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Jimmie Johnson: IndyCar race on Brickyard weekend 'an awesome opportunity' to try the open-wheel series

Could the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s month of May postponement mean that Jimmie Johnson will run both the Cup Series and IndyCar Series races at the famed track in July?

The coronavirus pandemic caused IMS to push the Indianapolis 500 from May 24 to Aug. 23. As part of that shift, the track also moved the May 9 Indianapolis Grand Prix on the track’s road course to July 4, a day before the Brickyard 400. With Johnson in town to run the Cup Series race that weekend, it’d be a great chance for him to officially try an IndyCar race.

“I think that would be an awesome opportunity,” Johnson told NBC Sports. “Clearly a lot of things to sort out, and I haven’t even asked permission yet to pull it off. But I love the idea and am thankful Graham [Rahal] brought it up because I would have probably missed it and reacted too late.”

When the road course race was moved on Thursday, Rahal made sure that Johnson realized there was a chance to race two races in one weekend.

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Johnson is retiring from the Cup Series at the end of the season and has made his desire to try an IndyCar road course race well-known. He was at Circuit of the Americas for the series’ preseason testing in February and was scheduled to test an IndyCar at Barber Motorsports Park on April 6.

With all racing activities on hiatus because of the pandemic, Johnson is having to branch out a bit. After running in Sunday’s NASCAR iRacing race, he’s going to take part in IndyCar’s iRacing race on Saturday. The IndyCar race begins at 4 p.m. ET and will be streamed on IndyCar’s website.

Hopefully that race goes a little bit better than Johnson’s NASCAR race at Homestead did. He started last for that iRacing event and triggered a big crash that took out many of the race’s lead cars.

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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports

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