“(It’s) going to be interesting because there’s no previous data for us on this new track,” notes Andretti Autosport’s Colton Herta.

Throw in the unforgiving walls that wrap around the track and it’s going to take a zero-mistake weekend to have even a chance of challenging for the pole or for the win in Sunday’s 100-lap, 164.5-mile race. And for the teams and drivers of the Ind圜ar Series, no matter how many miles they’ve run in the simulator, it’s a journey into the unknown.īased on the city’s street grid, the track has its fair share of 90-degree bends, but a long, near-200mph blast on Jefferson Avenue’s back straight followed by massively heavy braking into Turn 3’s double-90 “hairpin” and prime passing spot means setup will be a compromise and a puzzle that teams will have only two sessions and 150 minutes to unlock before diving into Saturday afternoon’s qualifying session. It’s a return to some of the same city streets that hosted Formula 1 from 1982 to ’88 and CART from ’89 to ’91, with some familiar challenges and a few new twists. After the 220mph-plus, momentum-is-everything challenge of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the NTT Ind圜ar Series is back to stamping on the brakes, arm-wrestling the steering wheel, and mashing the throttle for a full-on street fight at the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix.īut after 16 years on Belle Isle’s parkland roads, it’s all change and all new as the brawl heads west a couple miles to downtown Motown and a 1.645-mile, nine-turn track that wraps around the Detroit skyline-defining GM Renaissance Center and skirts the Detroit River.

Where: Streets of downtown Detroit, Mich. What: Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix / Race 7 of the 2023 NTT Ind圜ar Series

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