Disappearing act

 Maybe it's just the sport that makes people dumb. Sure seems so.

Maybe even smart people like Roger Penske, and all the smart people around him, get infected with Dumbness Disease when they take the reins of IndyCar. What else could explain the fact I couldn't find the IndyCar race anywhere yesterday?

This was not a programming thing, understand. It was because there wasn't an IndyCar race.

There hasn't been one, in fact, since Fourth of July weekend, when the snakebitten Josef Newgarden finally broke through at Mid-Ohio. And there won't be another one until -- let's see -- August 8.

August 8??

So, IndyCar basically goes dark for over a month in the very heart of the motorsports season?

What's the deal here, guys?

The official explanation is IndyCar is an NBC property and the Olympics are also an NBC property, which means for two weeks it'll be all Olympics, all the time. And IndyCar did have a race scheduled July 11 in Toronto, but that got wiped out by the Bastard Plague.

Still, going away for more than a month? Especially now?

A racing series in desperate need of buzz was, after all, finally getting some. There was Helio Castroneves' dramatic fourth win in the Indianapolis 500 in May, a bit of outrageous good fortune that actually produced a blip on the sporting landscape's radar. And the emergence of an exciting crop of young talent -- Pato O'Ward, Colton Herta, Alex Palou, Rinus VeeKay chief among them -- has given IndyCar a bump it hasn't experienced in years.

Eight different drivers have won the 10 races so far this season, the four drivers above among them. Fully half the field or more is a legitimate threat to win every time it comes to the green. The sport has rarely been as competitive as it is right now.

So, you know, this was not the time to vanish like old smoke. 

The Blob has frequently observed that IndyCar's biggest obstacle is IndyCar, because it can't seem to get out of its own way. That observation remains distressingly relevant.