• Days after the highs of the Indy 500, the Detroit Grand Prix is an unfortunate low point for IndyCar. The 100-lap downtown race is marred by eight cautions lasting 47 laps — nearly half of the contest — and making matters worse, 12 penalties are assessed to drivers and teams in the two-hour race as decision making, mostly of the poor or errant variety, rule over the event.
• Among the penalties, one is assessed to Arrow McLaren’s Theo Pourchaire for flying into a hairpin, locking his brakes, and knocking Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Agustin Canapino aside. Both drivers continue, but Canapino’s strong run is hampered as he falls to 12th place at the finish.
• In a repeat of two incidents in 2023 when Canapino’s ardent fans went on social media attacks with his then-teammate Callum Ilott over on-track clashes — which included death threats — the same online explosion happens to Pourchaire, who receives a variety of threatening and menacing messages from some of Canapino’s followers. As with the 2023 threats, Canapino and team co-owner/countryman Ricardo Juncos appear to be uninterested when calls to help quiet the attacks are made.
• Reacting to the inaction, McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown, who struck a commercial deal between Arrow McLaren and Juncos Hollinger Racing during the preseason that would allow for some of its overflow sponsorship deals to be carried on JHR’s cars, calls off the deal.
• Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, along with the owner of the Texas Rangers and the mayor of Arlington, announces the Arlington Grand Prix will take place as a street race that fires around the two stadiums starting in 2026. It’s another big achievement by Penske Entertainment.
• Making more headlines, Penske’s Mark Miles questions the drawing power of the series’ most popular driver Pato O’Ward while discussing a potential return to race in O’Ward’s native Mexico. The embattled executive is taken to task internally for the comments and by the driver’s giant fan base.
• Harnessing his power as the series’ top draw, a livid O’Ward starts a “Pato Who?” clothing line in response to Miles. But he’s not finished as O’Ward pays for two big billboards for month-long runs emblazoned with “Pato Who?” for Miles to see on his drive in and out of work each day in Indianapolis. To his credit, Miles eats crow without pushing back.
• With the championship winding down and a growing need to catch points leader Alex Palou, Penske’s Will Power crowds and hits Meyer Shank’s David Malukas late at World Wide Technology Raceway, leading Malukas to crash and Power to fire volleys of anger and blame at Malukas. A shaken and innocent Malukas, who says he was verbally accosted — “screamed at” — by Power after the incident, and whose team said he had to be consoled after the interaction, overplays the exchange and is later corrected by Power, who says he didn’t get in his rival’s face, but rather, rode by on a golf cart with his wife and yelled, “Malukas, what the ****?”
• Given a false impression of the situation, Malukas fans tear into Power for a perceived act of physical intimidation that didn’t take place. The two reconcile before the next race and the storm in a teacup is forgotten.
• Returning to green after the Malukas crash, and with Power holding fourth, IndyCar fans learn about the rules and intricacies of restart zones at WWTR when race leader Josef Newgarden opts to wait until the last possible moment to accelerate, which is legal, but is a rare choice in the series. Some of the cars close behind the leader stack up, including Power, who goes and then slows, and is hit from behind by Alexander Rossi who, for the second time in three races, rides over the back of a car — Power — and sees his Arrow McLaren car briefly shoot skyward. Both drivers are out on the spot. Newgarden, an easy target after the push-to-pass scandal, is blamed but cleared of any wrongdoing by race control.
• Renowned as one of the best races on the schedule, the Iowa Speedway doubleheader goes down as the worst IndyCar races of the year, if not the decade, due to a mismatch between tire specification for the heavier hybrid cars and the newly paved track surface. Saddled with tires that are too hard on a grippy short oval that prevents tire degradation, drivers spend two days going in circles with a bare minimum of passing. Skeptics of the hybrid powertrain use the forgettable event as evidence of the concept’s failings.
• Moving straight from Detroit to Road America, the furor over the online attacks against Pourchaire starts to affect Canapino’s mental health. The Juncos Hollinger Racing team, seeing Canapino’s mood sour shortly before the first practice session, yanks him from the car and sends him back to Indianapolis. Nolan Siegel, there to race in the Indy NXT development series, who made one IndyCar start at Long Beach for Dale Coyne Racing and did his best to qualify for the Indy 500 but was unsuccessful, is asked to step in and replace Canapino. Siegel does a good job in tough circumstances, earning 23rd.
• Unsure if Canapino — a sports car champion many times over and national hero in his native Argentina — is done as an IndyCar driver after 1.5 seasons, the team announces he will return at the next race at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, which comes as a surprise when it appeared Siegel, with a healthy base of sponsorship to offer, was primed to head to his home race in Monterey with Juncos Hollinger and finish out the year in the car.
• Canapino stays in the car for five races, finishing last or close to last while crashing or similar across the last three, and is pulled for good by the team. With ovals filling most of the events left to run, the team drafts in oval ace Conor Daly to try and move the car upwards in the race to earn one of Penske Entertainment’s $1 million prize money payouts for its top 22 entries. Daly is instantly effective, delivering Juncos Hollinger its first podium finish and other quality results that allow the car to squeak in and snare one of the last $1 million contracts.
• A.J. Foyt’s Santino Ferrucci and Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Romain Grosjean act like magnets — angry magnets — who have a penchant for finding each other in a variety of tracks and corners, with both demonstrating high commitment to impeding or making contact whenever possible. It isn’t a good look, which leads to ongoing questions as to why IndyCar’s race control isn’t trying harder to control the situation.
• After announcing Theo Pourchaire will complete the season in the car Malukas was originally meant to drive, Arrow McLaren makes a 180-degree turn, calling the night before he was due to fly to Monterey, to say his services are no longer required. The team has signed local driver Nolan Siegel — a baffling development for the blindsided F2 champ — but the car is said to be exceptionally short on funding, which would explain the sudden reversal. Arrow McLaren is roasted for its umpteenth contribution to this season of unparalleled nonsense.
• Ignoring the chatter, Siegel shows occasional flashes, topped by a drive to seventh at WWTR, the best result for the car all season.
• Also years in the making, Penske Entertainment launches a charter membership program for its 10 existing full-time teams. Those members receive guaranteed entries at every race, excluding the Indy 500, and are able to sell their memberships if approved by Penske, but receive no profit sharing, TV revenue, or any other income in the arrangement.