Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. We love hearing your comments and opinions, but letters that include a question are more likely to be published. Questions received after 3pm ET each Monday will be saved for the following week.
Q: A 17-race IndyCar schedule is way too short, which in my opinion is the reason for the dip in viewership. They need to stop make these excuses that the Masters and NCAA Tournament is going to hurt viewership. It is what it is, the series is in competition with the United Football League, Major League Soccer, the NBA and the NHL. Just expanded to 22 races by adding Homestead, New Orleans and Richmond and keep Thermal. Having races every weekend will add more viewers for the series. Having these three week breaks in the schedule hurts the series.
Alistair, Springfield, MO
MARSHALL PRUETT: I don’t see the citing of The Masters or other big rival events as excuses. If an independent film debuts on the same weekend as a new Star Wars movie, there’s a 100-percent chance it gets overlooked and its ticket sales will suffer. Why wouldn’t the same effect happen here?
Without competition, IndyCar tends to generate solid TV audiences. Pitted against sports that are more popular? IndyCar falls to second or third on the list, if not fourth or fifth.
Its audience size reflects its current ranking among major sports, which is a mile behind anything involving a bat, ball, or club, and at least a half-mile behind NASCAR and F1. To quote Juan Pablo Montoya, “It is what it is.” I’ve lived in times where the opposite was true and IndyCar was the big dog, and I’m among the many who pray for its return to that exalted place.
I love the idea of more races being the answer to bigger TV audiences, if those extra events fall on weekends where IndyCar has the broadcast window to itself. But if it’s got big competition from one or two sports that have more fans, logic says those folks will go to what they prefer before checking out IndyCar.
More of something doesn’t automatically equate to greater popularity. MLB teams play 162 games per year, and most struggle to fill two-thirds of their stadiums and record TV ratings that suck.
Here’s what Sunday’s FOX audience of 552,000 viewers tells us: All of IndyCar’s diehards tuned in on big FOX, and that’s about it. Last year, buried on NBC’s USA cable channel, Long Beach produced 307,348, which was dismal. In the switch from a cable channel that nobody associated as the place to watch IndyCar, to a giant network home in a featured slot, Long Beach went from 300k to 550k. It’s nearly double, so that’s obviously a good thing, but it’s still a tiny number. Especially for the race that’s rightly hailed as the second biggest on the IndyCar calendar after the Indy 500.
Despite the competition from golf on CBS, I would have expected IndyCar on FOX at Long Beach to attract more than 550k. It’s disappointing, at least to me, and also acts as a reminder that no matter how much we love IndyCar, a massive effort lies ahead for the series and for FOX to bring it out of the shadows. This is an unwelcome reality check, but it is indeed what it is.
Q: I just read the news item saying that Hy-Vee will no longer sponsor the Iowa doubleheader. Do you know why Hy-Vee pulled out? It went from sponsoring a car and the doubleheader to getting out of IndyCar completely. Do you think this is a harbinger of rough times for IndyCar and teams finding sponsors?
Peter, Indianapolis, IN
MP: This change happened last year, so I wouldn’t take the news of Sukup (Sue-cup) Manufacturing being signed just now as a sign of anything meaningful in April of 2025. Hy-Vee underwent a CEO change, with Randy Edeker, a huge IndyCar fan who drove the deals with RLL and the series at Iowa, stepping down. A failure to renew the contracts after their completion in 2024 was not a surprise, since CEO changes often result in sponsorships going away.
Q: The talk about tariffs made me remember Swift. Back when IndyCar was choosing a new car, Swift was making Formula Nippon cars (now known as Super Formula). What are they doing nowadays?
That car was nice, it raced well and sounded great. I remember Swift’s IndyCar project was beautiful. I always wondered why Japan had an American company making its cars, but IndyCar couldn’t go with Swift to make theirs.
Also now with this talk in F1 about the V10 (which looks like will result in a V8), maybe IndyCar could switch to a V8. Ask Honda and Toyota if they still have those engines around. They sounded better than the IndyCar V8 from those years.
This seems like a very complicated moment to decide engine rules, isn’t it? So much uncertainty.
William Mazeo
MP: Made in San Clemente, Calif. I grew up working Swift’s NorCal distributor and built/prepped/ran countless Swifts. Of all the marques, it’s the closest to my heart, and I’d rate the longtail Swift DB-1 as one of the most beautiful race cars made.
V10s would be a play for entertainment alone since there’s zero road-car relevance at the point in time. Same with V8s as a mandated formula. But if a series lacks auto manufacturers, there’s no reason not to go with something loud, screaming, and entertaining. I feel for Penske Entertainment on this front. We know hybridization is genuinely important to a lot of manufacturers today. But will it hold the same importance in three to five years?
Q: Not surprisingly, push-to-pass was often talked about during the Long Beach broadcast. I swear the FOX guys never even mentioned the hybrid. Is the stored electric energy not self-deployed on demand to assist with overtaking and defense?
Shawn, MD
MP: The energy recovery system can harvest automatically, if that option is enabled prior to whatever session, but is not allowed to deploy automatically. That’s the sole responsibility of each driver.
And yes, if I’m an auto manufacturer in IndyCar and compete with hybrid engines to showcase or promote hybrid road-car technology, I’m livid.
I rewatched the race Monday night and don’t recall a single mention of the ERS being available as a push-to-pass tool. Heard tons about the turbo P2P and who had however much time left to use, but it’s as if the other, newer P2P is invisible. I did note, however, that in the Acura commercial I saw during the race, it used its hybrid IMSA GTP car in the ad.