Entertainment is targeting a visit to Mexico City off the back of its annual visit to Laguna Seca, a race slated in the series' most recent discussions about the following year's schedule for the same day as the World Cup final. Mexico City, then, would follow July 26 as a centerpiece addition to IndyCar's busy summer slate and run-up to its late-summer season finale.
Should a deal be reached, landing Mexico City, the venue that for years has hosted both Formula E and Formula 1 and this year hosted NASCAR's Cup and Xfinity series last month, would give IndyCar its second new venue on its 2026 calendar, including the Grand Prix of Arlington street course that weaves around the complexes of both the Dallas Cowboys and the Texas Rangers. Paddock sources expect the addition of at least one more new venue to replace Iowa Speedway's slot in the wake of the series' doubleheader July 12-13 that only drew a few thousand fans over both races.
The additions of Arlington and Mexico City would replace the loss of The Thermal Club and one of IndyCar's Iowa Speedway races, but as Penske Corp. president Bud Denker told IndyStar ahead of the Iowa weekend, not only is it important for Penske Entertainment to preserve 17 points-paying races on its calendar, but a close second is preserving IndyCar's somewhat even mix of road, oval and street course races. The expectation, then, is the series may either create a new doubleheader oval weekend to add back an oval or seek out another oval track to keep next year's oval race count at five.
Talks of possible IndyCar-NASCAR doubleheader weekend held, shelved
In the wake of NASCAR's announcement last summer that it would run its first international points-paying Cup series race, the IndyCar paddock stirred with the frustration that it housed the country's second-most popular racecar driver in perennial title contender Pato O'Ward, who like Mexican NASCAR driver Daniel Suarez, was born in the Mexican city of Monterrey. That backlash — which included O'Ward chiding Penske Entertainment for its lack of urgency, series veteran Scott Dixon calling the move "a massive miss" for IndyCar and Spaniard Alex Palou noting rival series "overtaking us left and right" — triggered an at times confusing explanation from Penske Corp. president and CEO Mark Miles.
In a sitdown with reporters, Miles said Penske Entertainment had been told by track owners CIE and its subsidiary that runs the Mexico City track, OCESA, that both the series and its young Mexican star were not popular enough to spark an overly successful event and warrant the risk of the track promoter to host such a race weekend.
Miles, then, was adamant in stating that IndyCar would not entertain a visit to the track without an agreement from the track operators to promote the race, and so both sides for years had been locked in a stalemate. But ahead of NASCAR reaching a deal with OCESA for its June 2025 visit, Penske Entertainment charged Ricardo Escotto, the father of the Mexican Indy NXT driver of the same name and the owner of a highly successful advertising company in Mexico, to negotiate on IndyCar's behalf with OCESA with the goal of coming to terms on a visit to Mexico as early as 2026.
At that time, Penske Entertainment had proposed April 12, 2026, the Sunday after Easter, as its initial target race date. That race placement offered IndyCar an additional event to help bolster its slim spring slate that this year saw three instances of two consecutive off weekends between races largely due to a lack of warm-weather venues.
According to multiple sources, at some point in the negotiating process, that target date spurred conversations that could've seen Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez host a doubleheader weekend featuring both NASCAR and IndyCar, a special weekend the pair of major North American racing series held recently for four years at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (2020-23). As one would expect, though, Penske Entertainment officials balked at the idea of IndyCar, who would come to the table with far and away the most popular driver in the local market among the two series, potentially playing second-fiddle to NASCAR and racing Saturday ahead of a Sunday Cup series race to cap the weekend.
Somewhere along the line — it's not clear whether before or after talks of an IndyCar-NASCAR doubleheader were abandoned — an April visit to the track no longer became tenable, and Penske Entertainment refocused on a late-summer visit to the track that sits in the heart of one of the 10 most-populated cities in the world.
Mexico City would be a welcomed addition to IndyCar's summer slate
The late-July date helps begin to fix one of the series' biggest issues with its present-day calendar — and one that, frankly, would've only been exacerbated by holding Mexico City in the spring: a front-heavy load of IndyCar's biggest races, including is long-time season-opening street race at St. Pete; its newest flashy addition in Arlington that will see the series partner with the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Rangers; Long Beach, historically the sport's second-biggest race on the schedule; and the Indianapolis 500, the largest single-day sporting event in the world. Despite the series and its promoters' best efforts, IndyCar's short-oval races, its street events in Detroit and Toronto and its Midwest (Road America and Mid-Ohio) and West Coast (Laguna Seca and Portland) road course races don't nearly fit that billing.
The addition of Mexico City to the closing stretch of the season would give the sport a high-interest late-summer stop where O'Ward, IndyCar's runaway most popular driver, would be expected to receive a king’s welcome in his first opportunity to race in his home country on a major stage — a feature of this latest schedule addition that could only get better should O'Ward win next year's Indy 500 (having finished second twice and third once in his last four starts) and/or find himself in the heat of a championship fight. Entering Round No. 13 of 17 for Sunday's race on the streets of Toronto, O'Ward sits second in this year's title fight and the most likely driver to finish best in class to Palou.
IndyCar's newest target for its hopeful Mexico City race also allows for a buffer to the finish off the World Cup, should Mexico find itself playing in the championship. Mexico City's Estadio Azteca, the home of the men's Mexican national team, will host World Cup matches roughly weekly from the event's kickoff, starting with its first Group Stage match June 11 to its second of two elimination matches July 5, making that stretch specifically untenable as a potential landing spot for a major race at the city's internationally acclaimed race track. Holding off until the World Cup's completion will then allow for IndyCar to be the city's major sporting focus upon its arrival.
Miles' comments in August regarding IndyCar's most recent in-roads into Mexico City indicated Escotto may be slated to assist in promoting the race weekend. It's not immediately clear the exact roles of Penske Entertainment, Escotto and OCESA in helping to land, promote and run IndyCar's latest race date outside the U.S.
A Penske Entertainment official declined to comment when asked to confirm the target timeframe and other specifics around major American open-wheel racing's first visit south of the border in nearly two decades.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar 2026 schedule: Mexico City to replace Iowa Speedway stop
Category: General Sports
