When IndyCar unveiled the IR-28 set to take over competition in the 2028 NTT IndyCar Series, there was a range of opinions about the car’s presentation and aesthetics.
Many liked the looks; some panned the looks, while many were somewhere in the middle, this writer included. However, the main judges were the ones who would be getting behind the wheel of this new car that will define IndyCar’s on-track product for the next several years.
As such, the IR-28 was put through its paces at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course by Alexander Rossi and Alex Palou, two drivers well worthy of the honor of being the first to steer IndyCar into the future.
The verdict? The test was a massive success, and as such, the future is bright for the IR-28.
Both Rossi and Palou were pleased with the way the new car felt to drive and with the differences that the new car had compared to the DW12 that has been used in its various iterations since 2012.
The cockpit is larger to fit taller drivers better and also allows drivers to electronically adjust how their car handles via the rollbars, instead of using knobs in the cockpit.
The main negative about the first part of the test involved the weather. Unfortunately, the rain prevented any representative lap times from being set during Saturday and Sunday’s running, but the purpose of the test wasn’t to set a new record. It was to turn mileage.
Which the car did, with Rossi turning 36 laps on Saturday and Palou turning 35 laps on Sunday. Both drivers praised the new parts of the car’s design.
“The integrated cooling, like you certainly feel it third gear, fourth gear and up,” Rossi said of the aeroscreen. “There’s a lot more airflow in the cockpit. It looks better, but I don’t think visually there was anything that really needed to be improved.”
Palou had fewer than 10 laps in the car in his first session on Sunday but had immediate feedback of his time in the new car.
“It’s very nice how it feels as a driver,” Palou said. “When you lean into the car, all the shifts, it feels good.”
“The cars (DW12 and IR-28) are very similar in terms of speed, downforce, power, ratio, like it’s very similar, but it works super differently. So you’re able to go aggressive with it because it’s not like suddenly we have, I don’t know, 500 horsepower more, so I’m confident with the car and I could already feel when I was leaning into the car what [Rossi] meant and what he was saying about how soft and how good […] everything feels.”
However, Dallara and IndyCar wanted to do some more dry-weather running and offered Palou the chance to drive a few more laps around the IMS road course with the new car on Tuesday afternoon and Palou turned 25 more laps around the 14-turn, 2.439-mile road course.
Unofficial stopwatch usage put the lap times in the high 1-minute-and-10-second bracket, which was a good starting point ahead of more testing.
The car only had a few minor issues during the validation test days. On Rossi’s initial shakedown run earlier in the week, the car had a wheel speed sensor that was acting up, and on Off Track with Hinch and Rossi, the 2016 Indianapolis 500 winner said that the sensor wouldn’t allow him to shift gears because of the fault.
Fast forward to Saturday and there was a thermostat issue affecting the oil temperature, so the crew working the test had to bypass the thermostat and just check to make sure that the oil temperature wasn’t going haywire.
For Palou, the wet weather portion of the test had one major issue with the alternator and that issue cropped up again when he pulled out of pit road to try and go onto the track. The technical crew told the Spaniard to stop and pulled the car back into the garage area.
The only other negative that Palou mentioned was the brakes, but there is time to improve their performance.
“It’s not incredible,” Palou said of the brakes. “I think the brakes, we need to work a little bit more, maybe the feel as well. We’re not really running the same stuff as I run on my car, like even I think just changing the brake pumps and stuff, I could make it feel more like what I feel on the real car, but the downforce is there, the grip is there, it’s more like the pedal feel and how the car decels.”
Based on Rossi and Palou’s feedback, the overall verdict is that this is a tremendous starting point for IndyCar’s new era beginning in 2028. After more fine-tuning, testing will resume in September and eventually each manufacturer will have a car of their own to put their new engines through their paces ahead of competition.
With how well the initial rollout of the car has gone, it might not be a good idea to change up part of IndyCar’s marketing strategy with the new car with a new slogan:
Is It 2028 Yet?
Christopher DeHarde has covered IndyCar racing and the Road to Indy for various outlets since 2014. In addition to open wheel racing, DeHarde has also covered IMSA and various short track racing events around Indiana. Originally from New Orleans, DeHarde moved to the Indianapolis area in 2017 to further pursue a career as a motorsports writer.