- Will Power, of Team Penske, says after considerable testing that the hybrid-engine-powered car IndyCar hopes to debut in 2024 carries “a lot of potential.”
- Meyer Shank Racing’s Tom Blomqvist and Felix Rosenqvist and Chip Ganassi Racing’s Marcus Armstrong are familiar with electric-engine technology as former ABB FIA Formula E Series racers.
- Scott Dixon, who’s pursuing a seventh series crown, calls the unique powerplant “a pretty trick system.”
Romain Grosjean was baffled.
Back in early December, during the NTT IndyCar drivers meeting, the Juncos Hollinger Racing driver said his colleagues were asking questions about “the hybrid,” and recently he confessed, “I had no idea what they were talking about.”
Now he knows they were curious about the cutting-edge collaboration by Chevrolet and Honda—a 2.2-liter twin-turbocharged V-6 engine with hybrid technology whose debut has been scheduled for sometime after the May 26 Indianapolis 500.
Grosjean said he’s “definitely kind of happy that it’s been postponed.” And the consensus among drivers as they prepare for the March 10 season opener on the streets of St. Petersburg, Fla., is a pragmatic concurrence.
Delay a ‘Right Step’
Veteran series racer and four-time Indianapolis winner Helio Castroneves said the delay of the hybrid engine’s emergence in competition was the proper decision. Some had expressed frustration with Honda’s concern about costs and hints that it might consider leaving the series it has supported for three decades, since 1994, when its engine-supply contract expires in 2026.
But Castroneves was optimistic the project would move forward despite supply-chain issues and that the manufacturers would land back in their cooperative groove, aiding each other and the teams to field a powerplant that is ready for prime time.
“I see that we’re taking the right step, Castroneves said. “Sometimes manufacturers want to make things happen, but we’ve got to work as a group. They might threat[en], they might push it, but at the end of the day, we’re all working together. It’s the right thing to do instead of having half of the field or the entire field having issues.
“We’ve got to take our time. Because of that, we don’t want to ruin the biggest race of the season, which is the Indy 500, so we want to take our time to make sure that it happens. It’s not only that – it’s the supply issues for a lot of the teams who hardly have the equipment from [chassis builder] Dallara and the gearbox. It’s been a challenge from that aspect,” he said.
Nevertheless, he said, “It was the right thing to do, the right decision . . . and I fully support it. The series is taking the right steps, going (to) modernize, make the cars a little bit better, according to what the trending is going. I’m sure in the future we’re going to have a new car, but . . . we can’t just go in and make things happen.”
Team Penske’s Will Power, who has had considerable experience in testing the revolutionary engine, said, “I think IndyCar wants it to be absolutely bulletproof when it’s introduced, so I think they made the right decision there.”
‘Detriment to Teams Who Didn’t Get to Test It’
Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s Graham Rahal had no hesitation championing the hybrid’s delay.
“I 100% support it. Personally, I think it was going to be a major detriment to the teams like Rahal Letterman Lanigan who didn’t get to test it. It was going to be a major advantage to those who have tested it and had knowledge of it,” he said.
“I’m sure IndyCar is doing (its) best. I know they got a lot of heat for that deal, but I don’t think people realize how hard it is right now to get vendor support. I own a massive business outside of racing, and getting parts is damned near impossible and has been for two years—and it’s not getting better. Getting suppliers to deliver has been a major challenge, and unfortunately, IndyCar got stuck in that. They’re going to follow through. We’re going to make it happen this year. But I think it was 100% the right thing to do to delay. We would have been in serious trouble at St. Pete if we tried to make this happen,” Rahal said.
Power’s teammate, Scott McLaughlin, said, “I think the category has done the right thing from a competitive standpoint. It does suck for everyone that we haven’t been able to get the parts and whatnot in time, but I think doing the right thing to keep our world-renowned competitiveness.”
Two factors dominate the latest conversation: the lack of equal testing among the drivers and the impact a midseason debut of the engine will have on the championship chase. At least in the preseason, as late as mid-January, many drivers had not gotten an opportunity to drive with the unique, hybrid-boosted engine package.
Rahal said he didn’t “know how I feel about implementing it midseason, but that’s a personal thing. I think it’s clearly the way of the future. It’s clearly the way Honda wants to go. So we need to make sure it happens.”
Power said that the change for every driver “will be very interesting. There’s no question that it’s going to be a factor in the championship. I don’t know how.”
Power guessed it will depend on “how the car (behaves)—obviously the weight distribution changes, the weight of the car goes up. What manufacturer does it complement the most? Is it the Chevy or the Honda? It’s going to hit in a certain power range. It’s hard to say how that will all play out, because it’s not like you’re going back to the same tracks. You have this hybrid system that you have to use as efficiently as possible. So people will be learning through those races on how to extract the most out of the system, which is a good thing. It’ll make for a very interesting championship. Very interesting.”
David Malukas prepares to turn laps of the new IndyCar hybrid at Indianapolis in October.
‘You’ve Just Got to Roll With It’
Six-time series champion Scott Dixon said, “I don’t think there will be an issue on the credibility of the champion unless—I don’t know. . . There’s so many hypotheticals. The technology is going to be huge. It’s a pretty trick system and something that will hopefully evolve pretty quickly. I’m excited for that part of it. You’ve just got to roll with it. For me, I just want a car that’s fast, whatever which way you have to drive it. But this will definitely add some pretty tricky driver situations in how you use it and something that if you use well I think can definitely benefit you. I’m excited for that side.
“I guess if you look at it insofar as a DNF or reliability issues maybe, but I feel like that can be true anyway with the current formula with different situations,” the Chip Ganassi Racing headliner said. “Yeah, I don’t think I’d put an asterisk over this championship.”
Arrow McLaren team newcomer David Malukas said, “What I’m most intrigued about (is) seeing the differences between what a hybrid car feels like and what (the current car does).”
Power could answer some of his questions. He said, “The car pretty much behaves the same, and they’ve given you the ability just to push a button out of a corner and that’s it. I think it’s auto-regen, so you’re not holding the paddle or anything like that. It’s pretty straightforward. It’s not that complicated. You’re just pressing a button. That’s the long and short of it. All the simulations will be saying out of this corner is where you should be hitting the button, and that’s what will happen. Maybe in the races, slightly different strategies, maybe hitting a different spot to pass or something like that.
Marcus Ericsson and the rest of the IndyCar field will have to roll with the changes in 2024.
“I love the fact that it’s lighter. It will make for a nicer car. Anytime you’re knocking weight out, it’s good. I don’t think it’ll be a big difference. It’s not like we’re knocking 100 pounds out of it. But it won’t be slower,” Power said. “It would depend on the track. Obviously track with long straights and all that, you’re going to get benefit from the horsepower.
“There’s a lot of potential in that hybrid,” he said. “I reckon it’ll be started pretty conservatively, so if the lap times happen to be slower, that’s the reason. But eventually they’ll be faster, because you want to ease into it. I don’t think you just want to go, ‘Yeah, this thing will give 150 horsepower. Bang! Let’s go do it!’ It’s still a hit. It jumps out of the corner when you’re using the hybrid. And you’re only using a third of what it’s capable of.”
Teams Have Different Levels of Hybrid Experience
Team owner-driver Ed Carpenter, who said in January that he and his teammates don’t have any first-hand experience yet with the hybrid system, said they’ve learned some aspects of it in simulation but “won’t fully know how that’s all going to change until we do get the hybrid on track. We get some information from Chevrolet and the series from those that have been doing the testing, but that’s all second-hand at this point.”
Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood said he did, “testing it a ton” and deciding his team “came to grips with it very well. It definitely takes some adjusting with the car and understanding kind of how it works and the way it works. It changes the balance when it’s charged and uncharged.”
Kyffin Simpson, from the Chip Ganassi organization, said he isn’t sure but is hoping the rookies will be on a level playing field.
Meyer Shank Racing teammates Tom Blomqvist and Felix Rosenqvist and Chip Ganassi Racing’s Marcus Armstrong are no strangers to electric-engine technology. All have raced in the global all-electric ABB FIA Formula E series.
Blomqvist said, “I feel like I’m quite experienced with all that, the hybrid stuff and electric stuff. I’ve got experience in Formula E, which is 100% electric, and (IMSA’s) GTP class is a hybrid now. In terms of IndyCar settings, I’m very familiar with that sort of technology and how to utilize it, how to get performance from it. Let’s see how that’s implemented.”
Rosenqvist said he thinks his team has advantages: “We have our partner Honda, (which is) deeply involved in hybrid tech in F1. We have Meyer Shank Racing, who competed very competitively in IMSA with a hybrid. We have Tom, who has been in Formula E and is probably the strongest driver in recent times in IMSA with a hybrid. And then you have myself, who drove in Formula E for two and a half years. For some people working in IndyCar, this is all brand-new stuff, and for us it’s not.”
McLaughlin said the 2024 series champion will be the driver “who can combat the changes the most. That’s what the championship and building the championship is all about is combatting the change. Things aren’t the same from St. Pete to Nashville, and they never are. We need to combat that, whether that is adding a hybrid or whatever it is. That’s all part about building a solid championship campaign and working with your guys and girls and making sure you can get at the front quicker than the rest of them.”
That means the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Susan Wade has lived in the Seattle area for 40 years, but motorsports is in the Indianapolis native’s DNA. She has emerged as one of the leading drag-racing writers with nearly 30 seasons at the racetrack, focusing on the human-interest angle. She was the first non-NASCAR recipient of the prestigious Russ Catlin Award and has covered the sport for the Chicago Tribune, Newark Star-Ledger, and Seattle Times. She has contributed to Autoweek as a freelance writer since 2016.
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