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2024 IndyCar Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio Preview

How will the premiere of the hybrid power unit play out?

That’s the focus as the NTT IndyCar Series heads to the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course for the Honda Indy 200 on Sunday (July 7). 

IndyCar’s work to get the delayed unit on track is finally coming to fruition as cars will hit the 2.2-mile road course nestled in Ohio’s rural hills by Lexington this weekend and show off what has been in the works since the effort was announced in May 2019. 

While the series continues down the same old path with the current car and engine formula which have seen few updates since 2018, this investment will hopefully be a popular choice and add something new to what has slowly become a stale formula. 

Last Year

Don’t be surprised as you read this, but in the 2023 IndyCar race at Mid-Ohio, Alex Palou won. It was his third win in a row and capped off his championship which was basically wrapped up in victory lane there, regardless of what Josef Newgarden or Scott Dixon were going to do. 

The race started with Colton Herta on pole, intending to get revenge for a poor fuel strategy choice at Road America, however a pit road speeding penalty bit him and cut his race out from under him.

Ohio’s own Graham Rahal had his best qualifying spot (later bested by a pole at the fall Indianapolis road course race), but the run was ruined when there was an issue on his left rear during his second stop.

In the end it fell into Palou’s lap as he jumped to the front after going long during his first stint. The Spaniard is coming off a win at IndyCar’s most recent event at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, so does he go two-in-a-row?

Arrow McLaren

Do you know who runs well at Mid-Ohio? Alexander Rossi, the soon to be free agent who Arrow McLaren announced earlier in the week would be replaced by Christian Lundgaard starting next year. It’s an unseemly split, as Rossi is completing just his 25th race with the team and has compiled a very respectable two podiums, nine top fives and 17 top 10s.

This situation might make sense if he was not meeting the performance level of his teammates, but the team’s alpha Pato O’Ward hasn’t blown Rossi’s sidepod off in results. While the first stat, podiums, is significantly different – O’Ward has nine since Rossi joined the team – its the other ensuing results that tell the story. O’Ward has one more top five and top 10 than Rossi, and even though he has the win at St. Pete, he hasn’t actually pulled into victory lane since 2022. The results aren’t too damning against Rossi in legitimizing a reason to move on from him. And Rossi was on his way this May to getting the best finish for McLaren at the sport’s biggest race at the Indianapolis 500 before O’Ward made one of the best overtakes to get around him in the closing laps. 

This isn’t a story about what gives at McLaren as they announce their fourth driver change since last offseason, but Rossi’s focus as he writes his epilogue with the No. 7 crew. As mentioned, he’s run well at Mid-Ohio, finishing outside the top 10 just twice in nine starts, and won in 2018 with Andretti Autosport. 

In 2022, during his last stretch with Andretti before leaving the only team he’d known since coming back to the U.S., he won at the fall Indianapolis road course race to cap off a great run with the team. He hasn’t won since. Perhaps that dry spell ends later in the year, or even at Mid-Ohio. Won’t that be a fitting completion to his story at McLaren?

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Hybrids

This was touched on already, but these new hybrids can be a big game changer for the series, racing product and championship. For the series, it comes down to whether the introduction of the technology is compelling to fans, viewers and storytellers. It’s pretty cool technology as far as what it’s capable of doing and the cooperation of the series’ two engine manufacturers being a big part in the development shows their commitment to the new endeavor. However will it translate to being an integral part of IndyCar’s story that captivates audiences?

That isn’t known yet. 

For the racing product, the raw power of the unit will give drivers extra juice to use with the series managed push-to-pass system, which could up the engines to 800 to 900 horsepower. Fans of the legacy CART and Champ Car World Series days, with the 1,000 horsepower engines have to be salivating at this. Making the cars beasts to drive is part of that storytelling arc IndyCar can embrace. 

However, unlike the push-to-pass, the hybrid is completely in the driver’s control as far as its tactical use as well as its generation. Plenty will be mentioned during the weekend, but simply enough the driver can charge the power system by braking or manually in the cockpit. That is going to take a lot of coordination (something my video game career against my son suggests I’d fail at) to make happen while going at insane speeds, and managing other tools on the steering wheel. Generation will be critical because the driver that is best at resupplying the storage will be able to splice the hybrid with push-to-pass to make some speed for overtaking. Adding more strategy and tactics to racing is always a good thing.

Worrisome for sure though is if the reliability will be there to ensure no impact on the championship. Introducing the system mid-way through the season did raise some hairs as far as the new technology possibly failing while a close-fought title race was underway. The delay did provide more time for teams to test, but the majority of that fell into the hands of the top four – Team Penske, Chip Ganassi Racing, Andretti Global and Arrow McLaren. By the time the checkered flies on Sunday, there will be more known on how IndyCar’s new “hotness” was received. 

Chasing Palou

Last year it was Dixon and Newgarden. This year, as mentioned on The Pit Straight, it’s Will Power and Dixon. This season shaping up to present a fun chase to Nashville. Having all that experience in the two slots behind Palou in the championship is a great story as both are nearing the ends of their respective careers. But they have to do battle with the best driver to come storming into IndyCar since Power did so when he started full-time with Penske in 2010. 

Surprisingly, considering Power’s success on road and street courses, the Aussie has just one win in his 15 starts at Mid-Ohio. Still, he isn’t a slouch either at the midwest track, notching seven podiums, including two straight thirds, heading into this Sunday.

Dixon is a different story. At some point after he retires, they should rename the facility after him by putting Dixon with a possessive ‘-s’ because he has owned this place. His victories at the course total six.

Oh yes, this championship battle is going to be fun to watch.

The Rest of the Field

Dale Coyne Racing could use a good finish on Sunday. They’ve ran six different drivers across the two-car team, with the seventh coming up this weekend, rookie Toby Sowery. While the Sowery is experienced in open-wheel cars, he only ran three races in Indy NXT last year, and in two-and-a-half seasons, won only one race in IndyCar’s top feeder series. Jack Harvey’s 13th at Barber Motorsports Park is DCR’s best result of the year. 

Will Ohio be kind for Rahal after the year he has had? He’s lived mostly in the ninth to 15th place range at each race this year, but Mid-Ohio is a special place to his family, after his father Bobby Rahal won there multiple times and long-time car owner Jim Trueman owned the facility. Also, he is dealing with the personal stress concerning his father-in-law John Force who was seriously injured in a NHRA drag racing event two weeks ago in Virginia. A good run will help off-set the stress and the loss of young driver Lundgaard to McLaren.

What driver outside of Penske and Ganassi has a shot at a win Sunday? Look no further than Kyle Kirkwood. He continues a great start to the year, and has the best worst finish of any driver, 11th at the Sonsio Grand Prix at Indianapolis. He hasn’t won on a permanent road course, but doesn’t mean he can’t. 

Romain Grosjean gave Juncos Hollinger Racing their best finish ever in IndyCar with a fourth at Laguna Seca. It has been a long road for the team, started by Ricardo Juncos in the IndyCar feeder series before moving up to the Show in 2017 at the Indy 500 then becoming full-time in 2022. Mid-Ohio hasn’t been kind by the finish to Grosjean, but his first visit in 2021 was seventh, which in his current environment, the team would be ecstatic over. 

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Frontstretch Predictions

Babe Ruth, give me strength. I’m calling my shot. Rossi for the win. He is going to come in and win the Honda Indy 200 and make this situation seem even more unbelievable. But the No. 7 returns to victory lane for the first time since Danica Patrick did so at Motegi. 

  1. Rossi – who is with me?
  2. O’Ward – chases his soon to be former teammate down but can’t catch him. I wonder if he keeps a group text with every driver that has been signed by McLaren one time or another to drive in IndyCar. 
  3. Kirkwood – he’s going to get a win soon.

The Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio will start at 1:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, July 7, with coverage on NBC and Peacock.

Tom Blackburn

Tom is an IndyCar writer at Frontstretch, joining in March 2023. Besides writing the IndyCar Previews and the occasional Inside Indycar, he will hop on as a fill-in guest on the Open Wheel podcast The Pit Straight. His full-time job is with the Department of Veterans Affairs History Office and is a lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard. After graduating from Purdue University with a Creative Writing degree, he was commissioned in the Army and served a 15-month deployment as a tank platoon leader with the 3d ACR in Mosul, Iraq. A native Hoosier, he calls Fort Wayne home. Follow Tom on Twitter @TomBlackburn42.

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