Bill Abel and his Abel Motorsports team will not take part in the Indianapolis 500, which solidifies the field at 34 cars.
Abel told RACER on Sunday at Barber Motorsports Park that he was giving it another week to see if his 2023 Indy 500 driver RC Enerson could raise the funds to bankroll the effort, but Enerson’s efforts were unsuccessful.
“Yes, that’s what’s happened,” Abel said. “I had a meeting at the shop this morning and let everybody know we won’t be racing at Indy.”
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Abel’s son Jacob won his first Indy NXT race last weekend and could be in the frame to test the team’s brand-new Dallara DW12, and possibly take part in his first IndyCar race later in the season if everything aligns as desired.
“Our car’s still being prepped and the bodywork is being massaged,” Bill Abel said. “We’re building a great car and doing it the right way, and there’s a good chance it will be done in the next week, but we’ve just run out of time.
“We haven’t confirmed this with Chevy, but we’d like to do a test or two this summer, and if the timing works out, maybe we could do an IndyCar and Indy NXT doubleheader weekend. If Jacob has a chance to win the NXT championship, I wouldn’t want the IndyCar stuff to get in the way, but we do want to try and get out and going with the car and show people we are capable of doing well with it.”
IndyCar engine supply demands are such that Abel doesn’t expect to have a full-time motor made available to the No. 50 car next year, but he wants to race at least once, if not more.
“This might be the only year we get to run a couple of races, who knows,” he said. “We may be an Indy-only team in the future. We’d love to be in IndyCar, and timing is everything. I wish we could have started this five or six years ago when the car counts were lower.”