IndyCar pleased by ‘healthy’ crowd at Laguna Seca

Last weekend’s Java House Grand Prix of Monterey gave rise to optimism for the future of IndyCar racing at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, where the former CART IndyCar Series served as the famed road course’s biggest annual draw in the 1980s and '90s. It appeared to be the largest crowd to witness an IndyCar Series race at the venue since the championship made its return in 2019.

Like its Bay Area counterpart at Sonoma Raceway, which held IndyCar races through 2018 and suffered through lean ticket sales in its final years, modest interest was registered with the venue shift to Laguna Seca and mild upticks in audience size was the norm during each visit.

But something changed with a noticeable and encouraging rise in attendance on Friday, again on Saturday, and once more on Sunday as a stronger response to the series, mostly with younger fans, were present to see Alex Palou and championship rival Pato O’Ward start side-by-side and race for 95 laps under blue skies.

“It was amazing,” Palou said. “You can see that they've done an amazing job on promoting the race. I think (track GM) Mel (Harder) is doing a great job as well on keeping this track in the best shape as it's ever been. You could feel it. You could feel it on Friday, but you never know if Friday is just because – I don't know, everybody is on vacation and then suddenly they pop up to the track or not. Friday was huge.

“Driver autographs was a lot of people, but today was amazing. It was insane. Yeah, it makes it even more special. It makes you love the event even more. I hope everybody had as much fun as we did.”

At a time when IndyCar has some hard decisions to make on which events to keep, such as Iowa Speedway, which had an alarming downturn in attendance, the turnout for Laguna Seca was a welcome surprise. Although there were plenty of seats left to fill in some grandstands and a number of general admission areas that could use more fans, it was the first time since IndyCar returned where the volume of paying customers justified the series’ ongoing presence at Laguna Seca.

“I've been to every race since we've been back, and I can gauge by just looking around and feeling the energy, and it was a good weekend,” IndyCar president Doug Boles told RACER. “The other way I gauge things is on merch sales, and our merch sales were up. It was really significantly up, which is great, and which is an indicator, obviously, that the attendance is up.”

In an interview on Saturday, Harder, who was recently appointed to lead the facility by the Friends of Laguna Seca organization which runs the property on behalf of Monterey County, spoke to a rise in ticket sales prior to the race which was said to be up 20 percent over 2024.

Investments made by the Friends’ group comprised of local business owners and racers – which includes Ross Merrill, Bruce Canepa, Jonathan Feiber, Gordon McCall, Ned Spieker and Jason Retterer – in facility upgrades, infrastructure improvements, beautification and promotions all appear to have drawn more customers to the IndyCar event.

“I do think Bruce and Mel and the team there did a great did a great job of really trying to build some excitement and get the event going and we're all really excited about the future there,” noted Boles, who spent Friday and Saturday at Laguna Seca before flying back to Indianapolis Saturday night on a red-eye for the Brickyard 400. “I think it was a fantastic event. It's one of those places where it's a historic racetrack in North America and it's one we love to go to. And, yeah, it felt great. I watched the whole thing from the Speedway in the middle of a Brickyard race and from TV, it looked good.

“Even the fan midway, I walked around through all that and it's just a lot of fun activation in there. They did a really nice job. Anecdotally, it was fun to run into a lot of fans who'd never been before and said it had been on a bucket list. When you start hearing those stories, those tell you that things are going in the right direction at a venue.”