December So Far in IndyCar

Today’s theme music: “Pop Shuvit” by Pop Shuvit

It’s been a couple weeks since our last survey of the IndyCar news landscape, and in that time, most of the developments have had something to do with the endurance world. In that spirit, we’ll take this roundup a little differently, starting with the dial pointed towards sports cars and pulling it closer to our usual side of things with each headline.

Ericsson wings it in Malaysia

One-time Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericsson made his GT3 debut this weekend at the 12 Hours of Malaysia, finishing 9th in a race to forget.

The Leipert #63 Lamborghini Huracán crew had arrived in Sepang with some promise. Ericsson headlined the team’s all-Swedish lineup alongside his brother Hampus, fresh off winning this year’s Lamborghini Super Trofeo North American and world championships, and the Sneaky Swede was certainly the biggest racing star in the field. However, on Marcus’s opening stint, the rear wing partially detached itself, forcing the car into the pits for repairs not even a half-hour into the race. That put the team in a hole it couldn’t dig itself out of, and the #63 finished 12 laps down, last among GT3 Pros, second-to-last in GT3 more broadly, and 9th out of 17 entries overall.

Ericsson’s detractors will have a juicy new piece of slander to work with, as this result means he just lost head-to-head against Kollywood actor Ajith Kumar. However, with Ericsson gearing up for a run at Daytona next month, he’ll likely see this whole affair as a mere warmup for the much bigger prize ahead.

Daytona’s got the Power

Meanwhile, Ericsson’s new Andretti teammate, Will Power, made some endurance racing news of his own the day before the 12h Malaysia. After cancelling in 2023 due to his wife’s life-threatening illness, Power will finally make his IMSA debut at next month’s 24 Hours of Daytona.

Just as he did at the Indianapolis 8 Hour back in October, Power will join the 75 Express Mercedes team alongside fellow Australians Kenny Habul and Chaz Mostert, the latter of whom is fresh off winning the Supercars Championship. To help share the load, they’ve added Mercedes factory driver Maro Engel, who brings a strong resume of GT accomplishments from around the world.

The news makes Power the latest in a long line of IndyCar names to enter this year’s Daytona gauntlet, so we may as well recap them now. Joining Power in the GTD Pro class, we find Kyle Kirkwood and James Hinchcliffe, who’ll repeat their respective assignments at Lexus and Lamborghini. Marcus Ericsson, as previously mentioned, will compete in the lower GTD class for Lamborghini, where he’ll face off with Romain Grosjean. The Frenchman, now driving for Ford, is in the hunt for a Dale Coyne seat and could use this as another audition if it’s not sewed up by the time this kicks off.

In LMP2, Christian Rasmussen will drive AO Racing’s ever-popular Spike the Dragon car, while Indy NXT rookie Enzo Fittipaldi will pair with his brother Pietro at Pratt Miller. Finally, in the flagship GTP class, Álex Palou and Scott Dixon will return to their respective Meyer Shank Acuras. Felix Rosenqvist, the weak link of Dixon’s team last year, is out, replaced by five-time Champ Car race winner AJ Allmendinger. However, the biggest story is happening over at Cadillac, where Colton Herta will debut for the brand and begin his transitional year between leaving IndyCar and debuting in Formula One.

Ilott takes the two-sport approach

There’s also one other name taking part at Daytona we should mention whose involvement will run far deeper than the rest. In addition to a full-time IndyCar schedule with Prema, Callum Ilott will join the Wright Motorsports #120 Porsche 911 for the full IMSA SportsCar Championship season, including the sprint rounds that his IndyCar peers normally avoid.

It’s a shock in concept, but it’s also shockingly doable. Due to the way the IndyCar and IMSA schedules worked out, the clashes we saw last year are eliminated outside of joint weekends, allowing Ilott to gun for the GTD championship relatively unimpeded. The big one to watch will be at Long Beach, where Ilott will have to pull double duty and race on consecutive days.

Given the dark clouds around Prema’s finances, it’s easy to see this as Ilott making a backup plan in case the team collapses, but they could turn this in their favor. Ilott’s IMSA presence builds on his established relationships with both Wright Motorsports, who he ran the Indianapolis 8 Hour with in 2023, and Porsche, who powered his 2024 World Endurance Championship campaign to the overall win at Spa and the FIA Hypercar Teams’ World Cup. If he can convince any IMSA sponsors to follow him to IndyCar, it will bring vital cash into Prema’s coffers and help keep the team on the grid.

Sting Ray will stay

Finally, we rewind to December 2nd, when a seemingly open seat on next year’s IndyCar grid locked back up. After a period of uncertainty, Juncos Hollinger Racing announced that Sting Ray Robb will be back in the #77 for next season.

For the team, it’s a grudging acceptance of their pay driver, who’ll play second fiddle to Rinus VeeKay all year long, while the team presumably scans the landscape for a more competitive pilot to put in the car once Robb’s contract is up. For Robb, on the other hand, this means he finally gets to drive for the same team two years in a row, and he’ll be hungry to try and use that stability to build himself up and prove he’s more than a meme.

As for the wider driver market, the spotlight is once again on Dale Coyne Racing, One theory going around was that DCR would grab Yuki Tsunoda fresh out of F1 and have Conor Daly take over the car for the ovals, but with Tsunoda hanging onto a reserve role at Red Bull, that might not be in the cards. Daly by himself remains an option, as do Romain Grosjean, Linus Lundqvist, and whoever Honda wants to bring over from Japan.

Should Coyne take that last option, the likely candidate is Kakunoshin Ohta, who just wrapped up a three-win season in Super Formula, shared the polesitting car at this year’s Six Hours of the Glen, and, most importantly, took his first IndyCar test at the same Mid-Ohio session where A.J. Foyt evaluated Caio Collet.