The RACER Mailbag, September 2

Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. We love hearing your comments and opinions, but letters that include a question are more likely to be published. Questions received after 12pm ET each Monday will be saved for the following week.

Q: Just reading the last Mailbag and saw a couple of contrasting stories on the in-person experience at the Freedom 250. I will thread the needle as I was there with tickets on Saturday and it was the motivation for a few friends (half of us getting on a plane to get there) and me (flew from out of country) to reconnect in the city where we met at school many years ago.

Complaints about viewing locations, screens, vantage points, grandstands, and vending (I threw that in) are all legitimate. As a longtime attendee of Long Beach and St. Pete, I know how it should look when it is done properly. This didn't wreck my experience by any stretch, but it did mean that I was not necessarily perturbed that we didn't have tickets for Sunday and were able to execute my other plan, which was to watch the race at a local bar with my non-IndyCar fan friends.  The bar we chose was right across from Nationals stadium, who were out of town, had self-pouring taps, bright open windows, and IndyCar playing on the jumbo screen (several LEDs put together to create a massive viewing wall) with the broadcast blaring through every speaker in the bar.

This was the first time I have ever been to a sports bar that was playing IndyCar as the main event. From the pre-race show to the race itself, this was the best experience I had watching outside of attending the race itself. People in the bar actually cared about the race, and hearing the jets over the speakers while simultaneously hearing them outside as they flew over the bar was awesome.

This is just another metric of success falling somewhere in between, ‘new race fans purchasing tickets’ and ‘new TV IndyCar viewers’. Not sure how to measure it, but from my point of viewCar relevant enough to play at a pub in front of a large IndyCar diehards) who are invested the race outcome feels like a huge win.

Mike

MP: Great report, Mike. Thanks! 

Q: What is the impetus for Andretti’s switch in engine manufacturer from Honda to Chevy? Since Honda has won six of the last 10 Indy 500s and seven of the last 10 manufacturer championships, is this with the new car in mind? I can’t decipher the tea leaves.

Vincent Martinez, South Pasadena, CA

MP: Consolidating all of its racing programs under the same manufacturer where General Motors is involved. There’s a new motor on the way and GM has invested heavily in its new technical center; it’s easy to see how a team would want to be part of its IndyCar family.

With all that being said, I started hearing right after D.C. that the Andretti-Chevy plans might not be moving forward, and at Milwaukee, I had someone confirm this and also had Honda confirm Andretti would be staying.

There’s an alleged desire within GM’s board to create separation with the Mark Walter/TWG funding matters that are making headlines, so if that’s accurate, it would fit a timeline of interest being on, and then off, in a fast and recent manner.

Powered by Honda, for the foreseeable future. Chris Graythen/Getty Images

Q: When it comes to F1, Zak Brown appears to be a personnel wizard. In IndyCar, well, not so much. How is it that he turns and burns so many top tier drivers out? 

Shawn, MD 

MP: I’m not seeing the same thing here in terms of volume.

Rosenqvist arrived with one win and left with one win. Rossi arrived with eight wins and left with eight wins. The team wasn’t close to Ganassi, Penske, or Andretti at that time, so they knew what they were signing up for. There was hope that they’d get wins, which they obviously didn’t, but they did make the team better with their input and effort and deserve credit for helping to shape part of what it’s become today.

I can’t speak to whether both were burned out by Zak, but they definitely struggled to strive in a team that was built around O’Ward and his phenomenal and phenomenally unique driving style. Is that a Zak thing, or a team thing? The main thing that started to happen during that phase was the recognition and acceptance that Arrow McLaren would not join the bigger teams at the front of the field each year if the cars were so lopsided in their setups to suit Pato first and foremost, and that’s where the ongoing efforts to be less O’Ward-centric really gained momentum. It’s an ongoing process, as well.

After Franchitti, how many new teammates showed up at Ganassi and found the organization revolved around Scott Dixon, and then found they didn’t have the ability to do what he does in his unique way, or sway the team to favor them, and left to try again elsewhere? At least in my head, I don’t see a lot of differences here where an established leader continues to be the established leader, and only in the rarest of examples – with Palou’s arrival – do we see the team become the new driver’s team.

Lundgaard is the only example I see that falls into the burnout side, and I’d say it’s owned by Zak, Kanaan, O’Ward, and Christian. This has been a bad personality fit from the outset. Failure by the team to adapt itself to Christian’s very unique personality, and a failure by Lundgaard to adapt to the needs of this team where Pato is the center of its universe.

Palou rocked up as Dixon’s teammates, worked from a place of humility, and reaped all of the benefits. I don’t know if the same can be said with Lundgaard. Take Zak, TK, and O’Ward, and that’s three large and potentially feisty Type A personalities to join and navigate within. As the fourth member of the Type A party, and the newest member, it was either going to be amazing or an explosion, and it’s been the latter. When humility isn’t a natural mindset, and you don’t show up and instantly depose the top Type A driver, there’s going to be an unpleasant reckoning and that’s what we’re seeing play out this season.

Pato and Christian fell out, which meant the team was going to ride with with its version of Dixon, and with the oval deficiency on display by Lundgaard in 2025, this breakup was in motion long before it came to light in a public capacity.

There was a hope for something to change in the early races, but it only got worse, with the latest Indy 500 being the thing that appears to have cemented the divorce. The narrative being spun over and over again during last weekend’s races was solely about the oval shortcomings, and that’s failing to tell the other half of the story.

If the interpersonal side was solid between Lundgaard and Pato, I don’t believe we’d be talking about anything other than Lundgaard’s oval improvements and how he and O’Ward are looking like the most formidable duo in the series leading into 2027. It’s a damn shame.