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 printed. Questions obtained after 3pm ET every Monday can be saved for the next week.
Q: A 17-race IndyCar schedule is approach too quick, which in my view is the explanation for the dip in viewership. They should cease make these excuses that the Masters and NCAA Match 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 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 ignored and its ticket gross sales will undergo. Why wouldn’t the identical impact occur right here?
With out competitors, IndyCar tends to generate stable TV audiences. Pitted towards sports activities which can be extra widespread? 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 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 other 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 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 received huge 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 routinely equate to better recognition. MLB groups play 162 video games per yr, and most wrestle to fill two-thirds of their stadiums and file TV scores that suck.
Right here’s what Sunday’s FOX audience of 552,000 viewers tells us: All of IndyCar’s diehards tuned in on huge 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 one related because the place to observe IndyCar, to an enormous community residence in a featured slot, Lengthy Seaside went from 300k to 550k. It’s practically double, in order that’s clearly a superb factor, nevertheless it’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 Seaside 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 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 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 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 modifications usually end in sponsorships going away.
Hy-Vee stated Bye-Vee, however Iowa will nonetheless be superior. Travis Hinkle/IMS Photograph
Q: The discuss tariffs made me bear in mind Swift. Again when IndyCar was selecting a brand new automotive, Swift was making System Nippon vehicles (now referred to as Tremendous System). What are they doing these days?
That automotive was good, it raced properly and sounded nice. I bear in mind Swift’s IndyCar undertaking was lovely. I at all times puzzled why Japan had an American firm making its vehicles, however IndyCar couldn’t go together with Swift to make theirs.
Additionally now with this speak in F1 in regards to the V10 (which seems to be like will end in 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 vehicles made.
V10s could be a play for leisure alone since there’s zero road-car relevance on the cut-off date. Identical with V8s as a mandated system. But when a sequence lacks auto producers, there’s no purpose 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 necessary to a whole lot of producers immediately. 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 vitality not self-deployed on demand to help with overtaking and protection?
Shawn, MD
MP: The vitality restoration system can harvest routinely, if that choice is enabled previous to no matter session, however is just not allowed to deploy routinely. 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 know-how, 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 in regards to the turbo P2P and who had nevertheless a lot time left to make use of, nevertheless it’s as if the opposite, newer P2P is invisible. I did observe, nevertheless, that within the Acura business I noticed in the course of the race, it used its hybrid IMSA GTP automotive within the advert.
