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.
ED’s NOTE: This week’s Mailbag is a special ‘overflow edition’ to mop up all of the questions we couldn’t fit into last week’s. Questions that have been submitted in the meantime will be answered when the regular Mailbag returns next Wednesday. See you in 2024!
Q: The news of a potential withdrawal from IndyCar by Honda should have 16th and Georgetown extremely concerned. To claim a lack of return on investment and the inability to attracta third engine supplier to offset costs should be a shot across the bow. It seems like a third engine supplier is a long shot at best.
I learned from the Mailbag that IMSA runners spend about $20 million for a two-car team. What does Honda spend on supplying half the IndyCar grid?
Honda uses the detuned 2.4 liter engine in the IMSA team designed for IndyCar. I have yet to hear squat about Chevy’s2.4.Is there a reasonyou can give as to why we never hear about the GM engine?
If Honda does leave in ‘26, is Chevy willing to supply 33+ engines for Indy?
Lastly, I heard a rumor that Liberty was interested in purchasing the IndyCar Series. I have heard that F1 teams are now approaching $1 billion in value. Perhaps Roger should call Liberty and see if they are still interested.
Gary, Urbana, Ohio
MARSHALL PRUETT: Hi, Gary, let’s go: I mentioned hearing the cost to field a two-car hybrid program is in the $20 million-plus range, as noted, but that does not include the costs to design and create the cars, develop them on an ongoing basis, build mountains of spares, fund the factory that does all of this with employees who also support the teams, and so on. I’d bet the real cost is at least double that for a committed manufacturer.
Honda has never said how much it spends, but it did throw out some unqualified numbers of $60-100 million in its quotes to us on how to reduce costs.
I asked GM Racing boss Jim Campbell the question of supporting IndyCar as a sole supplier if Honda left, which he didn’t want to answer, then asked it again, and also didn’t get an answer, so I can’t say.
Written here more than once that I’ve been told on good authority that Liberty offered to buy the series in 2023 and was harshly rebuked, as it was characterized to me. Penske doesn’t want to sell, and he’s said the same to me, in an emphatic manner, in 2022.
Q: Are the new IndyCar speedway wings still set to debut in 2025, with testing happening sometime in 2024?
Joe
MP: I believe so. It’s on my list for a follow-up with the series.
Q: The recent article describing TV ratings in the USA for NASCAR, IndyCar and F1 could use some additional thought.
NASCAR and IndyCar are U.S.-based sports, and as far as I know, have limited TV coverage around the rest of the world. F1 is a world-wide sport and ESPN is only one of many of networks around the world carrying the broadcasts, making ratings comparisons among the three based on U.S. data is almost meaningless.
According to Google, F1’s worldwide TV viewership in 2022 was 1.5 billion.
Tom, Florida
MP: OK. But the question was about U.S. viewership, so comparing the three domestically isn’t meaningless, nor is the data meaningless.
Q: Do the failures surrounding multiple issues with IndyCar in games/sims show a particular failing in Penske’s management of IndyCar and its ability to gain younger fans?It feels like they chased the cash with Motorsport Games when that company was already showing issues, while simultaneously forcing the series’ branding out of iRacing and stopping them from using real tracks, which killed the series in that game and turned many people’s interests away.
Canceling the Motorsport Games contract that everyone knew wouldn’t be followed through with seemed way too little, way too late. It needed to be done, but now the best they have is a possible tail-between-their-legs return to iRacing and maybe their own game in 2025 – more likely 2026 – at the very earliest.Obviously games are not everything in attracting younger people, but if they are making these mistakes with them, what else are they missing with younger fans?
Will, Philly
MP: It’s not as if older people can’t fully grasp and negotiate and manage and see a contract to produce a video game carried from concept to creation. But I would love to hear that someone who was born into the same generation where video games — home gaming, with consoles bearing names like Nintendo and Xbox, and not the Ataris of the late 1970s — came to prominence has been appointed to look after IndyCar’s gaming needs and any other youth-related initiatives.
Q: I’d love to see a new IndyCar chassis. But I understand the reason for a new chassis not being at the forefront of things to deal with. What I do not understand, especially for very visual sport like IndyCar racing, is not giving the DW12 chassis new clothes since 2018. I get that the addition of the aeroscreen changed the look, plus altered the aero and weight in 2020. But for the most part the wings, sidepods and engine cover haven’t changed, to my knowledge. Can they not implement updated body kit components at predetermined yearly increments? That seems like the easiest and cheapest alternative to a new chassis. I feel like that gets more interest from the casual fan to the hardcore fan. What say you?
Derek, Perry, GA
MP: The series could if it wanted to. Also know that IndyCar rarely does such a thing without first consulting its teams and asking whether it’s something they want and can afford. It’s not like the paddock holds all of the power on whether something new like hybridization gets the green light, but there is a frequent two-way dialogue on major changes and the costs that go with them.
Here, and with big costs coming for 2024 in updating each car to hybrid specification, IndyCar was careful to avoid stacking other changes and costs onto the pile.
