IndyCar's IR-28 Hits Sebring: 5 Offseason Storylines
Welcome to the Happy Hour Racing IndyCar Race Preview. There is no race this weekend, so this is a between-races feature on the storylines shaping the sport while the cars sit still.
The Short Version
The 2026 IndyCar season ended on September 6 at Laguna Seca, and the next green flag is not until March 7 at St. Petersburg. That does not mean nothing is happening. In the last two weeks IndyCar took its brand new car outside Indianapolis for the first time, Ford shut the door on joining the series, and a 2027 driver market that has already moved Scott Dixon out of Chip Ganassi Racing still has seats open. Here are the five storylines worth following all winter.
1. The IR-28 Finally Left Indianapolis
Every test of IndyCar's next car had happened at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. On October 12 and 13 that changed, and the series picked about the meanest place it could have picked: Sebring International Raceway.
Sebring is old airfield concrete stitched to asphalt, and it beats cars apart. That is exactly why IndyCar went. Alex Palou ran 43 laps on the outer loop on Monday, and a fueling system problem pulled the car in for repairs before backup parts got him going again. Alexander Rossi took over Tuesday and turned 134 laps, the first real long runs the IR-28 has done anywhere.
"We're trying to test it as tough as we can. It's a bumpy course," Palou said. He also said the thing IndyCar most wanted to hear: "I'm very excited. I like the looks of it. It seems safer."
Rossi's read was blunter. "It's a very nice car to drive. It's well-built and incredibly well-engineered," he said, and he pointed to cooling as the biggest gain since the summer tests: "It's night and day different."
There was one unplanned bonus. Current cars were on track at Sebring the same days for a Firestone tire test, so for the first time the IR-28 ran nose to tail with the car it is replacing. Palou and Kyle Kirkwood spent a stretch of laps together and swapped positions at one point. Nobody learns much about raceability from a car running alone, so that accident of scheduling may end up being the most useful thing that happened all week.
This isn't a refresh. It's a reset.
— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) July 28, 2026
Meet the IR-28.
2. Ford Said No, and That Matters
The 2028 rules package was supposed to be bait. A new chassis and a new 2.4-liter twin-turbo V6 hybrid arriving the same year is the cleanest entry point a manufacturer has had in IndyCar in two decades. Ford looked at it, ran the numbers, and passed.
Ford Racing completed its evaluation of the 2028 engine regulations and decided not to return, saying its resources are committed to its Hypercar and World Rally programs. The talks never got past the internal stage.
So the 2028 reset arrives with the same two engine badges IndyCar has now. Chevrolet and Honda have both signed long-term extensions, running the current 2.2-liter twin-turbo V6 through the end of 2027 before switching to the 2.4-liter in 2028. That is stability, and after years of Honda publicly questioning the cost of staying, stability is not nothing. It is just not the third manufacturer the paddock keeps hoping for.
3. The Grid Got Rearranged
The headline move is still hard to type. Scott Dixon is leaving Chip Ganassi Racing after 24 full-time seasons and six championships to drive for Arrow McLaren, alongside Pato O'Ward and Felix Rosenqvist. Dixon and Ganassi were one of the longest driver-team pairings in American motorsport, and it is over.
Ganassi did not wait long. On September 29 the team signed Christian Lundgaard to a multiyear deal in the No. 9 PNC Bank Honda, putting him next to Palou and Kyffin Simpson. Lundgaard is the driver Arrow McLaren cut in July to make room for Dixon, and he responded by winning at the Indianapolis road course and Road America and finishing a career-best third in the standings. That one is going to be fun to watch.
Elsewhere, Will Power moves to Andretti Global with Kyle Kirkwood and Marcus Ericsson. Dennis Hauger, the 2026 Rookie of the Year, takes the No. 14 at A.J. Foyt Enterprises in place of Santino Ferrucci. Mick Schumacher lands at Meyer Shank Racing. Conor Daly goes full-time at Dreyer and Reinbold, a team that got there by buying a charter from Rahal Letterman Lanigan, the first charter sale since the system started in 2025.
4. Palou Is Still the Problem Everyone Has to Solve
It is easy to lose the scale of what Alex Palou did. He finished 2026 on 631 points, 86 clear of Kirkwood, with Lundgaard third on 535, O'Ward fourth on 522 and David Malukas fifth on 514. That is a fifth championship in six years and a fourth in a row.
Five titles puts him third on the all-time list, behind only A.J. Foyt with seven and Dixon with six. He is 29 years old. The uncomfortable thought for the other nine teams is that the one thing that reliably ends a run like this is a rules reset, and the rules reset is still two seasons away. Palou was also the first driver in the IR-28 at Sebring, which tells you how much homework he is doing on it.
5. Good Drivers Are Still Looking for Work
Nineteen of the series' chartered cars had confirmed full-time drivers by mid-October. The rest did not. Meyer Shank, Juncos Hollinger and Dale Coyne all still have seats to fill, and the list of drivers without a confirmed 2027 ride is longer than the list of seats.
Santino Ferrucci, who has run four seasons at Foyt and has a real knack for the Indy 500, does not have a car. Neither do Nolan Siegel, Callum Ilott, Sting Ray Robb, Caio Collet or Enzo Fittipaldi. Josh Pierson passed his IndyCar license test in October and is the name most often attached to Foyt's other seat. In a 25-car series with charters, there are simply more drivers than chairs, and some of them are going to be watching from home in March.
What to Watch Between Now and March
The IR-28 keeps testing, and every test adds another driver's opinion to the pile. The remaining 2027 seats get filled, probably in bursts. And IndyCar releases the rest of a schedule that already starts with three straight race weekends: St. Petersburg on March 7, Phoenix on March 13, and Arlington on March 21. That is only the fifth time in 118 years the series has opened that way.
The Bottom Line
IndyCar is in the strange position of having its competitive picture settled and its future wide open. Palou has the trophies, Ganassi has the superteam, and the car that could reshuffle all of it is out there taking punishment on old airfield concrete in Florida. The racing stops for five months. The story does not.
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More in the IndyCar collection, and everything new is at the front of the store.
