Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers will be despatched to mailbag@racer.com. We love listening to your feedback and opinions, however letters that embrace 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 method too quick, which for my part is the rationale 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 sequence 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 maintain Thermal. Having races each weekend will add extra viewers for the sequence. Having these three week breaks within the schedule hurts the sequence.
Alistair, Springfield, MO
MARSHALL PRUETT: I don’t see the citing of The Masters or different massive rival occasions as excuses. If an impartial movie debuts on the identical weekend as a brand new Star Wars film, there’s a 100-percent probability it will get ignored and its ticket gross sales will undergo. Why wouldn’t the identical impact occur right here?
With out competitors, IndyCar tends to generate strong TV audiences. Pitted in opposition to sports activities which might be extra common? IndyCar falls to second or third on the listing, if not fourth or fifth.
Its viewers measurement displays its present rating amongst main sports activities, which is a mile behind something involving a bat, ball, or membership, and no less than 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 other 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 thought of extra races being the reply to greater TV audiences, if these further occasions fall on weekends the place IndyCar has the published window to itself. But when it’s acquired massive competitors from one or two sports activities which have extra followers, logic says these people will go to what they like earlier than trying out IndyCar.
Extra of one thing doesn’t mechanically equate to higher reputation. MLB groups play 162 video games per yr, and most wrestle to fill two-thirds of their stadiums and document TV scores that suck.
Right here’s what Sunday’s FOX viewers of 552,000 viewers tells us: All of IndyCar’s diehards tuned in on massive FOX, and that’s about it. Final yr, buried on NBC’s USA cable channel, Lengthy Seaside 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 Seaside went from 300k to 550k. It’s almost double, in order that’s clearly an excellent 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 Seaside to draw greater than 550k. It’s disappointing, no less than to me, and likewise acts as a reminder that irrespective of how a lot we love IndyCar, an enormous effort lies forward for the sequence and for FOX to deliver it out of the shadows. That is an unwelcome actuality test, however it’s certainly what it’s.
Q: I simply learn the information merchandise saying that Hy-Vee will now not sponsor the Iowa doubleheader. Are you aware why Hy-Vee pulled out? It went from sponsoring a automobile and the doubleheader to getting out of IndyCar utterly. Do you suppose this can be a harbinger of tough instances for IndyCar and groups discovering sponsors?
Peter, Indianapolis, IN
MP: This variation occurred final yr, 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 sequence at Iowa, stepping down. A failure to resume the contracts after their completion in 2024 was not a shock, since CEO adjustments usually lead to 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 bear in mind Swift. Again when IndyCar was selecting a brand new automobile, Swift was making Formulation Nippon automobiles (now generally known as Tremendous Formulation). What are they doing these days?
That automobile was good, it raced properly and sounded nice. I bear in mind Swift’s IndyCar venture was lovely. I at all times questioned why Japan had an American firm making its automobiles, however IndyCar couldn’t go together with Swift to make theirs.
Additionally now with this discuss in F1 concerning the V10 (which appears like will lead to a V8), perhaps 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 like a really difficult 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 one of the crucial lovely race automobiles made.
V10s can be a play for leisure alone since there’s zero road-car relevance on the time limit. Identical with V8s as a mandated method. But when a sequence lacks auto producers, there’s no motive to not go together 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 whole lot of producers at present. 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 Seaside 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 is just not allowed to deploy mechanically. That’s the only 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 software. 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 automobile within the advert.
