More Controversy Surrounding an IndyCar City Race — A Colombian mayor announces a race starting in 2028, which the series claims to know nothing about
The dust from the success of the street race in Washington, D.C. hasn’t even settled yet, and the IndyCar Series is already back in the realm of rumored races that may not materialize in the end. Alejandro Char, mayor of Barranquilla, announced in Colombian media that a race will be held in his city starting in 2028. IndyCar, however, is playing it down.
According to a report by Revista Semana, Char announced during the presentation of an infrastructure project along the Rio Magdalena River that an agreement is in place for a race in the metropolis in April 2028. The track is set to run along the Gran Malecón waterfront promenade.
Char calls this a milestone for the region and emphasizes that it would mark the first time since São Paulo in 2013 that the series would race outside North America. The redevelopment of the former industrial area along the waterfront is intended to position the city as a destination for international tourism and major events.
However, IndyCar Series officials immediately tempered expectations, stating that reports of a finalized contract are entirely premature.
They receive regular inquiries about international events and, while they have met with representatives from Barranquilla in Indianapolis, they have not yet visited the city itself. They are only at the beginning of a thorough review and are still a long way from reaching an agreement.
Recurring Controversy Over City Races
Since its reunification in 2008, IndyCar has had a long, involuntary tradition of street races that failed to take root on the calendar. The fact that the track in Markham wasn’t even finished on the first day is one of the more harmless stories.
The current situation is strikingly reminiscent of a failed race in Rio de Janeiro. Here, too, the mayor announced a race in November 2018 that never took place.
Previously, in 2015, the IndyCar Series was scheduled to race in the Brazilian capital, Brasília. The race was planned as the season opener, was firmly on the calendar, and tickets had already been sold before the race was canceled with just six weeks’ notice.
The IndyCar Series also had no luck in 2012 with a street circuit race in Qingdao, China. The race around the Olympic Sailing Center was also on the IndyCar calendar but had to be canceled once the season was already underway.
That same year, Michael Andretti tried to capitalize on Ryan Hunter-Reay’s championship title by organizing a street race in Hunter-Reay’s hometown of Fort Lauderdale. Those plans fell through because financing could not be secured.
The most spectacular cancellation—and probably the biggest IndyCar scandal of recent times—was the 2016 Boston Grand Prix, in which the promoter embezzled funds that had been collected. IndyCar was unwittingly drawn into a criminal network. The cancellation of the race led to six years of legal fallout.
The series invested about one million dollars of its own money to compensate defrauded fans, who nevertheless had to sue for financial losses—as did other investors who had put money into the race. John F. Casey, the chief financial officer who embezzled the funds, was sentenced to four years in prison in 2022 for fraud, identity theft, money laundering, and tax evasion.