Grand Prix of St. Petersburg
The Indy Car Series makes its one visit to Florida each year in the streets of St. Petersburg in March to kick off their season.
The event, sponsored by Firestone, is the perfect alternative to a day at the parks.
Indy Cars are the open wheeled cars that fly around oval tracks at well over 220 MPH, but sometimes these cars also run on a road course on the streets of various cities around the world and St Pete is one of them.
Fast Course
The course is down near the Gulf of Mexico which makes for both, a very fast course and a very beautiful one as well.
The downtown course runs near Tropicana Field, the home of the Major League Baseball's Rays and around Al Lang Stadium, the spring training home of many major league teams over the years.
The 110-lap race covers almost 200 miles as each races competes to win the Verizon IndyCar Series' season opening event.
How many times do the big leaguers perform on the same fields you play your rec league softball or pickup basketball games?
Never, but at the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, they drive the same streets as you.
That’s a pretty cool thing.
Racing
Racing in this part of the world is dominated by the gold ol’ boys of NASCAR.
NASCAR is great, but sometimes it is nice to do something you are not used to and an old fashion road race on steroids is the answer.
Drivers are fielded from around the world, so if you're from outside of the US you want want to pack a flag to fly in case one of your compatriots is part of the action.
Watching the stars that run the Indy 500 every Memorial Day race in the streets is definitely something out of the ordinary.
So if you are visiting Florida in March, and you are not necessarily a big fan of motorcycles, then head to the west coast to watch the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.
