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Report: IndyCar Team Owners Say Budgets Have Become “Ridiculous”
A story posted Tuesday on the Racer.com website has interviews with five of the 10 IndyCar team owners, looking back at the 2024 season and forward to 2025, and the news is sobering. The first line of the story: “Annual budgets skyrocketed for IndyCar teams in 2024.”
Three of the five owners said budgets increased between 20 and 25 percent for 2024 over 2023, largely because of costs associated with the new hybrid system on the cars. Said Mike Shank, co-owner of Meyer Shank Racing: “The increase for ‘24 was ridiculous. It was beyond 40 percent. Sustainably, we cannot keep doing that. And IndyCar knows that.”
In addition to the hybrid retrofit, owners said some of the wealthier teams, notably Andretti Global, have raised driver salary levels dramatically. The same goes for crew members, as teams are paying more than ever to retain talent and lure employees from other teams.
The story pegs Andretti Global’s Colton Herta as the highest-paid driver at a rumored $7 million a year. That would equal the entire annual per-car budget for some of the smaller IndyCar teams. Richer teams, the story says, have an annual per-car budget of up to $13 million. “Some people are just throwing money around like drunk sailors,” said Bobby Rahal, co-owner of the Rahal Letterman Lanigan race team.
Multiple teams, unable to pay the bills with sponsorship and purse money alone, must look to drivers who can bring personal sponsorship into the mix or who are able pay to seven-figure sums to compete in the series. This, incidentally, happens in other forms of motorsports as well, including NASCAR and the NHRA.
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Looming in IndyCar’s future is more change: an entirely new car. IndyCar has raced the Dallara DW12 exclusively since 2012. When it is retired at the end of 2026, as is the current plan, the DW12 will have been in service for an incredible 15 years. The new car will also be built by Dallara and called the IR-27. At that point, of course, the DW12 cars the teams have amassed, and likely most of the parts, will be retired, and have minimal value. Teams will have to adopt the IR-27, and the transition won’t be cheap.
Engines, currently 2.2-liter twin-turbo V-6s leased from Chevrolet or Honda at a reported annual cost of over $1.5 million per car, may or may not be carried over for 2027, but the series has made a lot of noise about a new powerplant.
All that said, the popularity of IndyCar, which is owned by Roger Penske—who also owns the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and a two-car IndyCar team—may be on an upward trajectory. The field includes 27 cars, two of them entered by PREMA Racing, a European team making its first foray into IndyCar. It plans to compete in all 17 races this season, which ends August 31.
NBC has owned the TV rights to IndyCar since 2019, but most of the races aired on cable’s NBC Sports Network, then on USA when NBCSN died. With all 17 races in 2025 airing on Fox, plus ancillary programming airing on Fox Sports 1 and 2, IndyCar will get its biggest media boost in its history. That should interest sponsors which, just as with NASCAR, ultimately power the IndyCar series.
The season begins on Fox this Sunday at noon ET.
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Ummmm….Penske has a THREE car team, not two.
I’m skeptical about the job Fox will do this year; so far, their NASCAR broadcasts have been a C-, at best.
I agree about Fox, especially if the only way to watch races is live when they are broadcast. The great thing about NBC was that I paid $30/year for Peacock and was able to watch all Indycar and IMSA races on demand. I love Indycar, but I’ll probably miss half the races this year if an inexpensive on-demand option isn’t available.
All the IndyCar races are free, on Fox’s over-the-air network.
But you don’t get qualifying and practice like you did with Peacock. so you have to pay for FS1 and FS2. Typical BS. At least it is real racing not NASCAR crash and burn.
The race is all I care about. Practice and qualifying is just the announcers rambling on and on trying to fill air time.
Racing and technology have come to a cross road. The advanced tech in all series has driven up costs. To win it has gone up even more.
You need to spend money like a drunken Penske to really be competitive. I don’t blame him as he is there to win. But the deeper pocket drive out other teams.
The other path is more of a standard car but then the racing is artificial. It become IROC for the wrong reasons.
So much tech that can’t be regulated and the cost it adds really has affected everything from F1 to Soap Box Derby.
We ran a Derby car. You know the one that has no motor and they say the kids build them? Sorry but the kids can really build them till they are older. Even then many parents take the cars to pro builders who quietly like to watch their work win.
You need special tools and about $1000 in scales and then some way to haul it all being a special trailer or vehicle.
Then if you race for points it can run $7K just to travel, entry fees , fuel and more.
Note too the cars need to be purchased so that is $500-$800 with spare parts. They the two classes you need to paint them that can be several grand. We got a sponsor that was a body shop to help us.
It was fun but if I had known the cost I may have gone go carts.
But the point is even the local racers are feeling the pinch.
When I grew up we raced stock cars and it was not cheap but you could easily do it if you did not crash much. We had a good driver. We did the same things as NASCAR. WE used grain scales and looked for advantages where we could find them.
The old adage is never more true today. To win a million Dollars in Racing you start with five eh now ten million.
So even with a spec racing the costs are still beyond the wealthiest of teams. I personally find spec cars to have no personality so it comes down to the driver which if you don’t have the money you are not going to be top level competitive. I can’t say I have watched an Indycar race in years.
IndyCar needs to- decrease costs and raise performance _ ‘We need lower costs and lower taxes’ _ ‘ They’ll need to prevent them from scoring and put points on the board’ _ “Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy”
The electric nonsense is ridiculously expensive from cradle to grave, does nothing for the show, and robs the cars of their music, as we’ve seen in F1. Standardization is great for the guys who make the cars, and probably for lining the pockets of sanctioning bodies, but robs a series of innovation, individual identity, and vehicular interest.
Penske is a billionaire and owns Indy Car so if you can’t afford it then he wins everything anyway. He shouldn’t own the series, a three car team and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. That is a monopoly at the very least. Why is nobody complaining about that? He can’t lose.
Palou backed up his 2023 championship for Ganassi by repeating last year. Penske is and has been one of the most dominant teams in IndyCar for longer than I can remember but obviously he can still lose.