Closer Racing, More Passing Expected For 107th Indianapolis 500 After New IndyCar Aero Package Tested At Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Drivers and teams hit the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Thursday for the annual Indianapolis 500 Open Test and are confident closer racing with more passing opportunities will be featured in the May 28 Indy 500.

A combination of aerodynamic changes to the underside of the Indy cars, combined with a change to the rear wing angle created more drag and more frontal downforce on the high-speed machines.

The result will be the ability for cars to close up quicker and closer to each other and create more passing opportunities in the 107^thIndianapolis 500 on Memorial Day Weekend.

There are 34 car/driver combinations entered for the 33-car starting lineup for the world’s biggest race that is the largest single-day spectator sport in the world.

In Thursday’s test session, 33 car/drivers were on track. The 34^th entry is RC Enerson of ABEL Motorsports, who will return to go through the Rookie Orientation Program (ROP) when practice for this year’s Indy 500 begins on Tuesday, May 16.

The Indy 500 Open Test was originally scheduled for two days, but Friday’s second day was cancelled at 9:15 a.m. Eastern Time because of steady rain and temperatures in the 40s.

IndyCar officials anticipated inclement weather for the second day of the test, so they started Thursday’s session one hour earlier and added 30 minutes to the end of the track time, concluding the test at 6:30 p.m. ET.

Because of the extra track time, most of the teams were able to complete their test plan on Thursday, realizing that Friday was going to be a washout.

A total of 3,517 total laps were completed. That included one session for the veterans only in the morning, one session for the Rookie Orientation Program and for “refresher” laps and a final session for all drivers that lasted four-hours-and-15-minutes.

IndyCar officials, led by Director of Aerodynamics Tino Belli, came up with a complicated combination of strakes, “Barge Boards,” Gurney Flaps (aka Wickers) and other tweaks to create a balanced approach to additional downforce.

Josef Newgarden of Team Penske had the fastest speed in the test at 227.686 in the No. 2 Shell Chevrolet in a very busy session where he completed 115 laps.

It was 86 degrees and sunny on Thursday. The following day, it was raining with temperature in the 40s.

“Great day. Really great day,” Newgarden said after Thursday’s test. “I wish it was like race day today. But you don’t get to choose those. You got to show up on that day and be really good. I told the team, if this was race day, don’t touch it. It was very good.

“Sometimes you have that around here. Sometimes you show up and sometimes the cars are just great. Sometimes you got to work on it.

“Today was one of those really good days. We got through a list as well, we learned a lot, which is always positive.

“Sometimes you can go in circles around here, sometimes you’re inefficient. Today as a team I felt like we were very efficient with time, split it up, divided and conquered. Really happy for Team Penske today and feeling good next month for the Shell car.”

Conor Daly of Ed Carpenter Racing was second fastest at 227.466 miles per hour in the No. 20 Bitnile.com Chevrolet. He was followed by six-time NTT IndyCar Series champion and 2008 Indianapolis 500 winning driver Scott Dixon at 226.788 mph in the No. 9 PNC Bank Honda for Chip Ganassi Racing.

Kyle Kirkwood, who won last Sunday’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, was fourth at 226.727 mph in the No. 27 AutoNation
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Honda.

Two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Takuma Sato of Chip Ganassi Racing rounded out the top five at 226.265 mph in the No. 11 Honda for Chip Ganassi Racing.

“This is the first time we get to see what we’re doing on computers actually makes sense on a racetrack, and we think it does,” Kirkwood said. “They’ve done a really good job. We’re able to race really close with everyone. The racing is a lot closer this year in this front pack than it was last year, which is cool to see.”

All five veterans and three rookies required to participate in refresher tests and the Rookie Orientation Program completed those sequences of laps successfully and are eligible for full participation in May.

Veterans completing refreshers were Marco Andretti, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Tony Kanaan, Katherine Legge, and Stefan Wilson. First-year Indy 500 drivers completing ROP were Augustin Canapino, Benjamin Pedersen, and Sting Ray Robb.

Four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves believes any time spent in an Indy car at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is valuable.

“It’s priceless,” Castroneves told me. “You don’t have much chance to have an Indy car running in good weather with all the drivers on the track because it changes the way the car reacts. It’s important to have all the other cars out there at the same time to see how it will react in the race.”

Ryan Hunter-Reay, the 2014 Indianapolis 500 winner and 2012 NTT IndyCar Series champion, returned to the cockpit of an Indy car for the first time since the final race of the 2021 season. After a long and successful career at Andretti Autosport, Hunter-Reay was a reserve driver for Chip Ganassi Racing in 2022 but did not compete in an IndyCar race.

This year, he will compete in the 107^th Indianapolis 500 in a Chevrolet for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing.

“I was expecting a little bit more with the downforce adds that are offered to us,” Hunter-Reay told me at the test. “I was expecting a little bit more grip. It was similar.

“The real wild card today was the wind, right? Guys were kind of balloon footing it out of two at times. You never knew who was on the new tires. I was getting some really good runs on some guys. You just never knew. It was a weird day in that aspect.

“There is added bottom side downforce, which I would think would help. Josef looked super strong out there. There were a few others. Passes were not coming as easily amongst the whole group, as easily as they kind of do here when you’re the second or third car back.”

Teams have the option of tailoring the additional aerodynamic changes to meet their individual needs. That is why by the time they return in May, many of those teams will have a much better idea of how the package will work.

But the good news is these teams now have options, similar to the changes they used in the PPG 375 at Texas Motor Speedway on April 2 that brought wild racing back to that event.

“We don’t want to see everybody run the same aerodynamic configuration, if at all possible,” Belli told me. “The people in the back will use more rear wing and the people in the front with clean air will start more trimmed out. The good thing about wing angle, it can be adjusted during the race.

“You can work your way up and trim out to be more competitive at the end of the race.

“We are expecting more of a step-up in the competitiveness in the cars that are further back in the field and give them a bit more of a chance.

“It will make it easier for the cars to race closer together. At Texas, we had up to 12 percent more downforce. We are expecting somewhat of a similar step towards more passing and ease of following each other at Indianapolis.”