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Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg Returns March 5-7, 2027 to Open the INDYCAR Season

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The NTT INDYCAR SERIES will open its 2027 season where it has so often started — on the waterfront streets of downtown St. Petersburg. The 23rd annual Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg is set for March 5-7, 2027, Green Savoree Racing Promotions has confirmed, with the Grand Prix headlining the Sunday schedule.

It will be the 17th time the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg has opened the INDYCAR season, placing the city at the center of the sport’s opening-weekend spotlight. The race runs on a temporary 1.8-mile, 14-turn street circuit that winds around Pioneer Park, the Duke Energy Center for the Arts and The Dalí Museum before extending onto the runway at Albert Whitted Airport, bordering Tampa Bay and the St. Petersburg Harbor and Marina. The Grand Prix airs live on FOX on March 7.

Saturday brings a second headliner. The NASCAR Truck Series returns to the St. Petersburg street circuit on March 6 for the second straight year, after making history in 2026 with the first NASCAR national-series race ever held on a street course — a debut won by Layne Riggs in the OnlyBulls Green Flag 150. The series races under its new name in 2027, the NASCAR FedEx Freight Truck Series, following the entitlement partnership NASCAR announced in September. The weekend’s additional support races are still to be announced.

The 2026 edition set the bar. Four-time INDYCAR champion Alex Palou won the Grand Prix for the second consecutive year on March 1, and promoter Kim Green, co-owner, chairman and CEO of Green Savoree Racing Promotions, called it the event’s best yet, with tremendous spectator attendance on all three days.

“The combination of world-class racing, the waterfront setting and the incredible support from our fans creates an atmosphere unlike any other race on the calendar,” Green said as the 2027 ticket renewal window opened this fall.

Three-day tickets for the 2027 weekend went on public sale October 23 at gpstpete.com, with reserved grandstand seats starting at $150 and three-day general admission starting at $95. Single-day tickets go on sale in the new year, and the complete weekend racing and festival schedule will be announced at a later date.

The Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg is owned and operated by Green Savoree St. Petersburg, LLC. We Speak Media will have continuing coverage as the March weekend approaches.

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Championship Weekend Comes Home: After Seven Years Away, NASCAR’s Titles Return to Homestead

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October 27, 2026

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HOMESTEAD, Fla. — For 18 straight years, NASCAR’s season ended under the South Florida sun. From 2002 through 2019, every Cup Series champion was crowned at Homestead-Miami Speedway, on a 1.5-mile oval where the fastest line runs inches from the wall and the palm trees sway over the backstretch. Then the finale moved away. This year, it comes home.

NASCAR Championship Weekend runs Nov. 6–8, 2026, at Homestead-Miami Speedway, and for the first time since 2019 all three national series will settle their championships on the same South Florida weekend. The sport made it official back in May 2025, announcing that Homestead would host the finale as part of a new rotating model — championship weekend will move among tracks year to year, with Homestead first up and Phoenix Raceway, the finale’s home since 2020, staying in the rotation.

“It’s the place to be,” Homestead-Miami Speedway president Guillermo Santa Cruz said when the return was announced. “South Florida is the best place in America to host events — we have the weather, the people, the culture and the excitement.”

A weekend built in threes

The weekend stacks one championship per day. It opens Friday night, Nov. 6, when the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series runs its title race at 7:30 p.m. ET on FS1 — 134 laps, 201 miles. Trucks get the weekend started early, with practice on Thursday evening and qualifying Friday afternoon.

Saturday, Nov. 7, belongs to the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series — the circuit formerly known as the Xfinity Series, renamed for 2026. Its championship race goes off at 5 p.m. ET on The CW, 200 laps and 300 miles, with qualifying earlier in the day. When the checkered flag falls, the track keeps the party going with a post-race concert by Orlando Mendez from 8 to 9:30 p.m.

Sunday, Nov. 8, is the main event: the NASCAR Cup Series Championship, 267 laps and 400.5 miles, live on NBC at 3 p.m. ET. Before the green flag, a pre-race concert takes over the frontstretch at 1 p.m. — the speedway has announced Miami’s own Jason Derulo will headline it — and when the race ends, fans can reach the frontstretch through the crossover gates for the championship celebration.

The Chase changes everything

This is not the championship format Homestead fans remember. Gone is the elimination playoff that produced a winner-take-all Championship 4. In its place, NASCAR brought back The Chase for 2026 — in all three series.

Here is how it works in the Cup Series: the top 16 drivers in points after the 26-race regular season make the Chase. There is no more “win and you’re in” — a victory no longer locks anyone into the postseason. The 16 are seeded by their regular-season points, with the regular-season champion starting at 2,100 points, and they run 10 races with no eliminations, no rounds and no resets. A race win is worth 55 points, stage points still count, and when the last lap ends at Homestead on Nov. 8, the driver with the most points is the champion. Simple as that.

The other two series run the same playbook on a smaller scale: 12 drivers over nine races in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, and 10 drivers over seven races in the Truck Series. All three titles come down to who has been best, most consistently, over the full stretch run — and all three will be decided at Homestead.

With two races left — Martinsville on Nov. 1, then Homestead — Kyle Larson leads the Cup Series Chase after winning at Talladega on Oct. 25, and the field behind him is fighting to keep his run from turning into a coronation. Larson knows this track as well as anyone in the field: he won the Cup races at Homestead in 2022 and again in March 2025. Nothing is decided yet. Under The Chase, every position at Martinsville and every lap at Homestead carries championship weight — there is no scenario where Nov. 8 is a formality.

A track that demands everything

Homestead-Miami Speedway opened in 1995, part of South Florida’s rebuild after Hurricane Andrew, and it has been making champions uncomfortable ever since. The 1.5-mile asphalt oval carries variable banking — 18 to 20 degrees through the turns — that lets drivers search for grip from the apron to the wall. The signature Homestead move is running the top lane, throttle down, with the right side of the car kissing the barrier. It is how Tyler Reddick won here in 2024, and it is how titles were won here for nearly two decades: Jimmie Johnson sealed his record-tying seventh championship at Homestead in 2016, and Kyle Busch (2015, 2019), Brad Keselowski (2012) and Joey Logano (2018) all lifted the Cup at this track.

The grandstands hold 55,000, the Fan Zone opens every race day and stays open until the checkered flag, and the campgrounds fill up early — camper load-in starts Thursday alongside the first practice session. The weekend also has a hometown artistic stamp: Miami pop artist Romero Britto, announced as the weekend’s honorary creative director, designed a special trophy for the winner’s Victory Lane celebration and painted a mural on the speedway tower.

The practical details: tickets, hospitality packages and camping are on sale now through homesteadmiamispeedway.com or by calling 866-409-7223. If you are watching from home, it is FS1 on Friday night, The CW on Saturday, and NBC for the Cup finale on Sunday at 3 p.m. ET.

Seven years ago, Homestead-Miami Speedway stopped being where NASCAR seasons end. On Nov. 8, with three champions crowned in three days and a Chase that rewards the best driver over the long haul, it becomes that place again.

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