IndyCar’s Miles confident Milwaukee can recapture past glory

Dating back to the 1950s, the Milwaukee Mile was one of the traditional IndyCar homes. The living legends of our sport like A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti drew giant crowds, and with the handoffs from AAA to USAC to CART sanctioning, the crowds remained strong.

A transition to Champ Car and the Indy Racing League/IndyCar Series continued to produce appreciable audiences, and despite losing the event in 2010, it returned in 2011 and was taken over in 2012 by Andretti Sports Marketing, Michael Andretti’s former event’s firm, which lasted through 2015.

And now it’s back, led by the Wisconsin State Fair Park promotions team with central involvement from Penske Entertainment, owners of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the NTT IndyCar Series.

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Along with the Indy road course race, Indy 500, Detroit Grand Prix, and the Iowa Speedway doubleheader, Penske Entertainment adds Milwaukee to its promotional responsibilities which, in light of the one-mile oval’s disappearance in 2010 and final exit after 2015, places a lot of expectations on Penske to turn Milwaukee into a sustainable success.

Asked if Penske Entertainment did a deep dive to find the root causes of its previous failures, CEO Mark Miles declined to discuss the event’s past, but he did detail the efforts by the company’s leadership to reignite the historic IndyCar race.

“More than a year ago, Roger Penske and I and (PE VP) Michael Montri and (Penske Corp. president) Bud Denker were there, and we met with the governor, and we had heard that there was interest and that they were prepared to invest in the fairgrounds, and in particular, in the track,” Miles said.

“So in true Roger Penske fashion, we found ourselves walking the track and looking at every linear foot of wall or SAFER barrier or where there might be SAFER barrier and fencing and restrooms and all the rest of it, and honestly laid out a vision you would expect from us about the level of quality upgrades that would need to be made to make it appropriate for us.

“At every turn, the state was there, interested in helping make that happen. There’s some state funding. At the same time, the State Fair Board welcomed the opportunity and is really embracing it, and I don’t know that that was that true last time around in Milwaukee.”

Miles draws confidence for Milwaukee’s future from Penske Entertainment’s success at other venues.

“Those two things were really key, and this time as we have the experience we have here as Penske Entertainment at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for all that we’re doing and then Detroit and then Iowa, we thought, look, we should step up, and while the promoter is actually the State Fair Board, we’re going to be heavily invested and very involved,” he said.

“I think we’re in a position to make sure that it meets everybody’s expectations. The ingredients came together, and it seemed like the right time, and we’re happy to be part of it.”

IndyCar and Texas Motor Speedway were unable to find a date that worked for both parties in 2024, and as a result, an unbroken attendance record from the IRL’s inaugural race on June 7, 1997, through April 2, 2023, has been severed. Missing out on a trip to Denton, TX, in 2024 does not, in Miles’ estimation, mean IndyCar will never return to the wild 1.5-mile high-banked oval.

“There’s an opening, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we’re not going back, the fact that we’re not there in 2024,” he said. “I think everybody understands we have basically zero flexibility after the Olympics next year, and with NASCAR’s move into the spring there, there really wasn’t an opportunity from TMS’s perspective for us.

“So okay, there’s a great relationship there, and we’ll double back and see what’s possible in the future. I will say, though, I think that market is really important to us, so it’s not something that will be neglected.”

Although the post-season demonstration race in Argentina was not mentioned in IndyCar’s 2024 calendar release, Miles provided another update on the proposed trek to the Termas de Río Hondo road course.

“Not a week goes by, including this week, where we don’t have great ongoing conversations to try to work out the details to race there in the fall of 2024. So it’s not done yet, but we continue to make progress,” he said.

“It’s something we’re very interested in, as are the authorities in Argentina, and hopefully we can get it over the line.”

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