Story and photos by Tim Adams
IndyCar rolled into Road America the third weekend of June in the midst of a dominant season being had by Alex Palou. Eight races into the season, Palou had won five, with the biggest of course being the Indy 500. The other three races you ask, well those were all won by Kyle Kirkwood. One thing that both Palou and Kirkwood have in common is Honda engines power their cars. Chevrolet has been shutout in 2025.
For 2025 IndyCar pushed the race two weeks back in the calendar. Everyone paid the price for this. It was a brutally hot weekend. Well into the 90’s, with high humidity, and heat indices over 100 degrees. When the race was held the first weekend of June, the temperatures were normally in the low 70’s. Unfortunately for 2026 the race will again be ran the third weekend of June. Hopefully we will get cooler weather next year, and in the future, IndyCar needs to look at moving the race back to the first weekend of June. Along with the main attraction, IndyCar, all of the Road to Indy feeder series racers were on hand, Vintage Indy, as well as Radical Cup North America to round out the racing weekend. I was unable to cover any of the Vintage Indy this year.
With only two drivers winning so far this year, two teams have dominated, Ganassi Racing with Alex Palou, and Andretti with Kyle Kirkwood. If you have been following along at all this year, once dominant, Team Penske has been a huge disappointment. 2024 and 2025 up to this point have been a disaster for Penske. Last year it was the push to pass cheating debacle, then this year during Indy qualifying, it was found a seam had been filled on the rear crash structures on their cars. This led to the firing of the Team President, the Managing Director, and General Manager. The cars were penalized, but that also brought up another point of contention from the teams. Roger Penske owns the entire series, so that means those who are paid to enforce the rules and put forth penalties are also employed and paid by Roger Penske. Roger has finally understood this is a conflict of interest and agreed that in 2026 an independent officiating board will oversee the rules and penalties handed out. This makes more sense.
The terrible season continued at Road America. The top Penske finisher was Scott McLaughlin in 12th. Will Power finished 14th, and Josef Newgarden finished 25th, completing only 30 of the 55 laps, spinning at the exit of turn 14 and hitting the wall. Overall, for the season long points championship, Power and McLaughlin are 7th and 8th, and Newgarden is buried way back in 17th.
During the middle of the 2024 season, the hybrid, or energy recovery system (ERS) was added to IndyCar. This has done nothing to improve the racing and has made it worse. The system adds weight to the rear of the car which affects tire wear and makes it much harder to pass. This years running of the Indy 500 was the first Indy 500 using the new ERS system. If you watched, you saw that except for the restarts, there was little passing for the lead. Honda led the charge to get the ERS added to IndyCar, yet Honda has not committed to staying in the series after 2026. If Honda leaves, we are left with Chevrolet engines only in 2027, as the new chassis that is being developed arrives in 2028. The new car will be slightly lighter, and will feature a 2.4-liter twin turbo V6. The current cars have a 2.2-liter twin turbo V6. Hopefully, the engine manufacturer issue will get worked out. Having all the cars run Chevrolet engines would be a huge setback for the series.
This year’s race was exciting with 11 lead changes. The race also unfortunately had 5 caution periods, for a total of 12 laps. With the race only 55 laps long, every caution lap really cuts into the action. All the cautions, however, threw an interesting wrench into the race for the fans. It seemed almost every driver in the top ten was on a different strategy when it came to fuel, and if they could make it to the end of the race if the race stayed green. As the laps counted down, Scott Dixon, the master of fuel mileage, was in the lead. Speculation was that he would have to pit for a splash of gas to make it to the end. The laps just kept counting down, and Dixon was still not pitting. Could the fuel mileage master do it again? Closely behind Dixon this entire time as the laps counted down, none other than Ganassi teammate Alex Palou. Palou had pitted two laps after Dixon during the last cycle of pit stops. Could Palou even make it to the end? Well with two laps to go, Scott Dixon finally had to pit and get a splash of fuel to make it the end. Alex Palou assumed the lead, but could he make it two more laps? Felix Rosenqvist, now in second place, was furiously trying to chase Palou down, running the quickest lap of the race on the final lap. In the end though it was another win for Alex Palou. Six wins in nine races. An incredible season. Palou had even been able to save enough fuel to make it all the way around the 4.048-mile track on the cool down lap. Sadly, he did not have enough fuel to do any donuts for the fans.
Despite the brutal heat, the crowds were amazing all weekend. It was jam packed on race day, and the fans were treated to a fantastic race. Tickets are already on sale for next year’s race. Hopefully, we will be treated to nicer weather in 2026. See you on June 21st.
