New Indy Car And Independent Officiating Update From IndyCar President

IndyCar President and Indianapolis Motor Speedway President Doug Boles

IndyCar Photo

One of the major initiatives in IndyCar is the development of a new car to replace the current model that dates all the way back to 2012. During an IndyCar test session at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Tuesday, October 21, IndyCar President Doug Boles gave a brief update on the progress of the car that is expected to be ready for the 2028 NTT IndyCar Series season.

“We gave the team owners sort of that initial look at the car in October of last year and then had another opportunity to have team owners and actually team managers take a look at it here over the last couple weeks,” Boles said. “I think we’ll get it finalized in a sense, where we can really be public with it, hopefully, before Q1 (first quarter) of next year. Hopefully sometime in Q1 next year we’ll actually get a chance to physically have a car for people to see, touch and feel.

“Then hopefully start testing this sometime next summer.”

Fans, media and the teams believe IndyCar needs to have a new car on track to replace the current model that just completed its 14^th season of competition in 2025. The current car has had several different iterations of bodywork, but the tub and other components have remained the same since 2012.

Update On Independent IndyCar Officiating Body

Another major project for IndyCar is a new, independent officiating body to take over the duties currently held by IndyCar staff. It became a major point of contention after two Team Penske cars failed pre-qualifying inspection for the 109^th Indianapolis 500 which prevented two of the three entries from making a final qualification attempt in the Fast 12.

IndyCar, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Team Penske are all owned by Roger Penske. Although Penske is not involved in any officiating calls and strong denies exerting influence over those decisions, Penske and Boles believe transparency is important. That is why IndyCar is moving to an independent officiating group.

“One of the things we talked about in May is that we definitely got to get to a point where we have some sort of level of independent officiating to remove some of that, the optics challenges that I think we’ve all had,” Boles explained. “We’ve got three or four options.

“We’ve talked to the teams, about three of them. We’ve added another option since then. I think we’ll have to make that decision here in the next few weeks, because we have to be able to put that in place, to be able to have it ready to go on March 1, when we start racing to St Petersburg.

“We’ve come a long way. A lot of great options, a lot of great input from the teams, a lot of great input, frankly, from other series.

“We’ve talked to the FIA, we’ve talked to the ACCUS folks (The Automobile Competition Committee for the United States), we’ve talked to other series on what works and what doesn’t work.

“The challenge for us is, let’s just put something together that we all feel comfortable with, and even if it’s independent and at some level, we can refine it as we go forward. That may be where we go, but I feel pretty good about.”

A new Indy car and a new independent officiating crew are two major developments for IndyCar moving forward to create more interest and greater integrity.