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 might be saved for the next week.
Q: A 17-race IndyCar schedule is approach too brief, 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 preserve 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 large 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 probability 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 strong TV audiences. Pitted in opposition to sports activities which are extra in style? IndyCar falls to second or third on the listing, 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 occasions the place the alternative was true and IndyCar was the massive 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 larger TV audiences, if these further occasions fall on weekends the place IndyCar has the published window to itself. But when it’s acquired large 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 robotically equate to larger reputation. MLB groups play 162 video games per 12 months, and most battle to fill two-thirds of their stadiums and document TV rankings that suck.
Right here’s what Sunday’s FOX audience of 552,000 viewers tells us: All of IndyCar’s diehards tuned in on large 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 change from a cable channel that no one related because the place to look at IndyCar, to an enormous community house in a featured slot, Lengthy Seashore went from 300k to 550k. It’s almost double, in order that’s clearly a great factor, but it surely’s nonetheless a tiny quantity. Particularly for the race that’s rightly hailed because the second greatest 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 likewise acts as a reminder that regardless of how a lot we love IndyCar, an enormous effort lies forward for the sequence 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 no longer 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 it is a harbinger of tough occasions for IndyCar and groups discovering sponsors?
Peter, Indianapolis, IN
MP: This modification 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 sequence at Iowa, stepping down. A failure to resume the contracts after their completion in 2024 was not a shock, since CEO adjustments typically end in sponsorships going away.
Hy-Vee mentioned Bye-Vee, however Iowa will nonetheless be superior. Travis Hinkle/IMS Picture
Q: The discuss tariffs made me bear in mind Swift. Again when IndyCar was selecting a brand new automobile, Swift was making Components Nippon automobiles (now generally known as Tremendous Components). What are they doing these days?
That automobile was good, it raced nicely and sounded nice. I bear in mind Swift’s IndyCar challenge 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 speak in F1 concerning the V10 (which seems like will end in a V8), possibly IndyCar may change 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 fee the longtail Swift DB-1 as some of the stunning 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 system. But when a sequence lacks auto producers, there’s no cause 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 essential to plenty of producers right this moment. However will it maintain the identical significance in three to 5 years?
Q: Not surprisingly, push-to-pass was typically talked about throughout 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 robotically, if that possibility is enabled previous to no matter session, however is just not allowed to deploy robotically. That’s the only duty 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 evening 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, but it surely’s as if the opposite, newer P2P is invisible. I did be aware, nevertheless, that within the Acura business I noticed throughout the race, it used its hybrid IMSA GTP automobile within the advert.
