IndyCar's road to Australia opens up as Supercars Adelaide promoter reveals interest in crossover

IndyCar CEO Mark Miles' interest in adding a race in Australia to the series calendar has found reciprocation from a promoter of the Supercars championship held in Australia and New Zealand.

In November 2024, Miles revealed having conversations with Supercars about organizing a non-championship IndyCar race at the Adelaide street circuit. The idea came about after the Adelaide 500 became the Supercars season finale to be held in November each year. This would facilitate IndyCar, whose season ends in September, to conduct a post-season exhibition race in Adelaide during the same weekend.

Mark Warren, the chief executive of SAMB, which promotes Supercars' Adelaide Grand Final, recently gave in to the idea of having an IndyCar race in Adelaide, albeit not during the same weekend.

"We look at all sorts of things in terms of motorsport options. The whole reason we went down the Speedway and also Supercross paths is to look at different types of motorsports we can bring to South Australia," Warren said via Speedcafe.

"IndyCar is a really interesting one in that it’s obviously got a history in Australia, having been up on the Gold Coast previously. So if that was an opportunity for Adelaide to look at doing something with IndyCar, we’d definitely look at it," he added.

The last time the American open-wheel racing series raced Down Under was at the Surfers Paradise Street Circuit at Gold Coast. The Gold Coast Indy 300 was a part of their racing calendar from 1991 to 2008.

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McLaren CEO Zak Brown "not a fan" of IndyCar going international

Zak Brown at the 2024 F1 Grand Prix Of Abu Dhabi - Source: Getty

McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown wasn't on board with Mark Miles' plans to explore a potential race in Australia, or overseas in general, for that matter. The 53-year-old claimed that IndyCar is yet to explore untapped markets in North America.

In an interview with Speedcafe, Brown said:

"I’m not a fan of IndyCar going outside of the Americas. I know it’s Aussie [readers] here, and I love Aussie, and I’ve got a Supercar team, and I love the F1 race in Aussie, and I’ve got an Australian driver, so it has nothing to do with Australia, but IndyCar needs to grow its own market before it starts going international outside of America."

Brown, who also leads IndyCar's Arrow McLaren team, brought the spotlight onto cities on the American East Coast like Denver and New York, which, as per him, should be visited first. He also suggested an expansion into Mexico, Brazil, and the Americas as a whole before thinking of going international.

IndyCar's last international race was in Sau Paulo, Brazil. The Sau Paulo Indy 300 was a part of the calendar for four years, from 2010 to 2013. The local organizers canceled the 2014 event, citing financial difficulties, and the series never returned there.