Yesterday’s news that Ray Evernham and Rob Kaufman purchased IROC, the International Race of Champions, excit4ed me. I loved the old IROC series. It was fun to watch.

For 2024, just one race with historic IROC cars is scheduled. Evernham owns several, and the race might be with the machines in his collection. No future plans were announced.

IROC ran from 1973-2006, and was owned by Les Richter, Roger Penske, and Mike Phelps. Until 1991 the schedule included at least one road race, but was exclusively an oval series from 1992 forward.

Mark Donohue won the first championship. Other champions included A. J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Bobby Unser, Al Unser, Jr., Dale Earnhardt, Mark martin, and Tony Stewart.

While drivers from Indycar, Nascar, and Formula 1 participated, in its later years the series became heavy with nascar drivers, who dominated the championships. Al Unser, Jr. was the last non nascar champion in 1988.

The revived series enters an extremely busy racing calendar, and will need to carve i out its own niche. Tony Stewart’s Superstar Racing Experience has been very successful. How will IROC be different?

The former iteration had active drivers in competition, while SRX employs mainly retired or semi-retired drivers with an occasional active guest star. Today’s drivers seem busier than they have ever been. Will they have time to participate in IROC? I can’t see how Kyle Larson can fit one more thing into jis calendar.

IROC ran mainly as a support race for many nascar events. Will they can continue to do this? Would IROC run at an Indycar event, perhaps on Carb Day at IMS? Or will they go the s=weeknight route as SRX does?

I think a weekday might work best for them if the series decides not to be a support race series again. , which would mean a night series, and a schedule that begins and ends either before or after the SRX season.

Whatever IROC decides, I am thrilled to see this series come back. It means more racing, and perhaps nmore exposure for Indycar.