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It’s hard to believe that the month of September has come and gone. One month of the IndyCar offseason is already behind us. Has it really been over a month since Josef Newgarden won on his home track?

A lot has happened in the IndyCar world since that day. Will Power has found a new team and presumably a new lease on life at Andretti Global, followed by fellow-Team Penske alum Ron Ruzewski as new Team Principal; which begs the question…why does IndyCar now have Team Principals? That was a title that was nicely tucked away for use by F1 teams only.

David Malukas made an anti-climactic arrival to Team Penske, Dennis Hauger was announced for one seat at Dale Coyne Racing, while Rinus VeeKay may have completely outsmarted himself to the point that he may be left standing without a chair when the music stops.

In the midst of all this, the 2026 NTT IndyCar Series schedule was finally released with some things we had already expected, and one that was sort of a surprise.

I have already opined about Will Power moving to Andretti Global. It’s a good move for Power, but I think it will be good for Andretti also. It became even more interesting last week, when it was announced that Ron Ruzewski was named Team Principal at Andretti Global. Ruzewski was one of the three key personnel fired by Team Penske last May, the others being Kyle Moyer and Tim Cindric. Ruzewski was on Power’s car for the last few years at Penske. Both should help the other acclimate to their new surroundings at Andretti Global. Ruzewski could prove to be the missing piece that Andretti has needed the past few years.

As expected; David Malukas was named as driver of the No. 12 car at Team Penske that was vacated by Power, who had driven that car since 2009. If you had to characterize the 2025 season at Foyt for Malukas, you might say it was a little disappointing. With the Penske personnel that were assigned to that car, I think they were expecting better than an eleventh-place finish in the points by Malukas. But as expected, Malukas has moved on to a Team Penske that looks and feels much different than it did a year ago at this time. The leadership has changed dramatically, and now there is only one driver on the team that has won a championship or an Indianapolis 500. It’s the veteran Newgarden and two other promising drivers – one still looking for his first IndyCar win. Malukas joins at a time when Team Penske is at a bit of a crossroads.

Can they find their footing from the 2024 season, when the team won eight of the seventeen races on the schedule and locked out the entire front row at Indianapolis? Or has Malukas come on board just as the team has fallen off of their lofty perch and is headed toward several years in the abyss, as they were in the late 90s. Time will tell.

We have grown accustomed to Dale Coyne racing announcing their drivers in late winter. One year, we didn’t find out that Sébastien Bourdais would be driving for Coyne until the Friday morning practice at St. Petersburg. This year, Coyne has promised to have both drivers named by Halloween.

Dennis Hauger, the 2025 Indy NXT champion was announced last week as one of the two Coyne drivers. Before September, I would have put Rinus VeeKay in one of the other Coyne seats. VeeKay had a surprisingly good season for himself and Coyne, earning two Top-Five finishes that included a second-place finish at Toronto. He was the last driver named to a fulltime seat just before the 2025 season kicked off, but he had a strong season, given the circumstances.

But the same day it was announced that Will Power would be leaving Team Penske, VeeKay announced he had chosen to not return to Dale Coyne Racing. Speculation immediately placed VeeKay at Foyt to replace Malukas. I was mistakenly convinced that VeeKay was headed to Penske, since his resume was a little stronger than that of Malukas. That shows how smart I am on these things.

We now know that Malukas did. In fact, end up at Team Penske. I keep hearing that VeeKay will not be headed to Foyt. There is some speculation that Penske has ended the technical relationship with Foyt, but that has not been officially confirmed. If true, that could greatly influence how the second car is funded. VeeKay apparently has little to no sponsorship tied to him, so he would be seeking to be paid. If Penske is no longer tied to Foyt that would rule VeeKay out for that seat.

While the Foyt/Penske technical alliance is in question, guess who just signed a technical alliance with Andretti Global. Dale Coyne Racing; the same team that VeeKay said he did not want to drive for in 2026. With funding from Todd Ault secured for 2026, and now help from Andretti; it looks like things are finally going Dale Coyne’s way. It sure seems like a curious time to leave the team that was the only one to look your way in 2025.

Rinus VeeKay has gotten some bad advice from someone. He was wanted at Dale Coyne Racing and was in a good situation. I don’t know if he was convinced he was going to Team Penske over Malukas or what, but he is now in a position where he may be shut out of the 2026 season by his own doing. In August, VeeKay looked like he had a solid future with Dale Coyne. He gambled on landing a better ride. Figuring the grass was certainly greener anywhere that wasn’t Dale Coyne Racing. Just a month ago he felt good enough about his future to throw away a sure thing with Coyne. Now his best bet is either to latch on with Juncos Hollinger Racing, in what most would perceive as a backwards career move.

Personally, I’d like to see Rinus VeeKay swallow his pride and re-insert himself into the one empty seat still left at Coyne. That is – if Dale would take him. One side of me would snicker if Coyne told a groveling VeeKay to pound sand. But I want to see the best drivers have a place in the series. If Coyne would take him back, and if VeeKay would ask to come back – I’m hoping that cooler heads prevail and the right thing is done. Plus, if VeeKay goes to Juncos Hollinger, that displaces Conor Daly – who is another driver that I think needs to be in the series. Would Daly return to Foyt? That pairing did not end so well after the 2017 season. It is likely that there are no fulltime seats left by the end of this month. It’ll be interesting to see how this all ends up.

Finally, the NTT IndyCar Series released its schedule in September. All in all, I didn’t hate it. After a few seasons of lots of inactivity in the first couple of months in each season, that will not be the case in 2026. While the first race of the season at St. Petersburg technically runs in March (March 1), the practice and qualifying sessions for that race will be held in February.

Less than a week later, the series returns to the reconfigured one-mile oval at Phoenix International Raceway. This will be a NASCAR double-header engineered by FOX. NASCAR owns the track, so don’t expect them to go out of their way to promote the IndyCar race held on Saturday. If this race is to be successful, it is up to Penske Entertainment and FOX to make it happen. We’ll see.

The following weekend is the much-anticipated battle of the Streets of Arlington, around AT&T Stadium (home of the Dallas Cowboys). The Cowboys have already been very involved in the promotion of this event. I will be surprised if this inaugural event is not successful.

After three straight racing weekends to start the season, there is a scheduled break the following weekend. Then March closes out with four races over five weekends – when the series returns to Barber Motorsports Park for the annual visit. This date has been moved from early May to late March, but I welcome that change. Barber can be hot in May, and I am not a fan of non-IMS IndyCar races taking place in the Month of May.

For the last two or three years, the annual Open Test on the IMS oval has taken place in mid-to-late April, before the series heads to Barber. Speaking for myself, once I see cars running on the IMS oval, my mind shifts to Indianapolis 500 mode. Then it’s almost like a reset to have to go to Barber to run the race there, before getting back into 500 mode. This way, the series can go straight from the open test into the Grand Prix just a couple of weeks later, then Indianapolis 500 Qualifying and then the 500 race weekend. The teams can set up the garages beginning with the Open Test and be set up for over a month.

After four races over five weekends in March, April is where things slow to a crawl. Other than the IMS Open Test, the only on-track activity in April is the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. It would have been nice to have one more race in April; but realize that Easter weekend moving around like it does, makes April schedules difficult.

The Month of May closes out at the Streets of Detroit on May 31, ending a chaotic month after a fairly quiet April.

Gateway kicks off June, by moving the third oval of the season up to June 7. It will follow the strategy of last season and will be a Sunday Night race. This time fans in attendance will have more time to plan ahead for a night race on Sunday night. This also begins the fairly similar pattern of several races held every other week. Two weeks after Gateway is the usual June destination of Road America. Two weeks after that is the regular Independence Day weekend trip to Mid-Ohio.

Two weeks after that is one of the major changes I am still unsure if I am in favor of or not. For the past two seasons, the Powers that Be raved about what a great location Nashville was for a season finale. The 1.33-mile oval provided some very good racing to send fans into the offseason. Had Alex Palou not made a mockery out of the championship by clinching the tile with two races to go – it would have been a very intriguing way to decide the championship.

They loved Nashville so much for the finale, they moved it to mid-July. As opposed as I was when I first started hearing about it last month, there are two things about this placement in the schedule that I really like. First of all, this will be a 400-mile night race – making it the longest distanced race on the schedule, other than the Indianapolis 500. OK, calling it a night race might be a stretch. It will start around 5:00 pm and will still be daylight when the race ends, even after running 300 laps. But the second thing I like is that FOX has scheduled the Nashville race to have a lead-in audience of the World Cup Finals, also on FOX.

Personally, I would prefer staring at a 40-pound bag of fertilizer for several hours to watching the World Cup, but there are about 20 Million people who say I am wrong and will be tuned in. IndyCar won’t keep many of them, but if they can convince 25% of that audience to stick around for an hour or so, we are now talking Indianapolis 500-type numbers. It pleases me that FOX and IndyCar have such a high opinion of the Nashville race to try and make it a ratings draw.

After Nashville, the series gets a two-week break before starting a five-race blitz to the finish. Portland will start that five-race sprint on Aug 9. Afterwards, they travel across the continent to Markham, Ontario the very next weeks for the new Canadian street race. Two weeks after Markham, the series goes to Milwaukee for a double-header weekend, before closing the season out on Labor Day weekend on Sep 6 at Laguna Seca.

The one surprise from the schedule announcement? No race in Mexico City. After being told by many in charge that Mexico City was “…going to happen”; it didn’t happen. It was hoped that it could have slotted into that April void, but for whatever reason – it’s not happening.

Overall, I like the pace of the schedule. There are no gaps at the beginning, and we picked up another oval to replace losing Iowa. The pace slows down in June and July, before picking up steam in August. Although I like how they are treating the Nashville race, I still think it is a more suitable season-finale than Laguna Seca. I guess travelling the Pacific Highway sounded better to sponsors than navigating the honky-tonks on Lower Broadway.

I’ve been trying to remember this kind of September. With all of September being in what is considered the offseason, the month was anything but boring. There was a lot going on. October may be a bit slower, but I think we will have every remaining available seat settled before the month of October is out. Who knows what other offseason surprises await us?

George Phillips

This entry was posted on October 1, 2025 at 4:03 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.