Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers may be despatched to mailbag@racer.com. We love listening to your feedback and opinions, however letters that embody a query usually tend to be revealed. Questions acquired after 3pm ET every Monday shall be saved for the next week.
Q: A 17-race IndyCar schedule is manner too brief, which for my part is the explanation for the dip in viewership. They should cease make these excuses that the Masters and NCAA Event goes to harm viewership. It’s what it’s, the collection is in competitors with the United Soccer League, Main League Soccer, the NBA and the NHL. Simply expanded to 22 races by including Homestead, New Orleans and Richmond and hold Thermal. Having races each weekend will add extra viewers for the collection. Having these three week breaks within the schedule hurts the collection.
Alistair, Springfield, MO
MARSHALL PRUETT: I don’t see the citing of The Masters or different huge rival occasions as excuses. If an unbiased movie debuts on the identical weekend as a brand new Star Wars film, there’s a 100-percent likelihood it will get missed and its ticket gross sales will endure. Why wouldn’t the identical impact occur right here?
With out competitors, IndyCar tends to generate stable TV audiences. Pitted in opposition to sports activities which are extra well-liked? IndyCar falls to second or third on the record, if not fourth or fifth.
Its viewers dimension displays its present rating amongst main sports activities, which is a mile behind something involving a bat, ball, or membership, and at the very least a half-mile behind NASCAR and F1. To cite Juan Pablo Montoya, “It’s what it’s.” I’ve lived in instances the place the alternative was true and IndyCar was the large canine, and I’m among the many many who pray for its return to that exalted place.
I really like the concept of extra races being the reply to larger TV audiences, if these further occasions fall on weekends the place IndyCar has the printed window to itself. But when it’s bought huge competitors from one or two sports activities which have extra followers, logic says these people will go to what they like earlier than testing IndyCar.
Extra of one thing doesn’t mechanically equate to higher reputation. MLB groups play 162 video games per 12 months, and most wrestle to fill two-thirds of their stadiums and document TV rankings that suck.
Right here’s what Sunday’s FOX viewers of 552,000 viewers tells us: All of IndyCar’s diehards tuned in on huge FOX, and that’s about it. Final 12 months, buried on NBC’s USA cable channel, Lengthy Seashore produced 307,348, which was dismal. Within the swap from a cable channel that no person related because the place to look at IndyCar, to a large community house in a featured slot, Lengthy Seashore went from 300k to 550k. It’s practically double, in order that’s clearly a very good factor, however it’s nonetheless a tiny quantity. Particularly for the race that’s rightly hailed because the second largest on the IndyCar calendar after the Indy 500.
Regardless of the competitors from golf on CBS, I might have anticipated IndyCar on FOX at Lengthy Seashore to draw greater than 550k. It’s disappointing, at the very least to me, and in addition acts as a reminder that regardless of how a lot we love IndyCar, an enormous effort lies forward for the collection and for FOX to convey it out of the shadows. That is an unwelcome actuality verify, however it’s certainly what it’s.
Q: I simply learn the information merchandise saying that Hy-Vee will not sponsor the Iowa doubleheader. Have you learnt why Hy-Vee pulled out? It went from sponsoring a automotive and the doubleheader to getting out of IndyCar utterly. Do you suppose it is a harbinger of tough instances for IndyCar and groups discovering sponsors?
Peter, Indianapolis, IN
MP: This alteration occurred final 12 months, so I wouldn’t take the information of Sukup (Sue-cup) Manufacturing being signed simply now as an indication of something significant in April of 2025. Hy-Vee underwent a CEO change, with Randy Edeker, an enormous IndyCar fan who drove the offers with RLL and the collection at Iowa, stepping down. A failure to resume the contracts after their completion in 2024 was not a shock, since CEO adjustments usually end in sponsorships going away.
Hy-Vee stated Bye-Vee, however Iowa will nonetheless be superior. Travis Hinkle/IMS Photograph
Q: The speak about tariffs made me keep in mind Swift. Again when IndyCar was selecting a brand new automotive, Swift was making Formulation Nippon automobiles (now often known as Tremendous Formulation). What are they doing these days?
That automotive was good, it raced nicely and sounded nice. I keep in mind Swift’s IndyCar mission was stunning. I all the time questioned why Japan had an American firm making its automobiles, however IndyCar couldn’t go along with Swift to make theirs.
Additionally now with this discuss in F1 concerning the V10 (which seems to be like will end in a V8), possibly IndyCar might swap to a V8. Ask Honda and Toyota in the event that they nonetheless have these engines round. They sounded higher than the IndyCar V8 from these years.
This looks as if a really sophisticated second to resolve engine guidelines, isn’t it? A lot uncertainty.
William Mazeo
MP: Made in San Clemente, Calif. I grew up working Swift’s NorCal distributor and constructed/prepped/ran numerous Swifts. Of all of the marques, it’s the closest to my coronary heart, and I’d price the longtail Swift DB-1 as probably the most stunning race automobiles made.
V10s could be a play for leisure alone since there’s zero road-car relevance on the cut-off date. Similar with V8s as a mandated formulation. But when a collection lacks auto producers, there’s no purpose to not go along with one thing loud, screaming, and entertaining. I really feel for Penske Leisure on this entrance. We all know hybridization is genuinely vital to a variety of producers as we speak. However will it maintain the identical significance in three to 5 years?
Q: Not surprisingly, push-to-pass was usually talked about in the course of the Lengthy Seashore broadcast. I swear the FOX guys by no means even talked about the hybrid. Is the saved electrical power not self-deployed on demand to help with overtaking and protection?
Shawn, MD
MP: The power restoration system can harvest mechanically, if that possibility is enabled previous to no matter session, however just isn’t allowed to deploy mechanically. That’s the only real accountability of every driver.
And sure, if I’m an auto producer in IndyCar and compete with hybrid engines to showcase or promote hybrid road-car expertise, I’m furious.
I rewatched the race Monday night time and don’t recall a single point out of the ERS being accessible as a push-to-pass device. Heard tons concerning the turbo P2P and who had nevertheless a lot time left to make use of, however it’s as if the opposite, newer P2P is invisible. I did observe, nevertheless, that within the Acura industrial I noticed in the course of the race, it used its hybrid IMSA GTP automotive within the advert.
