MARKHAM, Ontario — Somebody owes this weekend’s crowd an apology.
Members of the media began to stroll around the streets of Markham throughout Thursday (August 13) afternoon and evening to catch a glimpse of the circuit set to host the NTT IndyCar Series and the Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Markham on Sunday. Immediately, things looked wrong.
Barriers at the hairpin on Enterprise Boulevard, which is supposed to be turn 5, were not yet placed. Workers were still on-site at 8 p.m. ET setting up banners on the grandstands. In a word: disorganization.
Come Friday morning, the situation seemed to have changed shockingly little. The hairpin, being the first sight of track for many walking in from the west, was still unfinished, with many anxious-looking workers scurrying whichever way to get whatever task done. Bless them, but they weren’t fighting a winning battle.
At 9 a.m., the USF2000 field didn’t roll out of the garage for practice as initially planned. As 3 p.m. approached, and the NTT IndyCar Series was slated to set off for its first practice session, there was no optimism about the track, regardless of what you made have seen on X (formerly Twitter). Practice was first put on hold, then moved to 6 p.m.
By 5 p.m., the media center began to clear out as word spread that Friday’s on-track action was dead on arrival. The announcement came at 5:42 p.m.: practice has been rescheduled for 10 a.m. on Saturday, with second practice coming at 2:30 p.m. and qualifying at 6:30 p.m.
This alone is strange enough. When has IndyCar, in any of its iterations, lost a full day due to track integrity?
However, the way this debacle was handled and communicated is equally strange.
Early on, it was being repeated by many that a new street circuit ought to be expected to have issues and that, with some patience, some good racing was on the way. That may be true. A new venue means different contractors placing barriers with different equipment. It means new event staff who may not know who to let on pit road and who to deny access, or how to identify a Race Mode sticker. It means different vendors with different practices and professionalism. Nobody should expect this to unfold seamlessly. But the gap between different and disaster is still very large.
So far, Markham has been more disaster than different.
What’s more concerning is that even if the track is 90% complete at the time of writing, that 90% doesn’t look anywhere near safe enough for IndyCar. Runoff is at an absolute premium, the track itself is about as narrow as the tightest sections of the Nashville street circuit at times, and the tires? Great heavens, the tires!
The tire barriers placed at various points around the circuit could have been put to shame by the stacks of spent rubber sitting behind the local pawn shop. In this regard, the runoff at turn 3, turn 10 and the turn 5 hairpin looked inexcusably underserved, with just two rows of tires ready to stop an out of control car as of midday on Friday.
What exactly went wrong here is hard to say definitively (or responsibly).
According to Bruce Martin, work on the circuit began on July 19, but access to the Unionville GO Station parking lots, which host the split pit lane, was not granted until August 12, or Wednesday of race week. He also posted that the track itself was not facing issues, per se, but that it had yet to be finalized, which had been race officials’ focus in the lead up to Friday’s scenes.
Hard to certify an unfinished racetrack.
As the hours rolled on and the situation became more overtly difficult, blame was directed quickly and precisely.
“Once the race promoter has completed the track build and INDYCAR deems the circuit safe and appropriate for competition, the first on-track session of the weekend will begin,” said the IndyCar X account.
“Practice 1 for the Ontario Honda Dealers Indy at Markham has been postponed until Saturday at 10 AM ET as the race promoter completes final track preparations,” a subsequent announcement reads.
Then an official press release and quote from INDYCAR President J. Douglas Boles drove the point home.
“INDYCAR is incredibly disappointed that our promoter was not able to complete the track build on time, despite significant support from our team on site,” Boles said. “Ontario has always been a magnificent market for our sport and the number of spectators that attended today is a shining example of that. New events can always pose logistical challenges and we join in the frustration of our loyal fans and apologize.
“Once we hit the track, we believe the circuit will be spectacular. We would like to thank the city of Markham for the major support it has made to provide INDYCAR a layout, which is fast, technical and will put on a terrific show on Sunday.”
Notice the pattern here? These are unusually pointed remarks, even considering the lunacy of the situation. INDYCAR has gone out of its way, three times, to highlight that the event promoter bears responsibility for the state of affairs we find the track in.
Now, Green Savoree Racing Promotions has never had an outstanding reputation among the community at large.
The company purchased Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in 2011 and the facility would fit in perfectly in the year 1972, with accessibility, basic amenities like pedestrian bridges and lavatory facilities all severely lacking at the circuit. Attendance in Portland, also promoted by Green Savoree, was visibly weak last week. Green Savoree also promotes the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, perhaps the most functional of the three races listed here.
And then there’s the Ontario race, the fourth in Green Savoree’s dossier, which had been hosted in downtown Toronto at Exhibition Place from 1986-2007 and then from 2009-2025. As concerns over adjustments needed for the Toronto-based events of the 2026 FIFA World Cup grew larger, the Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto was announced in July 2025 to be moving to Markham as part of a five-year deal. Notably, the race also received a new date, set weeks after the end of the World Cup, raising the question of why the race needed to move out of Exhibition Place at all?
Regardless, Exhibition Place was designed to and has proven capable of absorbing large events like an IndyCar race. Markham, for better or worse, has proven no such ability, as road and sidewalk closures have disrupted commuter infrastructure and even local access to public transit. Specifically, Unionville GO Station, which operates service to Union Station in downtown Toronto, is not directly accessible by car or bus during the race. Further, there is no step-free access during the event, forcing commuters to trek up multiple flights of stairs to reach what may be their only form of transit into Toronto proper. Certainly, cutting off parking-lot access to the station any sooner than August 12, as mentioned above, would have been even more controversial than the race already was.
In a sentence, the track has been majorly disruptive.
Residents on Reddit’s r/Markham, for what that’s worth, are no happier.
“Feels like the whole event was thrown together in a day,” says one.
“I took a vacation day for this and got rinsed $80 on lunch. I paid to sit in the sun for 5 hours doing nothing. Amazing,” echoed another.
“Who paid for this disaster?” asks a third.
“Stupidest decision by the city. Right in the middle of a commuter hub.”
“Literally no Markham residents asked for this.”
So, pivot for a moment and consider the look of this, on the slightest chance it’s not obvious. How many people got their first exposure to IndyCar when they walked through downtown Markham on August 14, 2026? How many people clenched their teeth through a major disruption to their commute and rode it out to get to Friday and spend a day at the races, just to find out that the track, in some form, wasn’t entirely there? How much good will has been burnt up, regardless of whose fault it is, by this inexcusable ball drop?
The answer is likely a lot.
And perhaps the worst part? The event’s own press release, posted on X, does not feature the words: regret, apologize or sorry.
Saturday will come regardless, and odds are racing will go ahead on Sunday, and the track may prove a smash hit with drivers and fans alike. Either way, IndyCar is now batting from behind in the count, looking to put on a good show for fans who have already lost a full day of track access and have had to trek around a poorly managed and defined racetrack that has quickly proven too much for its city promoters to handle.
This wouldn’t have happened in Exhibition Place.
Alex is the IndyCar Content Director at Frontstretch, having initially joined as an entry-level contributor in 2021. He also serves as Managing Director of The Asia Cable, a publication focused on the international affairs and politics of the Asia-Pacific region which he co-founded in 2023. With previous experience in China, Japan and Poland, Alex is particularly passionate about the international realm of motorsport and the politics that make the wheels turn - literally - behind the scenes.
The US flag will be flown at half staff for a period of 30 days due to the sudden death of Indy Car. This has been reported to be the darkest day ever in US history and possibly the world. There simply are not enough grief counselors available to console the 100M to200M Indy Car fans in the US and potentially 5B billion worldwide.