{"id":850230,"date":"2026-08-10T12:18:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T12:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/850230\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T12:18:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T12:18:22","slug":"why-indycars-new-runner-cannot-arrive-soon-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/850230\/","title":{"rendered":"Why IndyCar’s new runner cannot arrive soon enough"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five days after blazing around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course at a pretty fair clip in the 2028\u00a0Dallara IR-28 IndyCar prototype, Alex Palou<\/a> put on yet another clinic in the familiar old IR-18. A relatively unchallenged victory in the Portland Grand Prix (Palou\u2019s sixth of the \u201926 season) over Felix Rosenqvist<\/a> put him an almost insurmountable 110 points up on fifth-place finisher Kyle Kirkwood<\/a> with five races remaining.<\/p>\n

Headed toward his fifth IndyCar championship in six years, Palou has proven all but unbeatable in a Honda-powered Dallara IR-18 prepared by Chip Ganassi Racing<\/a>. The introduction of the IR-28 therefore can\u2019t come fast enough. IndyCar finally revealed renderings of the new car in late July and trusted the first shakedown laps 1-4 August at IMS to IndyCar veterans Palou and Alexander Rossi<\/a>, representing engine manufacturers Honda and Chevrolet.<\/p>\n

After turning around 60 laps over the course of two days at IMS in wet and dry conditions before he jetted off to Portland, Palou already seems comfortable in the new car. His best lap unofficially timed at 1m10.55s was less than a second off his pole lap of 1m09.75s from the Indianapolis GP in May set on softer alternate compound tyres.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

The IR-28 prototype driven at IMS by Rossi and Palou is running a generic 2.4-liter V-6 provided by Ilmor (Chevrolet), ballasted to simulate the weight of the spec energy recovery systems not fitted to the car. Claims that the new car will break existing track records \u2013 including on the Indianapolis oval, where Arie Luyendyk\u2019s one- and four-lap qualifying benchmarks set in 1996 still stand \u2013 don\u2019t seem far-fetched this time around.<\/p>\n

For a new car rollout, it all went very smoothly \u2013 in part, because despite claims of a being a clean-sheet design, the IR-28 is very much a development of the IR-18 concept, with many carryover parts. Dallara has done a nice job integrating the safety and technological advances that were incorporated over the long lifetime of the IR-18 (IR-12, in reality) like the Aeroscreen to create a sleeker and more cohesive design. If there is one criticism that can be levelled at the IR-28, it\u2019s hard for anyone other than a trained expert to identify it from an IR-18 \u2013 especially at speed.<\/p>\n

In short, if you like the Dallara IR-18, you\u2019ll love the IR-28.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was actually very good, and we\u2019re using a set-up for the previous car,\u201d\u00a0Palou told Autosport. \u201cWe don\u2019t have the hybrid \u2013 we\u2019re carrying the weight, but we don\u2019t have any power at all from the hybrid. We\u2019re running very good lap times, I think, with the primaries [tyres] and it being a green track. I think it\u2019s going to be very fun for everyone to watch, and also for the drivers. I feel we\u2019re going to break a lot of track records, which is going to be good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The Dallara IR-28 is scheduled to replace the IR-18 in IndyCar in 2028<\/p>\n

Photo by: IndyCar<\/p>\n

It’s an extremely positive sign that\u00a0Palou was able to extract a lap time from the new car at such an early phase of its development. But it\u2019s also a glimpse into the psyche of the man who has set the standard for IndyCar racing in the 2020s.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a driver, I come with a mindset of not pushing at all and just trying to give feedback and be relaxed,\u201d he said. \u201cBut then I\u2019m like, \u2018I can go and do more,\u2019 and by the end\u2026it\u2019s never like qualifying, but I like to push. That\u2019s how I feel good with myself and the car.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe car felt great,\u201d he later added. \u201cThere are some areas where the car is so much better than the current one, and there are some areas that we need to work on it. But as soon as we did some set-up changes, we got it somewhat close. The car started to come alive, so it\u2019s good. It\u2019s super nice when you drive a car that is not very well set up, but it already drives so much better.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dallara IR-28 could be ready to race right now, which is why it\u2019s so frustrating that a full 19 months will pass before it makes its competition debut<\/p>\n

If we\u2019re generous, the IR-28 project is at least five years into its gestation. But thankfully, it\u2019s a car that came out of the oven fully baked \u2013 unlike the Dallara IR-12, from which the IR-28 traces its roots. That tail-heavy car scared the likes of Dario Franchitti and Tony Kanaan<\/a> as they struggled to top 205mph in early tests on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval in late 2011 but eventually provided the IndyCar Series with some competitive and entertaining racing \u2013 and a basic chassis still in use today.<\/p>\n

The rollout of the IR-28 created a wave of excitement in the IndyCar fan base. If only it were the IR-27. Longtime observers of the series fondly remember the days when three or four chassis manufacturers and three or four engine manufacturers routinely cranked out new product every year, albeit supplying only a portion of the grid rather than a full field of 25-33 cars. Given modern thought processes and economics, the IR-28 is pretty much all we could have hoped for.<\/p>\n

In the modern spec-car era, the announcement of a new IndyCar is a big deal.<\/p>\n

It looks and sounds like the Dallara IR-28 could be ready to race right now, which is why it\u2019s so frustrating that a full 19 months will pass before it makes its competition debut at St. Petersburg in March 2028. Can anybody solve the puzzle of beating Palou in a Dallara IR-18 between now and then?<\/p>\n

\"Fans <\/p>\n

Fans will have to be content with watching Palou dominate in the IR-18 – but who is to say he won’t rule in the new car?<\/p>\n

Photo by: Gavin Baker \/ Lumen via Getty Images<\/p>\n

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– The Autosport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five days after blazing around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course at a pretty fair clip in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":850231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[71844,64,63,5856,806,805,803,804,7640,419465,85,420928],"class_list":["post-850230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-alex-palou","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-indycar","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-portland","tag-portland-international-raceway","tag-sports","tag-why-indycars-new-runner-cannot-arrive-soon-enough"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=850230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}