IndyCar hopes other teams take cues from PREMA's launch event

New IndyCar Series team PREMA Racing put on a grand launch in January at General Motors’ Charlotte Tech Center where it presented its team, cars, and colors in a manner reminiscent of the annual approach taken by Formula 1 teams with their new cars and liveries.

The live-streamed spectacle also featured new IndyCar on FOX host Will Buxton as the emcee, and the series would welcome seeing its other teams embrace the new standard set by PREMA.

“It was an engaging and impressive launch event that showcased the unique and powerful brand, heritage and international awareness PREMA will bring to IndyCar,” Penske Entertainment’s Alex Damron told RACER. “We were thrilled to be on hand and also to actively engage in the amplification of everything that took place.”

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PREMA engaged the series at an early stage to finalize the launch and IndyCar also collaborated on the co-branded stream, which brought the event to a wider audience. Among the existing teams, Arrow McLaren has made the greatest effort each year to present its liveries and drivers to the public through social media platforms, and other leading teams follow a similar practice of posting photos, videos, and press releases to support the reveals.

However, going the extra step of hosting a live launch for the media and fans has not been carried out by teams other than PREMA. McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown isn’t opposed to elevating his team's production effort, but he would prefer to have something new to show in the process.

“Yeah, we definitely need to do that,” he told RACER. “But that also comes with getting some new equipment every once in a while. Because right now, there's nothing super exciting about a new livery… because it's just livery. But I think what PREMA did, which I saw, I thought was very good. We've done our version of that, and I think there's more we can take from what other series are doing with their launches. We need to do more.”