Formula One Returning to U.S.

Formula One racing is coming to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It will take a while, though, before anyone knows when the race will be held.

Speedway president Tony George and Bernie Ecclestone, the chief executive of the international circuit, announced Wednesday that they reached an agreement to bring F-1 back to the United States for the first time since 1991.

The race will take place in 2000, but an exact date must still be determined.

“The U.S. Grand Prix will join the Indianapolis 500 and the Brickyard 400 at the world’s most famous speedway, underscoring the words that are chiseled in stone over the entrance of this building--’The racing capital of the world,”’ George said in a news conference at the Hall of Fame Museum in the speedway infield.

Formula One currently has only one event scheduled in North America, the Canadian Grand Prix, scheduled in Montreal on June 13.

“It was proposed that we run two weeks after the Canadian Grand Prix,” George said. “That would definitely be a challenge to change the facility over from the end of May [the Indianapolis 500] to a road race and then turn it back around for an overall race [Brickyard 400] within a span of 65 days.”

George said Formula One will decide the date.

“From a timing standpoint, in the interest of all three events we would like to not have to work with that [time frame]. In the interest of all three of our events, a fall date would work nice,” George said.

George has been talking about bringing the circuit to the famed racing track for most of the decade, and its arrival continues a major break in the tradition of the famed oval, which held only the Indianapolis 500 from 1911 to 1993.

Major renovations, costing millions, will be made at the famed 2 1/2-mile oval before the race is held, and work already has begun on the first reconfiguration at the speedway since it was built in 1909.

The F-1 race will be run on a 13-turn course that, unlike other races at the track, will include both right and left turns. The F-1 cars will race in the opposite direction than the Indy 500 and Brickyard 400.

Seating for the race will be more than 200,000.