“This isn’t a refresh. It’s a reset.” “Every inch reimagined. Every detail redesigned. One goal: pure speed.” “Built to break track records.”
The IndyCar social media team absolutely nailed the launch of the IR-28. Heck, they even got Matt Damon to do the voiceover. But let’s be real here. The IR-28 is not a refresh. It is not a reset. And don’t you dare post about track records with the car crossing the freshly scrubbed Yard of Bricks. (Thanks, Carson!)
Take a breath, team. You’re talking about a chassis cycle that gives us a car every decade-and-a-half, give or take. Meanwhile, the driver quotes are predictably glowing, repeating the same mandatory buzzwords over and over. Raw. Aggressive. Exciting. The drivers did a great job of falling in line.
The internet, thankfully, has no such filter. One engineer in the comments neatly summed it up. “Forgot the quotes around ‘reimagined’ and ‘redesigned’,” they say. Another put it even better: “If this is awake with this series, it must have to use a CPAP.”
They aren’t wrong. When you pull the sheet off the Dallara IR-28, the reality completely fails to match the PR copy.
To start, the thing is an absolute visual mess. Up front, you’ve got a massive, square-jawed front wing that looks like it was ripped straight off a 1985 March. Move back 6 inches, and suddenly you’re assaulted by an avalanche of modern Formula 1 bits and bobs — baffling winglets, flick-ups, and bargeboard nonsense glued onto every square inch of carbon fiber. I guess we’ve forgotten the OEM aerokit days.
Then you get to the back, and it only gets worse. Remember the mid-2010s Kardashian-style bumpers? This new rear wing makes those monstrosities look like fine art. It’s easily the ugliest piece of bodywork ever bolted to an open-wheel car, looking less like a functional aerodynamic element and more like a TEMU AI rendering bolted upside down onto the gearbox.
Yet, what really drives you crazy isn’t just the styling; it’s the total lack of original thought. Instead of moving forward, the series dug through the scrap heap of past failures and dragged them back into the light.
Case in point: the LED position panels. We spent years watching digital side-panel displays flicker, short-circuit, display the wrong information, or completely die two laps into a race on the DW12 before the series mercifully threw them in the trash. Now, IndyCar is bringing them back, slapped right onto the sides of the aeroscreen. Apparently, nothing says cutting-edge motorsport quite like a glitchy vintage neon sign.
Worse than bringing back old gimmicks, however, is refusing to fix recent mistakes. Enter the elephant in the garage, the hybrid system.
Ask any team owner, mechanic, or driver about the hybrid unit introduced in 2024 and they’ll roll their eyes. It’s a heavy, expensive mistake that adds dead weight right where you don’t want it, doing zero to improve the racing. The fans didn’t ask for it, the mechanics hated wrenching on it, and the accountants cried every time a bill came due for a failed part they had no control over.
So what does the series do for this grand reset? They double down. They kept the hybrid setup completely intact. Call it whatever you want in the press release, but it’s still an unnecessary battery pack shoved into a car that should be light, loud, and simple, all to placate corporate boardrooms that may or may not stick around for the entire life-cycle of this new car.
The engineers in Speedway have another reason to quietly lose their minds. IndyCar is taking away their suspension freedom.
For two decades, as IndyCar became more of a spec series, clever teams could still out-think and out-work the competition through damper development. Shocks were the secret sauce. Penske, Ganassi, and Andretti spent countless hours on dynamic rigs developing internal valving to gain tenths of a second. It was the last true bastion of engineering freedom left in the paddock.
With the IR-28, IndyCar took a pair of bolt cutters to that freedom. They’ve mandated a single-supplier, centralized shock package — the AXIS system — effectively neutering the damper war. Now, every garage will be forced to run the same basic internal architecture, reducing engineers to glorified parts-swap technicians. If a smart crew finds a clever way to improve a race car’s handling, the series shouldn’t penalize them. That’s what racing used to be about.
For years, the paddock and the fan base have been screaming the same basic wishlist. Make the car lighter. Make it look timeless. Cut the unnecessary bloat. Give the teams back some engineering freedom.
Instead, leadership took every fan survey, every mechanic’s complaint, and every driver’s memo, put them in a blender, and did the exact opposite. As one commenter noted when comparing this launch to the golden era: “The jump from the current cars to this reminds me of what we’d see from one year to the next in the CART era, except now it takes 14 years.”
We waited sixteen years for a brand-new car, and we ended up with an over-winged Frankenstein that revives dead gimmicks, doubles down on dead weight, and strips away the last bit of setup freedom the teams had left.
The social media accounts can call it a reset all they want. Down in the paddock, everyone knows the truth: it’s the same old song, just played on a much uglier instrument.
Chris Graham is a motorsports producer, director, and broadcast engineer based in the Philadelphia-area. Through his work with NRN Productions, he’s helped build and execute live race coverage and sports streaming workflows ranging from lean, two-to-three person crews to full broadcast-style productions. Chris has worked across nearly every position in the truck—producing, directing, technical directing, replay, graphics, camera operation, and engineering—and has supported events and partners including FloSports, the ASA STARS National Tour, and Diamond State Digital. He’s also involved in developing live show formats and digital coverage that bring fans closer to the stories behind the racing. He is currently also the producer for the Frontstretch podcast Happy Hour.
Chris. Drivers always are allowed to complain about INDYCAR. Why wouldn’t they now if they felt so? you’re a piece of crap for inferring that they’re just robots and not individuals with intelligence. Your agenda was to put down in the car in this article. That’s what your agenda was for some reason you took a shot at it. And it showed your lack of intelligence to think the drivers go along with anything you know nothing about race drivers then. You’re writing an article? I would fire you immediately, but that won’t happen. Pos
Obviously I meant IndyCar. Not in the car.
Article seems a bit of a weird hit piece. FS yet again looking for clicks by stirring the pot? Keep it up, and I’ll be out of here, not that one person matters much one way or the other. I tire of media feeling the need to be edgy, rather than reporting the news and/or giving calm, reasoned opinions.
I agree the car is far from perfect, with both front and rear wings looking awkward. If the racing turns out to be good, I don’t really care. It’s a race, not a beauty contest. The car isn’t exactly pretty to my eye, but it’s not as though it’s a Pontiac Aztec.
From there, the hate spewed seems tailor-made to create outrage. Any new or reintroduced tech is summarily dismissed as gimmicks, despite these having been wildly successful in other forms of racing. And to gloss over the power configuration being what the manufacturers require to stay in the sport is laughable.
This is either a 1/10 attempt at trolling, or someone who has some unseen axe to grind.
I would be curious to see a pic of what the author would deem acceptable? I agree, in road course form the wings are a bit much, but the speedway trim looks good to me. It’s not a huge deviation from the current car in looks, but the reduced weight, more power, and improved cockpit for the drivers are all steps in the right direction. If they actually get the aero figured out (even if it looks obnoxious) to where “clean air” isn’t a huge advantage, that’s a big bonus.
Reading the writer’s bio I have to wonder if he was turned down by Penske Entertainment or IMS Productions for a media job, and now has an axe grind.
The road course aero package is a bit much, but I like the looks of the speedway package. The road course wings may look a lot different when finished in a sponsor’s colors, instead of plain “sponsor me” white. I don’t have a need for a hybrid system in Indycar (or F1, IMSA, etc), but I understand why automakers who supply engines and help fund the series want it. IMSA and WEC car LED’s seem to work and are very helpful to fans at a track for keeping track of whose where. I have to believe IndyCar can make them work too.
As far looks, I’ve been a race fan since the 60’s and involved in racing since the late 70’s. I learned long ago what a car looks like has very little to do with how it performs.
Overall this article was just a one sided hit piece by someone with personal issues with IndyCar, instead of an honest review of the next generation car.