Marshall PruettFeb 27, 2025, 09:20 AM ET
The IndyCar Series is set to open a rapid-fire season this weekend on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida, and blast through 17 races in six months with the finale on Aug. 31 at Tennessee's Nashville Superspeedway.
Some drivers have changed teams during the offseason, and one of the fan favorites, ex-Formula 1 veteran Romain Grosjean, is out of a ride and has joined newcomer Prema Racing as its backup, but in many ways, what's on the horizon in 2025 feels like a continuation of the great IndyCar racing that was produced in 2024. The resumption of the fight among IndyCar's 11 teams and 27 drivers goes green on Sunday, and there are a few threads worth following throughout the calendar.
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss?
In 2012, Andretti Global, known then as Andretti Autosport, won the first IndyCar Series championship using IndyCar's new chassis and turbocharged engine formula. Since then, it's been a two-team race to the title, settled year after year by the monoliths at Chip Ganassi Racing and Team Penske.
That's 12 straight years of one or the other beating every other team. The recent contemplation of whether a third consecutive Super Bowl win by the Kansas City Chiefs would cement their status as a dynasty seems cute. It didn't happen, thanks to Philadelphia Eagles stars Jalen Hurts and Saquon Barkley, but the concept of three straight being a dynasty maker is hilarious considering Ganassi has won four of the past five IndyCar championships and seven since 2013. Penske owns five titles in the same span.
Combined, the two IndyCar titans have owned the series -- Penske actually bought IndyCar in 2020, so there's a literal aspect to this -- and unless one of the perennial challengers like Andretti or Arrow McLaren, the team owned by the McLaren Formula 1 operation, step up to end the real dynasties forged by Ganassi and Penske, it will be another season of the big two beating up on the pretenders.
So who from Ganassi or Penske might win?
Ganassi's Álex Palou. The newly minted three-timer with championships earned in 2021, 2023 and 2024 is the driver to beat. Palou's body of work across the season might not jump out in the showiest of ways, but his devastating results are spurred by his cold efficiency.
That said, Palou and the Ganassi team were nearly chased down and beaten as their strong output in the first half of 2024 dipped in the second. Ganassi didn't win a race in the last nine races of the 17-race championship, and that's where the focus will fall in the early rounds of the new season. Did the team's engineering and performance gurus claw back some of whatever went missing?
Or has Penske -- and the charging teams at Andretti and Arrow McLaren -- cracked Ganassi's code? His showing this weekend will provide an early answer to where the rest of the season is headed.
"The last half of the season was good, but it was not outstanding, and we saw a lot of teams and different drivers catching up or just taking wins and we couldn't," Palou told ESPN. "It was a bit frustrating, but honestly, it was super rewarding to get the championship in a year that probably things didn't go amazingly well for us. It was not a smooth year in terms of speed or issues, but during the offseason, we've been investigating, trying to get more speed. We have a lot of ideas, but honestly, you never know until you're on track in St. Pete and seeing if we actually made improvements or not."
Now or never
If Arrow McLaren and Pato O'Ward are going to break through and beat the big two, it needs to happen now. The same can be said of Andretti Global and Colton Herta. Despite their relative youth (O'Ward turns 26 in May and Herta will be 25 in March) and status as top performers (Herta was second in last year's championship and O'Ward was third in 2021), they're both entering their seventh IndyCar seasons.
There comes a point where "the next big things" need to leave the "next" behind and fully realize their potential, but with Ganassi and Penske to beat, it's an imposing task. Having come close to toppling Palou last year, Herta is fixated on a single task.
"Doing so well just pushes everybody through the offseason, which is important because it's a long offseason for us," Herta said. "And it's nice to be reminded that we were close, but we're also maybe in the worst finishing position ... one position away from winning a championship. It sucks. So it's a great motivator.
"We've had a really good offseason of looking at what we need to do differently on everybody's side of things, and for the most part, it's pretty minimal, but it's what we need to do to beat the Ganassis and Penskes and Palou and Newgarden and McLaughlin and all of them."
The mention of two-time champion and reigning back-to-back Indianapolis 500 winner Josef Newgarden and his Penske teammate Scott McLaughlin brings two other key title contenders into the win-now frame.
For Newgarden, there's been a surprising development since his last championship was won in 2019. Three straight runs to second followed, but in 2023 that fell to fifth, and last year he finished eighth in the standings. Stuck at two titles, Newgarden has the talent to retire with five or six IndyCar crowns, and after trying different approaches to rediscover his ultimate form in recent seasons, he's channeling something different in 2025.
"This is my 14th year, which is kind of crazy, and we change as people all the time," he said. "I'm a dad, now I have a family and I'm married. A lot's changed personally and even professionally, and as I've gone through phases as a person, I think the big thing for me is just getting back to basics. There's a reason that I fell in love with motorsport. It's competition, it's fast cars, it's the visceral-ness of it. Especially in IndyCar; it takes your breath away.
"It's amazing to be a professional race car driver, to get paid for this, and to live and breathe this world, but you can still get bogged down by the job of it. And I think for me, just getting back to the joy and why I like doing it, has been No. 1 on my list."
McLaughlin is older than Herta and O'Ward, younger than 34-year-old Newgarden, and definitely younger than 43-year-old teammate and two-time champion Will Power (who turns 44 on Saturday), but finds himself in a genuinely unique situation among the championship protagonists.
At 31, he's the least experienced within the group, having left the Australian Supercars series with three titles in hand to give IndyCar a try with Penske in 2021. McLaughlin is about to commence his fifth season, rates as the "new guy" in the Penske organization, yet led the team in the championship with third-place finishes in 2023 and 2024.
For someone with no open-wheel racing experience at the start of the decade, McLaughlin has risen to become Penske's top IndyCar driver and seeks his first title, but has Newgarden and Power on missions to stop him while pursuing championships of their own.
Like the young Andretti and Arrow McLaren drivers, there's also a feeling that if Newgarden and Power don't end the season being celebrated as IndyCar's newest champion, that chapter of their careers might be closed. Factor in Palou's 44-year-old teammate, six-time champion Scott Dixon, who is trying to match the all-time record of seven set by AJ Foyt, and there's no shortage of complications for the now-or-never gang to overcome.
A new home, a new audience?
Forgive the unintended wordplay, but IndyCar is akin to a beloved indie band that has a considerable and loyal following ... but has been stuck in a rut for the better part of 25 years and lives outside the mainstream.
Ask the average person to name a racing series, and you're most likely to hear NASCAR or Formula 1 mentioned. Ask the same person to name a series other than NASCAR and F1, and be prepared for a blank stare. That's the shadow IndyCar is hoping to crawl out of with the help of its new broadcast partner at Fox, which aired numerous promos leading up to and through its presentation of the Super Bowl.
Pinning the hopes of a sporting league on its broadcaster is a lot to ask, but considering what has happened with F1 on ESPN, Fox could provide a major lift for IndyCar if a sizable audience responds to its new network home.
