For those hoping to see someone besides Alex Palou win an NTT IndyCar Series race, last Saturday’s oval-course race at Phoenix might have suggested a nudge toward parity. Granted, that was just the second event of the season.
But the debuting Java House Grand Prix of Arlington this weekend in the Dallas-Fort Worth Motorplex city’s Entertainment District could produce a third winner in as many weeks because all the drivers are experiencing it for the first time. And no one is getting an early edge by using the simulator.
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“For a place like this that’s brand-new, you don’t have a full surface scan [for the simulator]. You only have essentially a GPS scan with walls kind of placed around the perimeter.
“Both Honda and Chevy have kind of the same track model, so you don’t have any sort of the bumps modeled or grip differential depending on surfaces,” Ed Carpenter Racing’s Alexander Rossi said.
“I think it’s a great tool to at least know what corner comes next. But in terms of, like, brake points and grip levels, how fast you can actually go, the line, where bumps are, that sort of thing, everyone will be figuring that out together kind of starting from zero.”
Christian Rasmussen, his teammate who also carries the distinctive livery of the race title sponsor, agreed that intensive sim work wouldn’t be helpful “just because we don’t have that track scan yet. Without all of the bumps and undulations of the track, it’s not really precise enough. Once you kind of get the layout of the actual track, there’s not really much more you can find there before we get a proper scan.”
“At this level of IndyCar, the drivers, we’ve all seen new tracks before. It levels the playing field for probably the first 20 minutes.”
However, Rossi said, “At this level of IndyCar, the drivers, we’ve all seen new tracks before. It levels the playing field for probably the first 20 minutes. Then everyone’s up to speed pretty quickly, getting pretty much all they can out of the car at that point. By the time you get into practice two and qualifying, everyone is going to be doing the same thing. By the time you get to qualifying, there’s still the teams that are superior on street courses.”
Earning extra TV time
Qualifying has a new twist this week. The procedure for the first two segments will be the same, the Firestone Fast Six portion—which determines who’ll have pole position—will become a single-car, single-lap qualifying effort. Each of the top six will go out, in inverted order from their top-12 performances, giving each driver more exclusive TV time as FOX Sports expands its coverage to two hours. Depending on the feedback, IndyCar has the option of using this format in the future.
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IndyCar President Doug Boles gave the move a hearty thumbs-up, as did the racers. He said, “This will allow the competitors and sponsors who earned spots in the Firestone Fast Six the full attention of the broadcast during its qualifying attempt. It also allows for viewers at home to see just what makes qualifying in IndyCar so competitive and the perfection that it takes to sit atop the grid and earn the right to lead the field to the green flag on race day.”
Eric Shanks, FOX Sports CEO and executive producer, said the network “continue[s] to search for new, unique, and innovative ways to tell the stories of the remarkable competition in the series. He said it will “showcase the stars of the series and dig deeper into what it truly takes to drive on the razor’s edge.”
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Rasmussen said, “It’s really cool that IndyCar takes the initiative to try something different, even though we don’t really know how it’s going to go. There’s still a lot of unknowns, probably some kinks that need to be sorted out. For now, it’s very exciting, something new, a new format. Hopefully we can make it in to actually get to try it.”
Rossi was equally enthusiastic about the change.
“I’m thrilled about it. I think it’s been talked about internally for a while. I think it will add a huge amount of excitement to what is already a pretty awesome and entertaining qualifying format,” he said.
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Alexander Rossi.
“I think the big thing that’s really cool is if you make it to the Fast Six, it’s quite an accomplishment. To be able to reward your partners by getting kind of three minutes of focused TV time on your car ’cause you made it into the Fast Six is a win-win for everyone,” Rossi said. “It will make the commentators’ jobs easier. We don’t know what we don’t know. I’m sure there’s some things that we haven’t thought about yet that potentially could change that opinion. Certainly, going into this weekend, I know that everyone on the drivers’ side is super-pumped. Hopefully it will continue after this.”
One thing the ECR duo does not want to continue is falling short of podium finishes, especially at their sponsor’s race and at this gleaming new venue. Rossi started and finished sixth Saturday at Phoenix. Otherwise, they’ve started mid- to back-of-the pack and stayed there—results that don’t reflect the team’s hard work and their own skills.
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Rossi said, “ECR is certainly taking steps in the right direction. We’re only two races in. Both cars on both weekends had their own dramas, to varying degrees, that didn’t showcase the full potential both in qualifying and the race. The team has taken a step forward from last year, which was already a big structural and organizational change from 2024. But unfortunately so far in 2026, it hasn’t really been shown at the end of the day on paper and race results.”
Rasmussen isn’t looking backward. He said, “The way I’m looking at it, we have been the car to beat in two out of the last three oval races. There’s no reason that we can’t make that three for four or four for five, et cetera, going forward. We’re looking forward, taking the positives, leaving the negatives, then see what we can do here this next weekend in Arlington.”
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Josef Newgarden.
Chip Ganassi Racing’s Palou won the opener on the St. Petersburg street course, and Josef Newgarden from Team Penske won on the short oval at Phoenix. But Rossi isn’t conceding anything, although he said Ganassi Racing and Team Penske “ultimately are the benchmark and have been for the past decade and a half, maybe two decades.” Rossi said, “The good thing about this sport is, especially the schedule right now, you’re back on track in a couple of days. Obviously being the Java House Grand Prix of Arlington, there’s a lot of incentive for Christian and [me] this weekend to put together a complete weekend that can showcase the steps that ECR has taken in the off-season.”
So something might be brewing at the Java House Grand Prix of Arlington, which FOX will broadcast, staring with qualifying at 2:30 p.m. ET Saturday on FS2, FOX One, the FOX Sports app, and IndyCar Radio. Coverage of Sunday’s Java House Grand Prix of Arlington will begin at 12:30 p.m. ET Sunday on FOX, FOX Deportes, FOX One, the FOX Sports app, and IndyCar Radio.
Susan Wade has lived in the Seattle area for 40 years, but motorsports is in the Indianapolis native’s DNA. She has emerged as one of the leading drag-racing writers with nearly 30 seasons at the racetrack, focusing on the human-interest angle. She was the first non-NASCAR recipient of the prestigious Russ Catlin Award and has covered the sport for the Chicago Tribune, Newark Star-Ledger, and Seattle Times. She has contributed to Autoweek as a freelance writer since 2016.