A new season with new storylines. Welcome to the NTT INDYCAR SERIES, the 2025 version.
There is much to note as the 17-race season begins with Sunday’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg presented by RP Funding on the streets of St. Petersburg. For starters, for the first time in the sport’s history, all the races will air live on the same broadcast network.
SEE: Event Details
In addition to FOX being the home of the races, all practice and qualifying sessions, INDY NXT by Firestone action will air live on FS1 and FS2. Sunday’s NTT INDYCAR SERIES race is set for noon ET, with FOX Deportes and the INDYCAR Radio Network also providing coverage.
The field of 27 car-and-driver combinations is again led by defending series champion Alex Palou of Chip Ganassi Racing, who will bid to become the first driver to win three consecutive season championships since another Chip Ganassi driver – Dario Franchitti – did that from 2009-11.
Among the expected key challengers for the Astor Challenge Cup will be Palou’s teammate, six-time series champion Scott Dixon, along with Team Penske drivers Scott McLaughlin, Will Power and Josef Newgarden, Andretti Global’s Colton Herta and Kyle Kirkwood, and Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward. Those drivers comprised the top eight in last year’s standings.
O’Ward won last year’s 100-lap St. Petersburg race with Power fishing second. Power has won nine NTT P1 Awards in the event, a record, and Team Penske has won 11 of the races since 2006 with six different drivers. Power and Newgarden have won twice, McLaughlin once.
This will be the 22nd event on the 14-turn, 1.8-mile temporary street circuit. A look at some of the other key things to watch for:
Palou’s Three-Peat Bid Begins
Several drivers have won consecutive INDYCAR championships over the years, but Ted Horn (1946-48), Sebastien Bourdais (2004-07) and Franchitti are the only three-peaters.
Palou has a terrific chance to join the club. He was the walkaway winner in 2023, becoming the first driver since Dan Wheldon in 2005 to clinch the title ahead of the season’s final race. Last year, Palou’s only challenger at the season-ending race was Power, and Power needed a lot of help to overcome a 33-point deficit, which he couldn’t. Power effectively bowed out of the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix at Nashville Superspeedway on Lap 12 when his seat belts came loose, forcing a lengthy pit stop for repairs. Palou finished the season 31 points ahead of Herta.
None of Palou’s three title marches have opened with a victory in St. Petersburg. Interestingly, his best finish in the event – a second-place result in 2022 – came in a year when Power won the championship. Palou finished fourth in last year’s race.
Palou is the only member of last year’s top five in the standings without a win in this event. Herta won in 2021, McLaughlin in 2022, Power in 2010 and 2014 and O’Ward last year.
A New Start for Drivers, Teams
Eleven of the 27 drivers in this field were driving for a different team last year, and three others have been elevated to full-time status.
The newest of the new is PREMA Racing, long a powerhouse in European junior formulas. Its first season in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES will be led by Callum Ilott, who has made 38 starts since 2021. He posted a pair of 11th-place finishes last year with Arrow McLaren. The team’s other driver is Robert Shwartzman, who won six FIA Formula 2 Championship races over two seasons.
Eight-time NTT INDYCAR SERIES race winner Alexander Rossi was the biggest name to change seats during the offseason. The driver who has finished fourth and sixth in the past two St. Petersburg races for Arrow McLaren is now driving for Ed Carpenter Racing, which has had a significant infusion of resources since last season ended. Rossi will team with Christian Rasmussen, who is scheduled to compete in all 17 races for the first time.
Other drivers in new places: Marcus Armstrong at Meyer Shank Racing, rookie Louis Foster and Devlin DeFrancesco at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, Rinus VeeKay and rookie Jacob Abel at Dale Coyne Racing, Christian Lundgaard at Arrow McLaren, David Malukas at AJ Foyt Racing and Sting Ray Robb at Juncos Hollinger Racing.
Conor Daly now has a full-time ride with Juncos Hollinger Racing, and Siegel is set for all the races at Arrow McLaren. Both had limited duty with their teams last season.
The Technical Alliances
In 2024, Team Penske and AJ Foyt Racing turned in impressive performances thanks to working together through their first-year technical alliance. This year, it will be interesting to see how Chip Ganassi Racing and Meyer Shank Racing benefit from their new partnership.
MSR had a similar relationship with Andretti Global in recent years, but this pairing feels more natural. Felix Rosenqvist spent the 2019 and 2020 seasons with CGR, winning a race at Road America in that second season. Armstrong was one of Chip Ganassi’s drivers last season, and he, like Rosenqvist, will work with a CGR engineer in 2025. Rosenqvist’s program will be led by Ross Bunnell, who won five races over the past two seasons engineering Dixon’s car.
CGR also has made a significant offseason change, reducing its number of entries by 40 percent. Instead of five full-season cars, it will have just three (for Palou, Dixon and Kyffin Simpson), but it will offset that by using the input and experience of Rosenqvist and Armstrong.
Who Bounces Back?
The field is loaded with drivers who quickly wanted to move on from last year. Or, better said: They’re eager to make a jump in 2025. Here are three:
Newgarden won his second consecutive Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge with yet another last-lap pass, but he might otherwise like to forget last season. Yes, he also won the Bommarito Automotive Group 500 at World Wide Technology Raceway to push his career total to 31 wins – that tied Franchitti, Paul Tracy and Helio Castroneves – but he had seven finishes of 16th or lower and ended up eighth in the standings, his lowest since becoming a Team Penske driver in 2017.
Marcus Ericsson’s first season with Andretti Global culminated with a 15th-place finish in the standings. After finishing sixth each of the past three seasons, he scored only one podium finish (a second in the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear). The struggles were most on display in the “500,” where the 2022 race winner had to fight through Last Chance Qualifying just to make the race only to be collected in a first-turn accident caused by the spin of rookie Tom Blomqvist in front of him. Ericsson also crashed in Turn 4 on Fast Friday, putting his program behind.
Malukas’ 2024 began with a broken wrist in a mountain bike accident. The incident in February caused him to miss the early part of the season and led Arrow McLaren to part ways. Once recovered, Malukas showed reasonably well at Meyer Shank Racing, but he didn’t have the results he wanted and certainly would like more than 10 races this year with AJ Foyt Racing.
The Rookie Class
This group isn’t large – just three full-time members – but it is worth watching.
Foster and Abel not only finished first and second in last year’s INDY NXT by Firestone standings, but they had several significant battles in 2023. Both will drive in the Honda camp this year, and they will likely have too much going on around them to care about the other, but they, along with Shwartzman, will be in a battle for the coveted Rookie of the Year Award.
Foster, Abel and Shwartzman will make their first NTT INDYCAR SERIES starts this weekend. They are part of the youth movement in the series.
Siegel (12 starts) and Rasmussen (14) have less than a full season on their resume. Simpson has made only 17 starts. DeFrancesco returns to the series from a one-year hiatus after two seasons with Andretti Global in 2022-23.
The four most experienced drivers – Dixon, Power, Graham Rahal of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing and Newgarden – have combined for nearly half of all the total series starts by the 27 drivers in this field. The other 23 drivers have an average of 55.4 starts, a sign that this sport is undergoing something of a reshaping.
Case in point: The three drivers who finished on the podium in last year’s INDY NXT by Firestone race in St. Petersburg – Siegel, Abel and Foster – are all in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES this season.
Each of the rookies will make their official on-track debuts Friday with the season’s first practice, set for 3 p.m. ET with live coverage on FS1. The rest of the weekend schedule includes a second practice Saturday at 10:15 a.m. on FS2, NTT P1 Award qualifying at 2:30 p.m. on FS1 and the Sunday warmup at 9 a.m. on FS2.