Biggest IndyCar stories to follow in 2026

There’s plenty to digest ahead of this weekend’s launch to the 2026 IndyCar season, so let’s take a first look at the biggest stories that have developed since the 2025 season came to a close and how the major items below will shape the 18 races that run through the Sept. 6 finale.

We’ll follow our "Biggest Stories" with a separate look at some of the secondary themes and developments in a story later this week.

TARGETING CHIP GANASSI RACING

Chip Ganassi Racing’s streak of dominance has pushed the rest of the IndyCar Series paddock to the brink. Collectively, they search for ways to stop a rival in a manner that we haven’t previously witnessed during the Dallara DW12 era.

In most offseasons, teams go back to their shops, cook up a range of modest tweaks to their operations, devise ways to improve in select areas, and return to start the new year in a fairly familiar guise. Same players. Same coaches. A handful of new plays in the playbook.

But on the back of taking a beating from Alex Palou and his eight wins in the No. 10 Honda in 2025, Ganassi’s pursuers have turned themselves inside out to try and rectify the situation. Ripping up those playbooks and revamping their rosters – either with new drivers or engineers or managers or all three – has been the widespread reaction.

Andretti Global has undergone a major overhaul. Team Penske has undertaken the biggest revamp in the paddock. Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing has torn up the foundation and built anew. Arrow McLaren’s done a meaningful amount of retooling. ECR has re-imagined itself.

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That’s half of the field who’ve gone back to the proverbial drawing board to try and come up with answers on how to dethrone Ganassi.

Since 2020, Ganassi has won two Indianapolis 500s with Marcus Ericsson and Palou and five of the six IndyCar championship with Scott Dixon and Palou. The rest of the paddock is understandably sick of their success. But have they as a whole, or has any individual team, done enough over the long six-month offseason to end Ganassi’s reign?

The first of many answers to that question will arrive on Sunday at St. Petersburg.

KILL ’EM WITH CONSISTENCY

IndyCar teams haven’t had many pre-season test days to give us a window into who’ll be the ones to beat in 2026, but there was an ominous thread being woven by Palou.

At the two-day Sebring test where the fields were split in half, he was fastest in his group to open the event and fifth the next day. At last week’s full-field Phoenix test, Palou was fifth, third, and third across the three oval sessions held over two days.

Not much has changed for Palou in 2026...which is a problem for everyone else. Chris Jones/Penske Entertainment

Palou won 47 percent of the races last year, and there’s no telling how many he’ll win this year. But as his pre-season form suggests, nothing appears to have changed. He’s been right up front, consistently there or thereabouts, and ready to score a lot of points. Same Palou. Same problem to solve.

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ANDRETTI LOCAL

Andretti Global has garnered a lot of attention for its worldwide reach where its Formula E team has won a drivers’ championship this decade and the Cadillac F1 team, which was originally conceived under the Andretti name and is officially run by Andretti parent company TWG Motorsports, is the shiniest of new objects.

And then there’s the roots of the organization, ‘Andretti Local’ as I think of it, with the IndyCar team which features the most envied financial backing in the series, but has rarely lived up to its potential.

Its last Indy 500 win was nine years ago. It’s last IndyCar championship was 14 years ago. And its newish owners aren’t willing to let the losses continue to pile up.

Andretti’s come close on the championship front many times since then with second places by Alexander Rossi and Colton Herta, but it surrendered a spot in the pecking order among teams last season as Arrow McLaren displaced Andretti with Pato O’Ward taking second in the standings.

With all that’s been spent and all that’s been changed since 2025 drew to a close, Andretti Local is clearly pissed and unwilling to accept more Indy 500 and championship runner-up performances. The hiring of Ron Ruzewski to lead the team was a huge statement of intent. Ruzewski ran Team Penske, and before that, won all of IndyCar’s biggest races as a race engineer or technical director-type at Penske and other major teams.

But he’s only been with Andretti since Jan. 1 – approximately 60 days – which simply isn’t enough time to turn the program into a Ganassi-toppling force from the first race.

Even so, Andretti took fourth in the most recent championship with Kyle Kirkwood, and with modest gains, they should be able to vie for second or third in the standings. But getting all the way there – leapfrogging McLaren in the process – is a lot to ask on such a short timeline.

The team also hired Will Power to bring the veteran driver presence it lost and sorely lacked since Ryan Hunter-Reay wasn’t retained and Rossi left. Partnered again with his former Penske colleague, Power and Ruzewski are where the team can transform itself back into a regular title contender.

Kirkwood’s already there; he’s primed to continue his upward ascension, and in Power, he has his veteran – his O.G.– to fill in the little things that can make him a champion. Power’s also there to win another championship, and has been given the freedom to have fun and be himself in ways that weren’t always possible at Penske.

The result so far is a Power who is loose and loving the change of teams while burning to prove he has the goods to become a three-time champ and a two-time Indy 500 winner. He’s reinvigorated.

Ruzewski, after being among the three who were fired by Penske, is motivated to show he’s capable of leading a different team to the highest of IndyCar heights, which would also involve keeping Team Penske behind Andretti, just as it did in 2025.

And then there’s Ericsson, in the third and final year of his contract, who has all of the inspiration he needs to put two underwhelming seasons behind him. Andretti needs Ericsson to get wins and podiums to complement what they expect to receive from Kirkwood and Power.

If all of those things happen and Andretti evolves into a three-car assault, the organization will indeed take the fight to McLaren for P2 in the standings and cause problems for Ganassi.

Andretti Local should be IndyCar’s biggest mover of the season, while also acknowledging the full effects of Ruzewski and Power will take some time for their full impact to be felt. But will the executive and ownership layer above the team have the patience required to let it develop?

How far can Arrow McLaren build on last year's momentum? Joe Skibinski/Penske Entertainment

STRAIGHT ARROW?

Arrow McLaren took a giant leap forward last season and, for the first time in its history, enters an IndyCar season with the full weight of championship expectations on its shoulders.

Under the direction of Tony Kanaan, who revamped major parts of the organization, the season Arrow McLaren produced in 2025 reset its internal standards for success as it proved it could be the second-best team in IndyCar. The question here is whether the next step for Arrow McLaren should be a championship-or-bust mentality in 2026, or simply trying to prove it can hold onto second. I’ll go with the latter.

This band produced a major hit and now it needs to follow it up – and fast – within another giant hit to prove the first wasn’t a fluke. But is an IndyCar title the only acceptable outcome?

BREAKOUTS

I’m looking to three drivers to have breakout years, and atop the list, it’s Meyer Shank Racing’s Marcus Armstrong.

After completing three seasons of Formula 2 that generated three straight finishes of 13th in the championship, the New Zealander arrived in 2023 with Ganassi as a part-timer with almost no expectations. The Kiwi was new to everything – the tracks, and oval racing – and by 2024, he’d risen to 14th in the championship, which was decent, but nothing suggested Armstrong was poised to go much farther.

A switch to the MSR team – which receives Ganassi technical support and is staffed by Ganassi’s Angela Ashmore as his engineer – for 2025 saw Armstrong jumped to eighth in the standings, just eight points shy of team leader and series veteran Felix Rosenqvist.

Armstrong’s been a rocket in pre-season testing, and looks to have taken another step forward. In what will be his third full IndyCar season, Armstrong has gotten the hang of ovals – had four top 10s on short ovals last year, including his first oval podium – and is a consistent performer on road and street courses.

The midfield guy from F2 is not the person who’s on the cusp of challenging Rosenqvist for P1 at MSR. This is an Armstrong we haven’t seen before. He’s also in a contract year, which makes motoring up from eighth in the standings to fifth or six a valuable year-to-year improvement that should be within reach. If he doesn’t celebrate his first IndyCar win at some point this season, I will be surprised. New lead performer at MSR? That’s the story to track.