Could this single-seater be the future of IndyCar?

The fundamental philosophy or platform for an Indycar was established in 1979 with the John Barnard-designed Chaparral 2K – in many ways a Lotus 79 clone, strengthened for the high speeds and crashes that are a product of oval racing. Al Unser proved the 2K’s promise and won the last race of the ’79 CART season but left in a fit of pique at the end of the year because he believed Chaparral supremo Jim Hall tried to take credit for the car that Barnard deserved. Johnny Rutherford stepped in and drove the 2K to victory in the 1980 Indianapolis 500 and walked the CART championship.

The modern IndyCar Series’ desperate need for a new chassis to replace the 2012-vintage Dallara still in use was documented a couple months ago on this page. But the upcoming 2028 Dallara spec car is unlikely to feature anything innovative like the Chaparral 2K did nearly 50 years ago.

One credible voice in the Indycar community says it’s time to radically shake things up. JR Hildebrand could have pursued an engineering career at Cal Berkeley or MIT, but he instead built a successful professional racing career that netted an Indy Lights championship and a near miss at the 2011 Indianapolis 500. In recent years, the 37-year-old formed a non-profit foundation to promote STEM education and serves as an adjunct lecturer at Stanford University.

Like so many drivers, Hildebrand has long called for increased power and reduced downforce. Now he’s trying to advance his ideas. Inspired by his hero, Dan Gurney – a tremendous driver and tireless promoter of the need for progress and innovation in racing – Hildebrand has created a concept he calls Blackbird 66 in the hopes of creating a next-generation open-wheel machine that is challenging to drive and thrilling for fans to watch in action.

“We need to get back to a place where you can have one car on track which all by itself is incredible to watch,” Hildebrand says. “We’ve been battling the advancement of technology for 40 or 50 years. Since wings arrived in racing, the sport has been trying to figure out ways to slow down the cars. So, let’s think about it more from scratch. What do we fundamentally want from the cars to dynamically seem like they’re doing on the track, and what is the combination of those factors?”

Hildebrand says that in his last conversation with Gurney, who died in 2018, the ‘Big Eagle’ told him: “Take the wings off, and give them an engine that sings.” Blackbird 66 concept renderings therefore show a compact, wingless open-wheel car with generously wide slick tyres by modern standards. The proposed twin-turbocharged 3.5-litre V10 would produce between 850-1250bhp, depending on track configuration. Hildebrand wants the nimble 725kg creation to slide like a non-winged sprint car.

“It must be simple, light, analogue and devastatingly ferocious to drive”

“It must be simple, light, analogue and devastatingly ferocious to drive,” he says. The racer-turned-activist believes too much power and decision-making has been placed in the hands of regulators – influence that needs to be returned to the car designers. “Long gone are the days where there was some genuine pursuit of outright speed whether its Formula 1, IndyCar or NASCAR,” he notes. “Without the restrictive rules in each of those categories you could probably build a car that was much faster than a human could drive it. The series regulators in essence decide how much power and downforce they are allowing these cars to have.”
For Hildebrand excitement and enjoyment in racing isn’t necessarily reliant upon speed. He argues that it’s far more thrilling to watch a car that’s visibly sliding around on the limit than one that appears to be cornering on rails. And it’s a bigger buzz for the drivers, too. “If you give drivers what they’re looking for, if you create an experience that the drivers fall in love with, you can’t underestimate the power that would have,” he says.

Any racing event in its 28th year is obviously a successful endeavour, but the Petit Le Mans has become a full-blown phenomenon. With perfect autumn weather, record crowds poured into Road Atlanta, forcing race organisers to shut off infield access halfway through the weekend. Traffic backed up for miles to enter and leave the circuit each day, a logistical nightmare not seen in American racing since the early 2000s NASCAR boom or IndyCar’s Nigel Mansell era.

It’s another sign of IMSA’s strength that Porsche, faced with the need to consolidate its worldwide prototype racing programme due to production car business challenges, chose to remain active in America while walking away from the WEC. With Genesis and Ford due to start participation in the next couple of years, Porsche’s withdrawal isn’t necessarily a problem for the WEC. But the optics of the most successful manufacturer in Le Mans history seemingly prioritising competition at the likes of Daytona, Sebring, and Road Atlanta aren’t ideal.

Petit Le Mans ended with Porsche as the 2025 GTP class champion manufacturer thanks to a third-place finish for title-winning pilots Matt Campbell and Mathieu Jaminet and substitute co-driver Laurens Vanthoor. The feats were achieved after Jaminet and Campbell encountered a 100-minute race-day traffic delay that forced them to abandon their courtesy car and walk into the track just in time for the recon lap…