IndyCar. 2026 season

Origin

American championship car racing predates every world championship — the American Automobile Association sanctioned national-level racing from 1905, and the discipline found its permanent home when Carl Fisher's Indianapolis Motor Speedway opened in 1909.¹ The first Indianapolis 500 ran on 30 May 1911 and was won by Ray Harroun in the Marmon Wasp at an average of 74.6 mph, driving alone with a rear-view mirror of his own devising in place of the customary riding mechanic.² The 500 became the centrepiece around which the national championship was organised. The AAA withdrew from racing after the 1955 Le Mans disaster, and the United States Auto Club — created by Speedway owner Tony Hulman — sanctioned the championship from 1956.¹

Turning points

The owners' revolt

By the late 1970s the team owners wanted control of television money and promotion that USAC's structure could not give them. Championship Auto Racing Teams, organised around Roger Penske and Pat Patrick and drawing on Dan Gurney's 1978 "white paper", split from USAC and ran its first season in 1979.³ USAC kept sanctioning the Indianapolis 500, producing an uneasy arrangement that held for sixteen years — CART ran the championship, while its teams crossed over each May to contest a 500 it did not control.³

The split

In 1994 Tony George — Hulman's grandson and the Speedway's president — announced a rival all-oval, cost-capped Indy Racing League, which opened at Walt Disney World Speedway on 27 January 1996 with a win for Buzz Calkins.⁴⁵ The IRL's 25/8 rule guaranteed twenty-five of the 500's thirty-three grid places to its own regulars, and CART responded by boycotting Indianapolis and staging the U.S. 500 at Michigan on the same day — 26 May 1996.⁴ American open-wheel racing spent twelve years divided: the stars raced where the 500 was not, audiences and sponsors drained away to NASCAR, and CART collapsed into bankruptcy in 2003, re-emerging as Champ Car.⁴ Champ Car folded in February 2008 and its teams were absorbed into the IRL's IndyCar Series, reunifying the discipline under the banner it carries today.⁴

Reunification and the Penske era

The unified series standardised on the Dallara DW12 chassis in 2012 with 2.2-litre twin-turbocharged V6 engines from Chevrolet and Honda — a formula still in service.⁶ Dan Wheldon's death in the 2011 finale at Las Vegas drove the cockpit-protection programme that produced the aeroscreen, fitted to every car since 2020.⁷ In November 2019 Roger Penske bought the Speedway and the series from the Hulman-George family, ending 74 years of family ownership; hybrid assistance was added to the engines mid-2024, and Fox Corporation took a one-third stake in Penske Entertainment in July 2025 alongside a broadcast deal running to 2030.⁸⁹

Today's shape

Álex Palou's 2025 championship — clinched at Portland with two races to spare, off the back of eight wins — was his fourth in five seasons and made him, at 28, the youngest four-time champion; he also won the 109th Indianapolis 500, the first driver since Dario Franchitti in 2010 to take the 500 and the title in the same year, and the first Spaniard to drink the milk.¹⁰ Only A.J. Foyt (seven) and Scott Dixon (six) have more titles; Foyt's 67 race wins remain the record, and the four-time 500 winners' club still numbers four — Foyt, Al Unser, Rick Mears and Hélio Castroneves.¹⁰¹¹ The 2026 season runs eighteen races — the most since 2014 — every one on the Fox network, opening at St. Petersburg on 1 March and finishing at Laguna Seca on 6 September, with Phoenix, Arlington and Markham new to the calendar.¹² Its centrepiece delivered: Felix Rosenqvist won the 110th Indianapolis 500 on 24 May 2026 for Meyer Shank Racing, passing David Malukas on the final lap to win by 0.0233 seconds — one of the closest finishes in the race's history, in a running whose seventy lead changes set an all-time record.¹³

Footnotes

1. Wikipedia, "American championship car racing," accessed 11 June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_championship_car_racing. ↩ ↩²

2. Wikipedia, "1911 Indianapolis 500," accessed 11 June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1911_Indianapolis_500. ↩

3. Wikipedia, "Championship Auto Racing Teams," accessed 11 June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Championship_Auto_Racing_Teams. ↩ ↩²

4. Wikipedia, "IndyCar Series" (Indy Racing League founding, the 25/8 rule, the 2008 unification), accessed 11 June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IndyCar_Series; Wikipedia, "U.S. 500," accessed 11 June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._500. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. Wikipedia, "Walt Disney World Speedway," accessed 11 June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_World_Speedway. ↩

6. Wikipedia, "IndyCar Series" (chassis and engine formula), accessed 11 June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IndyCar_Series. ↩

7. Wikipedia, "Dan Wheldon," accessed 11 June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Wheldon. ↩

8. Wikipedia, "Indianapolis Motor Speedway" (2019 sale to Penske Corporation), accessed 11 June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indianapolis_Motor_Speedway. ↩

9. Fox Sports, "INDYCAR Prepares for Another Historic Championship Season on FOX," February 2026, accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.foxsports.com/articles/motor/indycar-prepares-for-another-historic-championship-season-on-fox. ↩

10. IndyCar, "Alex Palou: 2025 NTT INDYCAR SERIES Champion," 11 August 2025, accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.indycar.com/news/2025/08/08-11-palou-champ; Indianapolis Motor Speedway, "Palou Wins Indianapolis 500 To Earn First Oval Victory, Immortality," 25 May 2025, accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.indianapolismotorspeedway.com/news-multimedia/news/2025/05/25/05-25-500-race-ims. ↩ ↩²

11. Wikipedia, "A. J. Foyt," accessed 11 June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._Foyt; Wikipedia, "Hélio Castroneves," accessed 11 June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A9lio_Castroneves. ↩

12. IndyCar, "INDYCAR Announces 17-Race 2026 NTT INDYCAR SERIES Schedule," 16 September 2025, accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.indycar.com/news/2025/09/09-16-2026-sked; IndyCar, "INDYCAR Prepares for Another Historic Championship Season on FOX" (18th race added for 2026), 23 February 2026, accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.indycar.com/news/2026/02/02-23-competition-update-2026. ↩

13. IndyCar, "2026 110th Running of the Indianapolis 500 — Race Results," accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.indycar.com/results/ntt-indycar-series/2026/110th-running-of-the-indianapolis-500/race/; Total Motorsport, "Indy 500 results 2026: Full finishing order," accessed 11 June 2026, https://www.total-motorsport.com/indy-500-results-2026-full-finishing-order/. ↩