Penske drivers Josef Newgarden and Will Power have called for a change to IndyCar’s oval qualifying format because the current system can disadvantage some drivers in title contention. At all ovals aside from Indianapolis, the running order for the one-by-one qualifying is currently decided by names being drawn from a hat – giving an advantage

Tony Kanaan says both he and his new AJ Foyt Racing team needed a change in order to win IndyCar races in 2018. The 2004 IndyCar champion has not won a race since ’14, his first year with Chip Ganassi Racing. His four-year spell with the team came to an end this season when Ganassi

Tony Kanaan has signed a multi-year contract to drive for AJ Foyt Racing in the IndyCar Series from 2018. It had been known that the team was negotiating with the 2004 champion and 2013 Indianapolis 500 winner, once it became clear that Kanaan’s tenure at Chip Ganassi Racing was ending after four years. Foyt said:

Roger Penske has ruled out running a fifth car at IndyCar’s Indianapolis 500 in 2018 for Juan Pablo Montoya. Montoya will drive full-time in the IMSA Sportscar Championship next season as part of Penske’s all-new Acura DPi programme after switching to an Indianapolis-only IndyCar schedule last year. The ex-Formula 1 driver had recently said he

Stefan Wilson is set to make his second Indianapolis 500 start next year after agreeing a deal to drive an Andretti Autosport-run entry in the 2018 event. Wilson, the younger brother of the late IndyCar driver Justin, contested the 2016 running of the race for the now defunct KVSH Racing outfit. He had made plans

Four-time CART champion and Dale Coyne Racing driver Sebastien Bourdais says the outgoing manufacturer aerokit era “hurt” IndyCar’s standing. IndyCar opened up the Dallara IR-12 aerokit to manufacturers in 2015, which resulted in a steep increase in costs. It also caused a split field as Honda struggled to adapt to the changes early on. Chevrolet

Juan Pablo Montoya wants to make a sixth Indianapolis 500 appearance in 2018, and hopes that racing with Penske in the IMSA SportsCar Championship will not prevent it. Montoya lost his full-time IndyCar seat to eventual 2017 champion Josef Newgarden at the beginning of this year, and was later confirmed as one of Penske’s drivers

Josef Newgarden was crowned 2017 IndyCar Series champion earlier this month, completing his rise from young hopeful to American superstar. A key player in his success is former Autosport journalist Jeremy Shaw, whose Team USA Scholarship allowed Newgarden to race in Formula Ford in the United Kingdom. In this video from Motorsport.tv’s weekly programme The

The new universal aerokit for 2018 has completed its IndyCar-led testing at Sebring, with six drivers taking part. Regular testers Juan Pablo Montoya and Oriol Servia were joined by 2017 champion Josef Newgarden, Scott Dixon, Spencer Pigot and James Hinchcliffe for Tuesday’s running. Next year’s car will be lighter than the current machinery and a

Trevor Carlin says it is increasingly likely that his Carlin team will step up to IndyCar in 2018, amid suggestions the outfit has held talks with McLaren about a project. Carlin launched an Indy Lights project in 2015 with an eye to eventually graduating to America’s top tier, and took Ed Jones to the support

New IndyCar champion Josef Newgarden says an “absolutely terrible” May in which he crashed out of the Indianapolis 500 made his 2017 title pursuit more difficult. Newgarden headed into the Sonoma double-points finale just three points ahead of nearest rival Scott Dixon, recovering from being as low as eighth in the drivers’ standings after a

Chip Ganassi has confirmed that his IndyCar squad will field just two entries for the 2018 season. The team has taken the decision to reduce its number of cars from four to two for next year. Four-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon – who ended this season in third place in the championship – will remain

Indianapolis 500 winner Takuma Sato will return to Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing for the 2018 IndyCar season. Ex-Formula 1 driver Sato moves across to Rahal after a single season at the Andretti Autosport squad. Sato scored four top-five finishes during the 2017 season, including the first-ever Indy 500 win for a Japanese driver, and ended

Porsche’s World Endurance Championship leader Brendon Hartley has revealed he is keen on a switch to IndyCar next year after the end of the German manufacturer’s LMP1 programme. The New Zealander confirmed that he is “genuinely looking at IndyCars” after being linked to drives with both Ganassi and Schmidt Peterson Motorsport for next year. “IndyCars

Tristan Gommendy says he and former Formula 1 team co-owner Didier Calmels will not be “daredevils” about their surprise 2018 Indianapolis 500 project. Sportscar racer Gommendy will make a shock return to American single-seater racing next May, 11 years after he competed in the final Champ Car season with KV Racing Technology. He will enter

Simon Pagenaud says he planned his surprise four-stop strategy that won the 2017 IndyCar finale at Sonoma over text with his engineer the night before Sunday’s race. Pagenaud entered the weekend as one of five drivers in title contention, and needed to win the race and have Scott Dixon and Josef Newgarden finish lower than

IndyCar champion Josef Newgarden says he was “steaming” at missing out on race victory in the Sonoma finale, despite winning the title. Newgarden had taken pole for the double-points decider, but lost out to Penske team-mate Simon Pagenaud in the race after the 2016 champion chose an alternate four-stop strategy and took the lead on

Josef Newgarden secured the 2017 IndyCar title in his first season with Penske with second to Simon Pagenaud in the season finale at Sonoma. Newgarden led much of the race but his reigning champion team-mate Pagenaud made the most of an out-of-sequence four-stop pit strategy to move into the lead on lap 65 of the

IndyCar title contender Scott Dixon admits his Ganassi team and its Honda aerokit have a “deficit” to the Penske Dallara-Chevrolets of his main championship rivals going into Sunday’s Sonoma decider. Points leader Josef Newgarden set a new track record to claim pole and the bonus point, and his three Penske team-mates Will Power, Simon Pagenaud

Josef Newgarden claimed his second career pole position in the final round of the IndyCar season at Sonoma, in doing so claiming a valuable point towards the championship. The Penske driver’s time of 1m15.520s was a new lap record in a session in which the previous benchmark tumbled multiple times. Newgarden was 0.035s quicker than

Simon Pagenaud was fastest in third practice for the 2017 IndyCar season at Sonoma as he looks to become the first driver to successfully defend a series title since ’11. Pagenaud set a record lap time of 1m16.0329s to finish ahead of Ganassi’s Scott Dixon by 0.1125 seconds. The top five positions were filled by


 IndyCar rookie of the year Ed Jones is close to signing a new deal to remain at Dale Coyne Racing, despite interest from rival teams. The 2016 Indy Lights champion graduated to IndyCar this season, partnering Sebastien Bourdais at DCR. Bourdais’ high-speed crash at the Indianapolis 500 then pushed Jones into the leading driver

Schmidt Peterson Motorsports says Le Mans 24 Hours winner Brendon Hartley and Robert Wickens are part of a 28-driver list to race the team’s second full-time IndyCar entry in 2018. Mikhail Aleshin left the team to help develop BR Engineering’s Dallara-built LMP1 car last month, and the vacancy at Schmidt Peterson has become a key

The Schmidt Peterson Motorsports IndyCar team has announced “an increased level of partnership” with Honda and a contract extension through 2020. SPM has been a Honda team since engine competition returned to the series in 2012, and ran Honda Performance Development’s side of the ’18 universal aerokit testing (pictured below). Piers Phillips, the team’s general

Reigning IndyCar champion Simon Pagenaud says he has found defending his title a “harder” task compared to winning his maiden championship last season.
 Pagenuad won five races on his way to the title in 2016, but his only triumph this year came at Phoenix – which marked his first oval victory in the series. 
The

Indy Lights racer Zachary Claman DeMelo will make his IndyCar debut for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing in the season finale at Sonoma. The 19-year-old Canadian finished fifth in Lights with Carlin this season, winning at Road America, and has conducted two IndyCar tests with Schmidt Peterson Motorsports (pictured below). He will drive the second RLLR

Scott Dixon says he will not “overcomplicate” the IndyCar season finale at Sonoma after cutting Josef Newgarden’s championship lead from 31 points to three after last weekend’s Watkins Glen race. Four-time series champion Dixon finished second in Sunday’s race behind eventual winner Alexander Rossi, while Penske’s championship leader Newgarden collided with the pit exit barrier

Josef Newgarden accepted full responsibility for his pit-lane crash at the Watkins Glen IndyCar round, which resulted in his championship lead being slashed to just three points. Going wide as he raced Penske team-mate Will Power out of the pits after his final stop, Newgarden made contact with the pit exit barrier and was then

Alexander Rossi took his first IndyCar victory since his 2016 Indianapolis 500 triumph, as Josef Newgarden’s championship lead was slashed by a pitlane crash at Watkins Glen. Newgarden smacked the pit exit wall at the final stops and was then hit by Sebastien Bourdais, causing rear suspension damage. A long stop for repairs left Newgarden

Andretti Autosport’s Alexander Rossi clinched his first IndyCar pole position at Watkins Glen, edging four-time champion Scott Dixon. Rossi’s lap time of 1m22.4639s, a new track record, came in the final seconds of the ‘Fast Six’ section of qualifying, denying Chip Ganassi Racing’s Dixon by little over half a tenth of a second. Rossi, who