The IndyCar Paddock Hopes A Dull Formula 1 Season Will Be Their Gain

The NTT IndyCar Series gets back underway on Sunday with the St. Petersburg Grand Prix. Reigning Indianapolis 500 champ Josef Newgarden will start on pole for a race that the series hopes will be every bit as exciting as Saturday's Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

If you watched that race — another dominant Max Verstappen performance — then you'll know that shouldn't be too hard.

I don't know that too many people look at Formula 1 and IndyCar as direct competitors. Not for attention, and not for talent. They're two separate series that you can enjoy without having to pick one or the other.

 Sure they've got a lot in common as far as being open-wheel series that hold their signature races — the Indianapolis 500 and the Monaco Grand Prix — on the same day, but some major differences contrast IndyCar from F1.

One of the biggest —which figures in the IndyCar paddock hope fans pick up on — is the more exciting racing compared to what you get from F1.

"The racing is terrible. It’s terrible," Chip Ganassi Racing owner Chip Ganassi told The Associated Press. "They’ve got nothing else to talk about but Christian Horner, OK?"

Another Dull F1 Race Proves Ganassi's Point

He's not wrong. On Saturday, Red Bull's Max Verstappen practically had his second win of the season and ninth straight dating back to last season in the bag by Turn 3 and certainly by the end of the first lap.

This meant that the two biggest storylines of the race were that Ferrari rookie Ollie Bearman finished P7 and that Haas' Kevin Magnussen — who was carrying a 20-second time penalty — held up cars behind him so that his teammate Nico Hulkenberg could finish in P10 and steal a single point.

If you're a racing fan, the storylines are there… they're just not particularly thrilling.

Even Zak Brown, the CEO of McLaren — which fields teams in both IndyCar and F1 — noted that if you want to NOT know who is going to win going into every race weekend, then check out IndyCar.

"IndyCar is the most competitive racing where there are more drivers who can win a race on any race weekend," he said.

Expect to see more comments like this from the world of IndyCar throughout the year. There's no doubt that they have a good product, and there's a push to take the sport to the next level by bringing in that element of spectacle that F1 leans on to make up for uncompetitive races.

Furthermore, IndyCar is in the final year of its current TV deal with NBC/Universal. So, drawing in more viewers with the promise of races that could be won by just about anyone on the grid will help give them leverage as they work their next deal.