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 embrace a query usually tend to be printed. Questions acquired after 3pm ET every Monday will probably be saved for the next week.
Q: A 17-race IndyCar schedule is manner 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 Match 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 impartial movie debuts on the identical weekend as a brand new Star Wars film, there’s a 100-percent probability it will get neglected 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 might be extra common? IndyCar falls to second or third on the record, 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 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 large canine, and I’m among the many many who pray for its return to that exalted place.
I like the thought of extra races being the reply to greater TV audiences, if these additional occasions fall on weekends the place IndyCar has the printed window to itself. But when it’s obtained 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 12 months, and most battle to fill two-thirds of their stadiums and report 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 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 change from a cable channel that no one related because the place to observe IndyCar, to a large community dwelling 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 greatest on the IndyCar calendar after the Indy 500.
Regardless of the competitors from golf on CBS, I’d have anticipated IndyCar on FOX at Lengthy Seashore to draw greater than 550k. It’s disappointing, at the least to me, and likewise acts as a reminder that irrespective of how a lot we love IndyCar, a large effort lies forward for the collection 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 no longer sponsor the Iowa doubleheader. Have you learnt why Hy-Vee pulled out? It went from sponsoring a automobile and the doubleheader to getting out of IndyCar fully. 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 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 mentioned 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 automobile, Swift was making Components Nippon vehicles (now referred to as Tremendous Components). What are they doing these days?
That automobile was good, it raced nicely and sounded nice. I keep in mind Swift’s IndyCar venture was lovely. I at all times questioned why Japan had an American firm making its vehicles, however IndyCar couldn’t go along with Swift to make theirs.
Additionally now with this discuss in F1 in regards to 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 price the longtail Swift DB-1 as some of the lovely race vehicles made.
V10s can be a play for leisure alone since there’s zero road-car relevance on the time limit. Similar with V8s as a mandated method. But when a collection lacks auto producers, there’s no motive 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 immediately. However will it maintain the identical significance in three to 5 years?
Q: Not surprisingly, push-to-pass was usually 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 routinely, if that choice is enabled previous to no matter session, however isn’t 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 evening and don’t recall a single point out of the ERS being obtainable as a push-to-pass software. Heard tons in regards to the turbo P2P and who had nonetheless a lot time left to make use of, however it’s as if the opposite, newer P2P is invisible. I did be aware, nonetheless, that within the Acura industrial I noticed throughout the race, it used its hybrid IMSA GTP automobile within the advert.
