Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. We can’t guarantee that every letter will be published, but we’ll answer as many as we can. Published questions may be edited for length and clarity. Questions received after 3pm ET each Monday will appear the following week.
NOTE: Chris Medland is on a well-deserved vacation, but feel free to continue sending F1 questions in and he’ll answer them when he returns for the December 20 Mailbag.
Q: I normally don’t get angry at IndyCar, but with the news of the hybrid unit being delayed until after the 500 I just have to ask: Was Roger Penske’s purchase of the series the right one? At first, I was excited about R.P. taking charge, now I am not. No new chassis, no new OEM, 2.4L engine fell through and now the hybrid delay.
At this point I would welcome the series being sold to Liberty Media.
Not that Stefan Johansson
MARSHALL PRUETT: It can be the right one. Thanks to Penske’s incredible record of winning in business and sport, he has a long line of credit with IndyCar’s team owners. But that credit line isn’t infinite. He’s directly responsible for keeping the series and the Speedway alive during COVID, and recognition for that will never diminish.
But there will come a point where resting on that huge hit from 2020-21 won’t sustain the series forever. Penske Entertainment will need to follow it up with another monster hit to infuse its most loyal supporters — the teams — and its wider audience — the fans — with energy.
I fear the delay in going hybrid, the second such delay under Penske’s ownership, might have robbed the energy it could have offered since its marquee event, the Indy 500 where the biggest audience is drawn, won’t have the hybrids in the race. Missing that month of May target is painful.
So, as a lover of technology, I really hope the ERS units, which are amazing, pique the interest of fans and the media and the auto industry. But if that falls through, Penske will be left to find something else to make his series stand above its rivals in the sports entertainment marketplace.
Like you, there was a widespread expectation for Penske to turn the series into a raging success. But that hasn’t happened so far. It’s safe and stable, which only Penske could have done during COVID, and car counts are up and the racing is great. We’ve also had high car counts in the past, and the racing has almost always been great. So IndyCar is stuck in this weird and familiar place of having a lot of cars and wonderful racing that is almost a secret to most of our country.
What’s next? We don’t know, but since Penske refuses to sell the series, we will keep waiting and hoping for a game-changing move.
Q: The Honda news is a symptom of a larger issue. IndyCar seems to be dying on the vine, with an aging demographic as its core fan base. From the outside it appears there is no urgency from IndyCar’s C-suite to fix it; it’s as if there is a single-minded focus on cost containment at the expense of growth. Any insight from your sources on if there is any sort of near-term and long-term plan beyond “our racing is amazing” with no material changes? I find it hard to believe that Roger Penske of all people is simply relying on hope to fix the issues here by doing more of the same.
Matt
MP: After hybridization is rolled out, I’m unaware of any substantial plans or changes to the current status quo that are in the works.
I feel like I am saying this at an increasing frequency, but prior to Penske Entertainment’s purchase of the series, Jay Frye (president) and Mark Miles (CEO) were the decision makers, with the majority falling to Frye. A lot of big decisions were set in motion prior to 2020. Since the series was purchased, that big decision-making power was taken away by the new ownership team.
If folks are pissed at the current state of IndyCar, calling for Frye or Miles to be fired is like trying to take down Ronald McDonald if your Big Mac sucked… best of luck, but he ain’t the one cooking up or responsible for that mess.
Q: Probably a lot people asking you about Honda maybe quitting after 2026. What are your thoughts about that?
Guillermo Calvillo
MP: A new wrinkle to add is how IMSA’s sweeping success with its new hybrid GTP cars must have given Acura/Honda/HPD a big wake-up call on what it’s spending to try and go hybrid racing in IndyCar and how all of the big love for GTP delivered a heavy compare-and-contrast that it didn’t have prior to 2023.
And it’s not like I predicted this, but I did wonder how going hybrid with GTP at the outset of the 2023 season — a full year before IndyCar got there — might lead Acura/Honda/HPD and Cadillac/Chevy Racing to view and evaluate its plans to race on two hybrid fronts in 2024.
Faced with two big annual hybrid racing budgets to commit, and after getting a feel for the costs and value GTP returned in 2023, I absolutely think it had an influence on Honda/HPD as it looks to the future. It’s committed to GTP for the long haul; now it wants IndyCar to pull the costs for it to compete down to a lower level to justify its future presence.
As for my thoughts, I’d say that Honda’s probably spent half a billion dollars on IndyCar, if not more, since it founded HPD in 1993. Anyone who questions its commitment or love for IndyCar is an idiot. Time for the series to pay serious attention to Honda’s needs and determine if it wants to make changes and keep them, or ignore them and take IndyCar in a new direction with a single supplier or an all-new formula to possibly attract a replacement for Honda that will still keep Chevy in the game.