Parting shot Aguri Suzuki loses his seat

The French expression mon brave – literally ‘my brave’ – more accurately equates to the English phrase ‘my good fellow’. However, both the literal meaning and the common usage apply to Éric René Boullier, who was born in Laval, near Le Mans, France, in November 1973, for he is both a nice chap and a man of remarkable audacity, as you will find out if you read on.

“I was born into a normal, decent, middle-class family,” he says, speaking via Teams from his holiday home in Marrakech, which ancient fortified city he loves, for his wife Tamara is from Morocco. “Laval was and is a nice town – not big, not small – and its medieval centre was and is very pretty. My parents weren’t into racing at all. Then, one Sunday, when I was nine years old, we were invited to lunch at the house of some family friends – lovely people with whom I’m still in contact now –and in the middle of their living room was a remote-control racing car that they’d built themselves. I was captivated, and what fascinated me most was the engineering more than the driving actually.

Éric Boullier, left, on GP2 duty in 2007 with Super Nova’s David Sears

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“So I begged my dad to buy me a remote-control racing car and I started competing. I finished second in my first race, with a car that I’d prepared myself, then I began to win occasionally, first in local contests then in regional tournaments. At that time I had no idea that I might one day work in motor sport – that would have seemed like a crazy fantasy to me back then – but, as I went on in school, it became clear that I was good at science and maths. So, after I’d passed my bac [baccalauréat, a national exam taken by French pupils at the end of their secondary education], I studied physics at university [the Institut Polytechnique des Sciences Avancées, in the Parisian suburb of Ivry-sur-Seine]. I’d like to have been able to study automotive or motor sport engineering, as you could then and still can in the UK, but that wasn’t available in France at that time, so I focused on aviation technology and space science, which I realised were relatively similar to automotive and motor sport engineering.

“By this time I’d worked out what I wanted to do with my professional life and motor sport was going to be at the centre of it. So I did whatever I could to get relevant internships. I managed to get myself a chance to be a gofer for the Porsche team at Le Mans, when I was still in my teens, which was awesome, then I started to do a bit of data engineering work with them, and that was followed by my first proper job, even though I was still a student, with Peugeot Sport, who were successful in sports car racing back then.

“After that I sorted out an internship with DAMS [Driot Arnoux Motor Sport], for which role I was interviewed by Jean-Paul Driot himself – in English. Driot seemed to like me, but he said my English was rubbish, which it was in those days, so, to help me improve my language skills, he put me in charge of foreign suppliers. But in fact it was DAMS’ British design-engineer Rob Arnott, a great guy, who taught me English. He and I used to have a few beers in the evenings, because he was living in the UK but staying at a hotel near the DAMS factory in France during the week, and, hanging out with him, something suddenly began to click and, well, I gradually became more and more confident in English. So I owe Rob a lot actually.”

Derek Hill was DAMS’ F3000 driver in 2001.

Boullier did well at DAMS and his progress, despite his having no one and nothing other than his own ambition to propel him, was impressive. Something about the young man – his chummy yet dogged determination perhaps – made influential people like him. Most twentysomething French lads with a love of motor sport would have been well satisfied to have landed the opportunity to develop a career with DAMS – and Boullier looks back fondly on those days – but he wanted more. So it was that, in 1998, when he saw an ad for a Renault Sport position he applied for it, even though the job was ‘Formula 1 race engineer’ and he was still at university.

“I applied for this job because it’s my dream but I didn’t expect to get it”

“Renault Sport was supplying engines to Williams and Benetton in Formula 1 at that time [via Mecachrome and Playlife],” he remembers, chuckling. “I applied for the job on a whim. I certainly didn’t expect to get it. But, to my surprise, they asked me to go for an interview, then a second, then a third. And now I began to worry because I was being serially interviewed for an important F1 job even though I was still a student. Then they asked me to attend a fourth and final interview, which would be conducted by Denis Chevrier, a legend of French motor sport, and, to my astonishment, it went well. In fact he said, ‘I want to hire you, so I’m going to introduce you to the Benetton race engineers, and, if they like you too, you’ve got the job.’

leading from the front, 2009 — Leading from the front, 2009

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“I didn’t know what to say, to be honest. I panicked. It was overwhelming. But I had to be honest with Denis. ‘I applied for this job because it’s my dream,’ I told him, ‘but I absolutely didn’t expect to get it. I don’t yet have a diploma – I’m still studying for it.’ So Denis checked with Renault’s HR people and they said, ‘No, if he doesn’t have a diploma, we can’t appoint him to that position.’ And that was that.

“So I carried on at DAMS, and I finished my internship there in July 1999. After that Driot gave me a full-time job as a data engineer – performance engineer in today’s terminology – in DAMS’ sports car racing operation. The car was a Lola-Judd, and our drivers were Éric Bernard, Emmanuel Collard, Christophe Tinseau and Jean-Marc Gounon. I also worked in Formula 3000 with Derek Hill, the son of the 1961 F1 world champion Phil Hill, and they were both great guys: real gentlemen in fact.

In 2002, Boullier saw success with Racing Engineering in the World Series by Nissan; Justin Wilson, pictured, would finish the season fourth

“Then, in 2000, DAMS got the contract to run the Cadillac Le Mans team. I was a race engineer on the second car. We weren’t mega-successful but it was an awesome experience. The following year, 2001, we continued with Cadillac, but by this time Audi was dominating the Le Mans scene. Also, Driot was maybe beginning to lose interest, just a little, and he moved to the UK to focus on oil trading. As a result he began to delegate more and more at DAMS. Anyway, one day, while I was driving to work, I heard on the radio that Luc Besson [the famous French film-maker] was planning to make a movie about the popular French cartoon racing driver Michel Vaillant. I mentioned it to Driot, and he replied, ‘Let’s help them make it! Go to Paris and meet them!’

“So I did. I was still in my twenties and I had no experience of business or even of life outside motor racing. I was shaking inside when I sat down for that first meeting. It took me three or four months to convince those tough film executives to choose DAMS as a partner with whom they should make their movie, but in the end that’s what happened. We proposed that our 1999 Lola-Judd would be the model for the hero car and that the baddie car would be based on a Panoz, that aggressive-looking front-engined Le Mans racer, and Besson’s people loved it.

Jean-Paul Driot, left, is the D in DAMS, here with Boullier in Valencia for the GP2 European GP, ’08

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“We had to build the cars ourselves, of course. I modelled the Lola-themed car on an older Lola, and I built the Panoz-themed car on an old Caterham 7 chassis. The two cars had to be capable of being filmed racing each other at more than 160kph [100mph], and they had to look super-cool, but, even so, we built them both on a total budget of $500,000 [£335,000 at that time], which was pretty tricky to do. It was a complex cinematic operation, too. The Lola-Judd sequences were shot in the UK and the Panoz bits were done in the US. We also filmed at Le Mans in 2002. The film came out in 2003. I learned a hell of a lot – about business and life. The whole thing was an amazing experience for me.

“DAMS didn’t compete in any racing in 2002, but because of the movie we still made a small profit. That year I also worked for Racing Engineering, the Spanish team that had been founded by Alfonso de Orléans-Borbón in 1999. I ran a Dallara-Nissan for them in World Series by Nissan – and we won the 2002 team championship with Franck Montagny and Justin Wilson. So that was a busy year – and a good year – for me.

Boullier was a race engineer for the DAMS-run Cadillac team at Le Mans, 2000-01

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“Driot was impressed and he asked me to return to DAMS for 2003. Better still, he asked me to be the team principal of his new Formula Renault V6 Eurocup team. Our driver was José Maria López. We were a small and young group – just 11 of us – and José Maria was 19 and I was still only 29. But we gelled well and we won the championship straight away. The next year, 2004, we ran Neel Jani, who was 20, and he finished fourth in the championship, but it was a tough year for us because we lacked sponsors and we were short of money therefore.

“For 2005 I was running DAMS’ new Formula Renault 3.5 Series programme, with Pastor Maldonado, Alx Danielsson and occasionally a few others, including Nicolas Prost. That was comparatively big-time, because the races were on the WTCC [World Touring Car Championship] programme and they were televised on Eurosport. I realised we needed sponsors and I began to work hard on getting them, which I’d never done before. We also ran A1 Grand Prix teams for not only France but also Switzerland and Mexico. Best of all, we entered GP2 that year, 2005, with López, whom I’d won with two years before, and Fairuz Fauzy. We won one GP2 race, in Barcelona, with López, then in 2007 we won two GP2 races, in Bahrain and at Spa, with Nicolas Lapierre. The following season, 2008, we won again, in Barcelona, with Kamui Kobayashi, and by 2009 we’d built up a successful and solvent operation. When Driot had asked me to return to DAMS for 2003, we had 11 staff. By 2009 there were 75, and we were running in four championships. We were doing more than 33 race weekends every year by 2005. It was very busy – but very good.”

DAMS was involved on three fronts in the A1 Grand Prix series from 2005-09.

Boullier was now in his mid-thirties and he had worked well with a lot of drivers, particularly young drivers, over the previous 15 years. Inevitably, some of them began to ask him to help them with their careers and so it was that he formalised that arrangement by joining forces with Gravity Sports Management, which was owned by Gérard López, the Luxembourgish-Spanish businessman who had co-founded the financial services firm Genii Capital with Eric Lux in 2008. It was a significant association for Boullier because it would pave the way for his entry to F1, for López and Lux were heavily involved with the Renault F1 team.

“Would you like to be team principal of the Renault F1 team?”

“In December 2009 Lux called me and asked me to go to the Enstone factory in the UK, where the Renault F1 team was based. ‘Come on December 27,’ he said. So I did. The 2009 season had been mega-difficult for the team because a big scandal about its fixing the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix had come out over the course of the 2009 Belgian Grand Prix weekend. I walked into Flavio Briatore’s old office, and there were López and Lux. ‘Would you like to be team principal of the Renault F1 team?’ López asked me.

“I was astonished. Here I was, still only 36, having never worked a single day in F1 in my entire life, and I was being invited to become the team principal of one of the biggest and most famous teams in F1. I hesitated. I was speechless in fact. To be honest I didn’t know what to say.

Filming the Lola hero car at Le Mans for Luc Besson’s 2003 motor racing film Michel Vaillant – which used DAMS’ expertise

“‘Yes or yes?’ said López, then he stared at me in silence. I looked at him, then at Lux, then back at López. Neither said a word.

“‘Can I say no?’ I finally replied.

“‘No,’ they both said, together.

“And that was that. ‘Come with us,’ they said – and they led me downstairs, where 600 people were standing waiting for me, and there and then they announced me to them all as their new boss.”

With no prior experience in F1, Boullier was drafted in as Renault’s principal in 2010 – a season of mixed fortunes for the team

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Not surprisingly, Boullier was as nervous as he was excited. Who wouldn’t be, having been sprung into such a big and challenging job so abruptly and, it has to be said, so bizarrely? He flew home to Paris for a few days, but he was back at Enstone, as Renault’s new and somewhat wet-behind-the-ears team principal, on January 2. “They booked me a room at the Feathers Hotel in nearby Woodstock [Oxfordshire],” he recalls. “When I got there, on the evening of New Year’s Day, I thought it looked like something out of Harry Potter. The next morning I woke up, I looked out of the window, and I saw 30cm of snow. My PA was supposed to be picking me up but she called me to say that she’d be late because of the terrible weather. Eventually she arrived, in a company Clio. She asked me to drive it to the factory, because of the snow, so I got into the driver’s seat and she sat beside me. At one point on the journey there was a long downhill descent. At the bottom of the hill I could see four cars that had crashed into one another. The four drivers were all waving at me, trying to get me to stop. But there was no grip so I had to put the Clio into the ditch so as to avoid a shunt. When we got out, we found that the four drivers were all Renault F1 employees. So that was a dramatic start.

“Petrov was a decent driver, but he wasn’t on the same level as Kubica”

“Our drivers were Robert Kubica and Vitaly Petrov. Vitaly was a decent driver, but he wasn’t on the same level as Robert. Robert was as good as it gets. Of all the drivers I’ve worked with, I’d place him up there with Kimi Räikkönen and Fernando Alonso. Robert was superfast, he made very few mistakes, he had excellent racecraft, and he was really good at motivating the people around him.”

The 2010 Renault F1 car, the R30, was not a great one, and, although Petrov managed a few minor placings here and there, he struggled with it for much of the season. Kubica drove it brilliantly all year, delivering three podium finishes, and he scored points more often than not.

Kubica leads Ferrari’s Felipe Massa in the 2010 Monaco GP.

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In 2011 López’s and Lux’s company, Genii Capital, became the team’s new owner, relegating Renault to engine-supplier status, and its name was changed to Lotus.

Both drivers were retained and pre-season testing went well, Kubica topping the time sheets in the new-for-2011 R31 on February 2, which was the last day of the pre-season Valencia test. But three days later he had a big shunt in a Skoda Fabia during the Ronde di Andora rally, leaving him with multiple fractures to his right shoulder, right elbow, right hand and right leg. He had a number of operations and although the indications were that he would make a reasonable recovery in time, it was equally clear that he was not going to be racing again in F1 any time soon. In fact he would finally return to F1 nine years later, as a Williams driver, but never again would he be the unstoppable force he had once been.

“I had no idea that Robert was doing that damn rally,” says Boullier, still disquieted by the memory, even after the passage of 14 years. “His manager, Daniele Morelli, called me on the Sunday morning: ‘Big drama, Éric.’ Well, it was. It really was. Robert was in a coma, and at one point we though he might die.

“Thank God he didn’t. But he never raced for us again. As a replacement we hired Nick Heidfeld, who was a logical choice, but he wasn’t on Robert’s level, and the truth was that we’d lost one of our prime assets.” Petrov and Heidfeld started the season well, bagging a brace of third places in Melbourne (Petrov) and Sepang (Heidfeld), but neither of them shone in the next few races and, after the Hungarian GP in July, Heidfeld was dropped, to be replaced for the remainder of the season by Bruno Senna, who, truth be told, performed less well than Heidfeld or Petrov.

“We knew we now had to make changes, and we did,” Boullier says, scratching his chin. “Kimi had been out of F1 for two years, doing a bit of rallying, but he wanted to come back to F1, and we thought he’d be worth taking a chance on. Yes, I figured that he might be a bit rusty at first, but he was still only 32 and he’d been absolutely brilliant in his prime. Alongside him I brought in one of my Gravity [Sports Management] drivers, Romain Grosjean, who was young [25] and superfast, especially over one lap. I thought Romain’s quali pace would keep Kimi digging deep, and it worked.” It did indeed. In 2012 Räikkönen won in Abu Dhabi, he was second in Bahrain, Valencia and Budapest and he was third in Barcelona, Nürburgring and Spa. He ended up third in the F1 drivers’ world championship, beaten by only Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull) and Fernando Alonso (Ferrari). Grosjean drove well, too, bagging podium finishes in Bahrain, Montreal and Budapest.

Robert Kubica, here testing in Valencia in 2011, was a rare talent.

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Räikkönen kicked off the following season, 2013, with a fine win in Melbourne and drove superbly all year, finishing second six times (China, Bahrain, Spain, Germany, Hungary and Korea) and third once (Singapore), while Grosjean stood on five podiums (Bahrain, Germany, Korea, Japan and India).

In 2014 Ron Dennis contacted Boullier to ask him whether he would like to become McLaren’s F1 team principal. A deal was quickly done and Éric was soon on his way from Enstone to Woking.

In 2014 Boullier was hired by Ron Dennis as McLaren’s racing director; he’d spend four years in Woking

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The season started well – Kevin Magnussen finished a fine second on his F1 debut in Melbourne – but thereafter results were disappointing. The drivers, Magnussen and Jenson Button, were not really the problem, but Dennis thought they were, as Boullier recalls: “Early in the season Ron had asked me who my ideal driver line-up would be. I answered, ‘Vettel and Alonso.’ Ron then said, ‘OK, you get Alonso and I’ll get Vettel.’”

Boullier succeeded, but Dennis did not. However, Alonso’s four seasons at McLaren delivered almost nothing. “The McLaren-Honda marriage just didn’t work,” Boullier admits now. “Our chassis weren’t mega in those seasons and Honda’s power units were sometimes poor. On top of that, there was war at board level. Ron and Mansour [Ojjeh] were at daggers drawn, the Bahrainis were taking Mansour’s side, and I, plus Jonathan Neale, Jost Capito and Zak Brown, were in a difficult position. And our engineers didn’t understand or therefore manage well the consequences of F1 going to the hybrid era. I tried my best but by the middle of 2018 it was over, and I announced my resignation.

“It’s probably the first time I’ve ever apologised to a Frenchman”

“It’s a frustrating memory. I remember arriving back in Woking from a visit to Honda’s F1 headquarters in Japan some time in 2014 and asking Ron, ‘How is it possible that Honda will be ready to compete with Mercedes and the others as early as next year, when they’re clearly still so far behind?’ Ron replied, ‘Don’t worry.’ Later, I revisited the Honda plant and I called Ron from there. ‘Come here and see for yourself,’ I said to him. But, again, he assured me that it would all work out OK. But it couldn’t, and it didn’t. They just weren’t ready. They’d begun work on their F1 project at the end of 2012. Ferrari and Renault had started in 2010, and Mercedes had started in 2009. The Honda guys were miles behind. When we went testing at Jerez in February 2015 and we were terrible – slow and unreliable – Ron called me and said, ‘You were right and I was wrong. This is probably the first time I’ve ever apologised to a Frenchman.’

“We had two great drivers in 2015 and 2016: Alonso and Button, world champions both of them. They were upset by our underperformance – understandably. As a result it was difficult to manage them. Jenson was more of a gentleman about it. He moaned behind closed doors but Fernando went public about his frustration. We all remember his ‘GP2 engine’ comment on the radio [Suzuka, 2015], his deckchair stunt [Interlagos the same year], all that. It was a stressful time.

Fernando Alonso deckchair strop, São Paulo, 2015

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“But I’m pleased that McLaren is back to its very best now. It was me who introduced Zak to Mansour and [Sheikh] Mohammed [Bin Essa Al Khalifa], our two main board members, and it was me who hired Andrea Stella from Ferrari, so I’m glad that Zak and Andrea are both doing so well now, as I say.”

Boullier became managing director of the French Grand Prix association in 2019, a position that came to an end when France lost its F1 race after the 2022 event. Since then he has been multitasking on a number of projects, some of which he can discuss and some of which he cannot. “I’ve been working on a plan to bring a grand prix to Tangiers, in Morocco,” he says. “That could be awesome.”

The F1 World Championship sorely requires a grand prix in Africa, and it has visited Morocco before, although the country has hosted only one F1 event of world championship status, in 1958, a race won by Stirling Moss and marred by the fiery and ultimately fatal accident that befell his Vanwall team-mate Stuart Lewis-Evans.

In 2019 Boullier founded Circle, a start-up company whose small but mustard-keen workforce have designed, patented and will soon begin to manufacture a tiny four-wheeled electric vehicle for hire in cities. “It’s a fantastic project,” says Éric, suddenly enthusiastic again, having struggled to smile during his description of his time at McLaren. “The business model is similar to the scooters and bikes that you hire in many cities nowadays, via an app, but our product is a proper little car, powered by batteries that you charge outside the car. So when one battery is flat, you swap it with a new battery that already has charge, and there are six batteries in each car, so you never have to be delayed while your battery is being charged, as you do with conventional full-size EVs. Our car is now fully homologated for the EU, it’ll do 90kph [56mph], and we’ll put it into production next year. We have orders from all over Europe.”

Boullier, MD of the French Grand Prix organisation, in 2022

Will we ever see Boullier in F1 again?

“Well, why not?” he replies. “Actually, I’ve had some interesting discussions recently…”

Born: 09/11/1973, Laval, France

1998 Almost hired by Renault Sport.
1999 Graduates from Paris’s Institut Polytechnique des Sciences Avancées; begins internship with DAMS, then given full-time job as a data engineer.
2000-01 Race engineer for DAMS-run Cadillac team in the Le Mans 24 Hours (2001 as the works team).
2002-03 DAMS involved with Luc Besson’s motor racing film Michel Vaillant.
2002 No racing with DAMS so works with Racing Engineering for the World Series by Nissan; wins teams’ title.
2003-04 Becomes principal of the DAMS-run Formula Renault Eurocup team.
2005 Runs DAMS’ Formula Renault 3.5 and GP2 campaigns.
2005-09 Involved with A1 Grand Prix teams for France, Switzerland and Mexico.
2007-08 Wins for DAMS in GP2.
2010-14 Renault F1 (later renamed Lotus F1) team principal.
2014-18 Team principal at McLaren.
2019-22 MD of French Grand Prix.
2019- Circle city hire cars project.

Parting shot Aguri Suzuki loses his seat

June 21 produced one of those ‘Is the glass half-empty or half-full?’ moments for IndyCar fans. The IndyCar Series formally confirmed a new car to replace the ancient Dallara chassis in use since 2012 is finally forthcoming – in 2028.

Álex Palou IndyCar car — Álex Palou is IndyCar’s star driver but his Dallara, used by all the grid since 2012, is slow, heavy and has a junior-formula feel

Taken in isolation, any fresh technology on the way is good news for a series that has been unable to regain the popularity it enjoyed 25-30 years ago before a destructive battle for control of the sport drove away fans, sponsors and manufacturers. But there’s also a strong sense that the appearance of a new Dallara spec car – built to essentially the same technical formula that has evolved over the past 15 years – could be too little, too late to revive a form of racing that veered off track and has been spinning its wheels in gravel since the turn of the century.

“There’s a strong sense that the appearance of a new Dallara spec car could be too little, too late”

Eighteen years have passed since two competing IndyCar championships were unified into a single entity, and this is the sixth season the IndyCar Series has been owned and operated by Penske Entertainment. Given Roger Penske’s success as a businessman and especially as a racer – a record 20 Indianapolis 500 victories alone – much was expected from the new leadership.

But Indy 500 excepted, IndyCar racing has fallen backwards during the Penske era into obscurity on the American sports landscape. Overtaken by Formula 1’s US momentum, IndyCar now ranks a distant fourth in popularity behind NASCAR’s B-level Xfinity Series, just within the racing genre. The paddock and what remains of the fan base is concerned to the point of alarm, and the July 31 announcement that Fox Corporation had acquired a one-third stake in Penske Entertainment only somewhat calmed the turbulent waters.

To many, fast-tracking a new car is the most obvious way to demonstrate progress. “The time has come for a new chassis,” admitted IndyCar president J Douglas Boles. “We are pleased by what our engineers and Dallara have collaboratively designed and believe it will appeal to the fans and paddock while also upholding our standards of safety and enhancing IndyCar’s on-track competition well into the future.”

It’s been more than 20 years since the car was an exciting element of IndyCar racing. Modern era drivers talk in awe of the CART cars from the 1990s, when there was intense competition between engine, and even tyre manufacturers.

Committee behind the DW12 announced — In 2010, the committee behind the DW12 announced their concept.

“I remember what the CART car was like,” smiled Will Power, who arrived in America in 2005 for the last three years of that formula. “At a track like Long Beach, you could hardly go flat from corner to corner with the amount of power it had. I still miss those days because the cars were much more exciting and difficult to drive. Even by the time I came in, it was already watered down a bit, but I remember Gil de Ferran telling me he came into the pits after a couple of laps in his first test in an IRL car [in 2000] because it was so slow. He thought something was wrong with the engine. But no, that’s just the way it was.”

Designed by committee and built to a price, the Dallara IR12 was tail-heavy and overweight from the start. It took on the appearance of a traditional Indycar when the current body kit was grafted on in 2018, but since then, integration of a bulky aeroscreen as well as the addition of a mild hybrid system to the powertrain have ballooned the car’s weight up to nearly 1900lb (862kg).

Indy Hybrid Honda engine — a hybrid engine has increased the weight of an already cumbersome car

The 2028 brief calls for a new Dallara chassis and a slightly larger and more powerful 2.4-litre version of the current highly restricted 2.2-litre twin turbo V6. The car is expected to feature better integration of the aeroscreen and the hybrid system to reduce weight by 85-100lb (39-45kg). Limited public comments from Penske Entertainment executives suggest that as many components as possible will be carried over from the IR12 to reduce costs. A rendering shown to teams was said to resemble Dallara’s Formula 2 design.

Nothing groundbreaking, therefore, and it’s all shaping up to be a bit of a letdown when the car is revealed – likely in early 2026 with a two-year development plan that hopes to avoid the public teething troubles the IR12 went through when it was new.

“For a 1600lb car, 1000 to 1100bhp would be about right. It would make a better formula”

“The car definitely needs to step it up; it’s currently more of a junior category car and it’s quite a heavy thing,” said six-times IndyCar champion Scott Dixon. “When I first came into the sport [in 2001], I think a CART car was 12-15sec a lap faster than an Indy Lights, and now it’s more like 2-3sec. We had 1000bhp then and now we have not even 700bhp.”

Josef Newgarden is another IndyCar star who advocates a lighter, more powerful car.

“As a driver, I want a car that I can feel well, that I have complete control over,” he said. “We’ve gotten away from that over the years with more and more downforce and the way the tyres have changed. In my opinion, it’s gone away from feel and control. You’re more reliant on the pure speed and capability of the car rather than relying on both the car and the driver. The balance has shifted too much to rely purely on the car. A driver is still required to do the job, but most drivers prefer a 50/50 mix of the driver and car rather than it being mostly dependent on the car. For a 1600lb [726kg] car, 1000 to 1100bhp would be about right. What we’re asking for is not complex. It’s simple in a lot of ways, and it would make a much better formula.”

109th Indianapolis 500 — Interest in the Indy 500 remains buoyant – this year was a sell-out.

Amber Pietz

For racing purists, the need for any form of newness to IndyCar racing’s technical package is critically important to maintain or grow interest. Yet the fact that the likes of Dixon, Newgarden, Pato O’Ward and Álex Palou are out there banging around in a chassis designed in 2010 that could be eligible for vintage racing is also arguably the least of IndyCar’s problems.

When Roger Penske acquired the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in late 2019 for an estimated £240-280m, it came as part of a package deal that included the IndyCar Series and IMS Productions, a long established and highly capable video production company. Over the past six years, Penske made a nine-figure investment into the Speedway, with tasteful (and often needed) updates and upgrades that modernised the historic venue without altering its unique character. As a result, the Indianapolis 500 is at a modern era peak, achieving a 300,000-strong sell-out this year for the first time since the celebration of the landmark 100th running in 2016.

The Speedway is personal for Penske. He started attending the Indianapolis 500 in 1951, and taking ownership of the venue and event that sparked his lifelong passion for auto racing is arguably the crowning achievement of his 65-year business career. But Penske’s ownership of the IndyCar Series forced him to create separation from his IndyCar team, and the fate of IndyCar events outside the Indy 500 seems to hold little of Penske’s interest. Yet it’s the rest of the calendar that urgently requires attention.

Roger Penske and Hulman & Co — IndyCar and Indianapolis Motor Speedway change of ownership in 2019, with Roger Penske, left, taking the reigns from Hulman & Co

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Lost in IMS tunnel vision, Penske and his management team fail to recognise the same ‘big picture’ issues that affected IndyCar racing in 1978 when he co-founded CART are still holding the sport back. In those days, the Indianapolis 500 was at the zenith of its popularity but the competing teams needed a strong overall series of races to keep the sport in the spotlight (and themselves in business) for all 12 months of the year instead of the near total focus on Indianapolis and the Month of May.

CART fulfilled that objective; its legacy in the history of IndyCar racing is how it successfully grew the Indy 500 and a handful of unsuccessful other races into a popular international championship that was gaining ground on F1 worldwide prior to the hostile creation of the IRL. Now IndyCar racing appears to be right back where it was in 1978, when the Indy 500 was cruising right along, but the USAC National Championship had no national traction and many of the competitors were functioning on life support. Sure, a new car is forthcoming in 2028. But it’s a sticking plaster for a burn victim. If IndyCar racing is to succeed and grow again, a rethink of the sport’s philosophy and its antiquated business and marketing model is needed. To paraphrase a well-meaning but toxic phrase from American politics, how do you make IndyCar great again?

The 2015-17 aero kits failed to resonate with fans.

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Even prior to Fox Corporation’s direct investment of a reported £97m, IndyCar was already counting on a new television package with all races broadcast on the free-to-air Fox network to bump up its popularity. But the Fox association has not delivered the anticipated ratings boost; the US TV audience for races outside the Indianapolis 500 has declined by 19% in 2025. IndyCar’s male-dominated audience is also the oldest among just about every sport in America. A 2023 media summary noted that 70% of its fans were 55 or older, including 45% over the age of 65. Fox Corp has the power and the platforms to make a difference. But its near-£100m investment is tiny in comparative terms; on the same day the 33% acquisition of Penske Entertainment was revealed, a 4.6% stake in the Aston Martin Formula 1 team sold for a reported £110m. With an ownership slice of the Speedway and IMS Productions, it’s a shrewd investment by Fox. It remains to be seen whether it was made purely to gain assets or out of a genuine commitment to growing IndyCar.

0ne of IndyCar racing’s fundamental problems is that decades of ‘Indy 500 über alles’ rhetoric created generations of ‘place fans’ who love and care only about the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Indianapolis 500. The majority are not ‘race fans’ who attend other IndyCar events and follow the series all season long on television. The Speedway has created a Disney-like cult following; loyalists genuinely believe IMS is the most wonderful place on earth and pledge their total devotion to it. That’s been great for the Speedway, but harmful in the long-term to the sport. The Indy 500 should be promoted and prioritised with the respect and reverence it deserves, but not to the point where it trivialises every other event on the schedule.

1978 IndyCar race start — In ’78 IndyCar was in the doldrums – like today

When IndyCar racing was at its popular peak from 1985-95, the growing strength of the CART series didn’t weaken the Indy 500. But losing that connection with Indianapolis during the split certainly harmed the likes of Mid-Ohio and Milwaukee and led to the demise of historic IndyCar venues including Phoenix and Michigan. Except for the season-opener at St Petersburg and Long Beach, today’s ancillary races get little love or promotion from IndyCar, and Long Beach – billed as the series’ marquee road racing event – attracted barely half a million TV viewers this year. A new event set for March ’26 featuring a temporary course that winds around the Dallas Cowboys football stadium is expected to be an attention grabber.

IndyCar must also change the mindset that it can’t schedule races after Labor Day weekend (early September) to avoid going up against American football on television. No racing series can afford to disappear from public view for six or more months of the year, especially one that hasn’t offered anything substantively fresh in terms of its product for nearly a decade. This is where the association with Fox – which carries a full slate of NFL games every Sunday afternoon and evening from September to December – can pay off, with the opportunity to experiment with weeknight races on TV.

Fans up close at Gateway in ’2025 — Fans up close at Gateway in ’25.

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In fact, the entire business model where IndyCar and its teams rely on television ratings to dictate sponsorship values needs a rethink. With content available in so many forms and formats, TV ratings have become a bygone measurement of a sport’s popularity. But then IndyCar also lags badly behind Formula 1 and NASCAR in terms of digital reach, social media and supplemental programming; its 100 Days to Indy mini-series, which is now in its third season, is a weak copycat of F1’s Drive To Survive and has had little impact.

IndyCar has its share of characters – the wildly popular O’Ward, California-cool Colton Herta, rising stars Kyle Kirkwood and Christian Lundgaard, competitive veterans Dixon and Power, not to mention Newgarden, the series villain, and the smiling assassin – four-time champion Palou. If Fox has the imagination and the commitment, it has the digital reach to make them household names.

Still, the roots of IndyCar’s stagnancy can be traced to the very focal point of the series: the car. Even when it was new in 2012, the Dallara IR12 was a couple of generations behind F1 technology. It’s a fossil now. The most current IR18/Aerokit/Hybrid iteration of the Dallara Indycar is humdrum when compared to the LMDh/Hypercars now competing in IMSA’s top class. NASCAR, which stubbornly championed 1940s technology until well into the 2000s, has a newer car than IndyCar.

Since the formation of the Indy Racing League as a cut-rate competitor to the CART series, a crippling emphasis has been placed on controlling costs and levelling the field rather than creating awe-inducing race cars. The evidence can be seen in a lack of track record speeds at many racetracks – most notably Indianapolis, where Arie Luyendyk set the benchmarks that still stand in a CART-specification Reynard in 1996. Current Indycars are 6sec a lap slower around Road America than when Dario Franchitti took pole position in 2000.

IndyCar Scott Dixon in 2001 — Six-times IndyCar champ Scott Dixon in 2001 CART… his car was quicker back then

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Once an arena for open competition between chassis, engine and tyre manufacturers, IndyCar racing’s zeal to lower the cost of racing drove away innovation and created a stale, spec racing environment. The on-track action is close, but it’s an artificial closeness because, engine excepted, every car is exactly the same. Honda and Chevrolet can’t push the envelope because of conservative engine mileage requirements and series-mandated caps on the cost of engine leases. Teams are not permitted any avenue of development outside shocks and dampers – hardly the stuff that creates interest from casual fans.

“IndyCar lags behind Formula 1 and NASCAR in its digital reach ”

The costs to compete were certainly higher in the ’90s than they are now. But the CART teams had the sponsorship to afford it until the effects of the split really started to take hold. The IRL, and later CART/Champ Car, came to believe they had the responsibility to save the teams from themselves and ensure that the wealthy ‘have’ teams didn’t force out the less-capable ‘have-nots’. And that’s the ultimate legacy of the split: it cheapened IndyCar racing, to the point where it no longer feels special. That’s a major problem for a sport that once prided itself on speed, excellence and technical innovation.

“One can say the racing is close in IndyCar, which it is,” observed McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown. “But IndyCar racing once had enough diversity that while it was not Formula 1, everyone was still excited about each year’s new cars and new technology. There were Lolas, Reynards, Penskes, Marches and Eagles. Ford/Cosworth, Ilmor/Chevy, Honda and Toyota were constantly evolving their engines.

Long Beach GP Indycar — TV viewing figures for this year’s Long Beach GP were depressingly low

“IMSA has a new product, NASCAR has a new product, and Formula 1 has a brand new product every year,” Brown added. “But for the past dozen or more years there’s been no reminiscing about the new Indycars coming along. IndyCar also needs to get out of the mindset of quantity over quality. I often think fans show up for the top 15 cars and that cars from 20-27 are a little bit of noise.”

One of the maddening realities of IndyCar’s tech malaise is that even though the original DW12 iteration of the Dallara IR12 was an ugly duckling, the ICONIC (Innovative, Competitive, Open-wheel, New, Industry-relevant, Cost-Effective) Committee that plotted its initial design direction came up with a good concept. The idea was that engine and potentially outside manufacturers from the aerospace industry could develop their own body parts (wings, sidepods and engine cover) that would create differences in appearance and performance between cars based on a common safety cell.

IndyCar’s 2015-17 aero kit era was a flop, but IMSA has used the concept to perfection with LMDh. Manufacturers design their own bodywork for one of four homologated chassis, mating the powerplant format of their choice to a common bellhousing and hybrid components. A BMW with its 4-litre turbocharged V8 looks and sounds different than a naturally aspirated 5.5-litre Cadillac, though they both incorporate the same chassis and other key common components.

Chevy PU gives 700bhp but drivers want more

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While long committed to a single chassis supplier model, IndyCar has been searching for support from an additional engine manufacturer since the Lotus programme came and went in 2012. But IndyCar can’t even be certain it will move into its new era in 2028 with the two incumbents. Chevrolet’s participation is thought to be safe, given Roger Penske’s stature in the Detroit business community and his ownership of Ilmor Engineering that designs and builds the Chevy engine. But for the past two years Honda has hinted it will end its 30-plus-year involvement in IndyCar that includes a six-year stint as its sole engine supplier from 2006-11. Honda has actually suggested it would support a single-spec engine produced by Ilmor if it would significantly reduce the costs of competing and attract other manufacturers.

Fixing IndyCar racing starts with recognising the severity of the problem. When Penske executives see a full house and improved TV ratings for the Indy 500, spurred on by the cheerleading local Indianapolis media, it’s easy for them to conclude all is well. A quick look at the TV numbers for Long Beach or the attendance at Iowa Speedway clearly demonstrate that IndyCar is in poor health.

IndyCar McLaren’s Pato O’Ward, Mid-Ohio — IndyCar has an abundance of driver talent – like Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward, here at Mid-Ohio in July – but Penske needs a plan to build its audience

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“I think a lot of the powers that be don’t realise once you sink a product how long it takes to get it back,” commented Mario Andretti, a four-times IndyCar champion. “It’s so tragic that you have unprecedented talent lined up in the series, but nobody knows about it. If you take Scott Dixon somewhere, he won’t be recognised. When the cop stopped you and said, ‘Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?’, all that is gone. I don’t hear, ‘Who do you think you are, Dario Franchitti?’ And these guys have won their share. They’ve won championships, they’ve won Indy. How do you explain that? Is there not an impact with the fans? What is it? I don’t know what the formula is.”

“A lot of the powers that be don’t realise once you sink a product how long it takes to get it back”

Prior to announcement of the Fox investment, many believed the easiest and best way to start solving IndyCar racing’s problems would be for Penske Entertainment to divest itself from ownership and management of the IndyCar Series – especially in the wake of Team Penske’s involvement in a pair of high-profile cheating scandals that resulted in the dismissal of three key managers. When Penske ownership was announced in 2019 IndyCar fans celebrated; they were terrified by the notion of an ‘outsider’ like Liberty Media taking control of their sport. Seeing Liberty’s success with F1, fans are now cheering the Fox ‘merger,’ believing it will create the kind of serious investment and nationwide effort needed to revive what was once America’s favourite form of open-wheel racing.

Hope springs eternal. The Indianapolis 500 will endure and it will likely continue to live up to its moniker as The Greatest Spectacle in Racing. It’s long been the only IndyCar race that mattered to many, but it’s in danger of becoming the only IndyCar race unless Penske Entertainment conjures up an exciting new car and Fox makes a serious financial and philosophical commitment to grow the sport outside of Indianapolis. That must start now, not in 2028.

Parting shot Aguri Suzuki loses his seat

November 7, 1993 Adelaide, Australia

Parting shot Aguri Suzuki loses his seat

Parting shot Aguri Suzuki loses his seat

Parting shot Aguri Suzuki loses his seat

Max out with a signed open-top Citroën

Parting shot Aguri Suzuki loses his seat

Parting shot Aguri Suzuki loses his seat

What we don’t love about F1 in 1985

Parting shot Aguri Suzuki loses his seat

Born: 09/11/1973, Laval, France

Parting shot Aguri Suzuki loses his seat

Parting shot Aguri Suzuki loses his seat

Parting shot Aguri Suzuki loses his seat

Parting shot Aguri Suzuki loses his seat

Parting shot Aguri Suzuki loses his seat

Parting shot Aguri Suzuki loses his seat

Parting shot Aguri Suzuki loses his seat

Parting shot Aguri Suzuki loses his seat

Parting shot Aguri Suzuki loses his seat

Parting shot Aguri Suzuki loses his seat