IndyCar delays 10-team hybrid test, rollout for start of 2024 season in question

IndyCar’s 10-team multi-day hybrid engine test slated for early December has been delayed until the new year, multiple sources confirmed to IndyStar.

The delay could give teams like Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, Meyer Shank Racing, Ed Carpenter Racing and others who have yet to test the power unit less than two months to work directly with the new hybrid electric motor paired with IndyCar’s current 2.2-liter, twin-turbo, V-6 engines before IndyCar’s 2024 season-opener in St. Petersburg.

The shrinking of that timeline, which one team source laid on the shoulders of “substantial supplier problems” that have forced multiple delays, has multiple high-ranking sources in the paddock doubting St. Pete’s 27-car grid will be able to use the new hybrid technology.

“I think it could look much different when we get to St. Pete, compared to how they want it to look,” one team source told IndyStar.

Said another: “I don’t think it’s possible.”

When reached for comment regarding the progress of their hybrid testing programs since a two-day test open to media in mid-October, officials with engine manufacturers Honda and Chevrolet declined to comment, pointing to IndyCar for an update. An IndyCar spokesperson told IndyStar that its work and collaboration with the manufacturers is going well, and the series' efforts remain focused on the start of the 2024 season.

When asked directly in a Race Industry Week forum Nov. 28 whether IndyCar would debut hybrid technology in 2024, Jay Fryem the longtime IndyCar president declined to give a short, direct answer.

“We have a lot of really smart people working really, really hard to get this thing done, and we’re very confident internally, everyone over here at IndyCar, that we’re going to get this done," Frye said. “I think we’ve got some of the smartest people in the world working on it, and we’re excited to see this play out.”

IMS oval test bred initial hope

The potential for production delays was quietly noted during IndyCar’s two-day test at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Oct. 12-13. It was the first hybrid test the series and its manufacturers opened to the media. Four teams -- Penske, Arrow McLaren, Ganassi and Andretti -- and six drivers took part in what appeared to be a successful program that brought the new system to the one type of track it had yet to visit: a superspeedway.

“Right now, it’s still about all the high-level items: Does it run? Does it run consistently? Does it do the same thing consistently? If it effects the car in a negative way, can you rebalance it?” Arrow McLaren driver Alexander Rossi told reporters midway through his first day in the hybrid at IMS Oct. 12.

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The most popular topic of conversation was how the series and OEMs would decide to use the technology on different types of tracks – would the when, where and length of the use of the additional horsepower from the new electric units be put in the hands of the drivers? Would rules for road and street courses be different than ovals?

Could those rules potentially evolve throughout a first season likely to be filled with troubleshooting?

Coming out of IMS, Rossi said, the general tone among those involved not only seemed positive but all the drivers were essentially all on the same page with their feedback.

“I ran 170 laps, and 140 of those were in a group (of four), and everyone had the same feedback at the end. The system worked the whole day for everyone, and the extra weight and change of distribution from the hybrid had a minimal impact on the balance of the car,” Rossi said on an October episode of "Off Track with Hinch and Rossi." “That was all a huge concern (going in), and a win when it wasn’t a big deal. ... From a reliability and safety standpoint, it ticked all the boxes.”

Frye told reporters the new hybrid system had run nearly 10,000 miles across two- and four-car tests before the two days on the IMS oval and the several since held on permanent road courses at Sebring and Homestead.

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History of delays in IndyCar's next engine date to 2019

One year ago Wednesday, IndyCar and its engine partners announced a change in the new engine model, slashing the parallel rollout of a 2.4-liter V-6 engine due to continued delays in the production of the hybrid unit by the series’ contracted partner, Mahle.

To get this new, “very unusual” technology to the finish line, HPD and Chevy/Ilmor took a more hands-on role over the last 12 months, requiring far more time, energy, money and manpower than had been originally budgeted. In an attempt to guarantee the on-time rollout of the hybrid, decisionmakers opted to stick with the 2.2-liter model – the same internal combustion engine IndyCar has run since 2012 – to decrease the workload and investment.

Notably, Formula 1 first developed series-wide hybrid technology in 2014, with IMSA, the premier North American sportscar series announcing their plans to do so around the same time as IndyCar in 2019. It rolled out the new technology a year earlier with the start of the 2023 campaign with the GTP class.

In the days leading up to the 2018 Indy 500, IndyCar officials announced plans for the 2.4-liter V-6 engine that would come with more than 900 horsepower for the start of the 2021 season and be in use through at least 2026. Testing was slated to begin in the summer of 2020. Just over a year later, the series announced its plans to go hybrid – long believed to be a necessary step to ensure Honda’s continued involvement in the series and to potentially attract a long-awaited third engine manufacturer. That pushed back a full-scale rollout of the hybrid and the 2.4-liter V-6 to 2022.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, IndyCar announced in October 2020 a further delay to the start of the 2023 campaign jointly with a multi-year extension with Chevy and Honda and engine manufacturers "well into the end of the decade."

That new engine rollout target was again shifted back, to 2024, in March 2022, citing significant global supply chain issues and to ensure the entire grid could be promised a power unit the following year. That spring, both OEMs tested the 2.4-liter V-6 on the IMS road course without the hybrid unit. Months later, HPD managed a two-day test with the whole system – the 2.4-liter engine and the hybrid unit – but reliable mass production of the model was becoming an increased concern.

The latest official rollback in IndyCar’s engine plans came early last December, when the decision was made to hold onto the 2.2-liter V-6, scrap the 2.4-liter model still in the works and continue pushing forward with the hybrid system. Frequent testing of the 2.2-liter V-6 engine paired with IndyCar’s new hybrid technology began in August with multi-time series champs from Team Penske (Will Power) and CGR (Scott Dixon).

“We’ve been working on this for some time, and once we got it to a certain point (in late 2022), we looked to our current partners to finish it off and make it raceable,” Frye told reporters in October.

Added Honda senior engineer Matt Niles: “It’s our goal to get this in all the teams’ hands before the end of the year. Getting all the parts and pieces in place before St. Pete is going to be a challenge, but that’s what we do here is challenges, so we’re going to keep pushing ahead and get it done.”

Moments later, Frye unveiled that a 10-car test to include one entry from each of the series’ full-time squads was slated to take place “the first part of December.”

“I think we’re in a good spot,” he added.

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Serious concerns with 3 months until 2024 season

Privately, some team owners had long felt differently. Dating to the week of the season-finale, some expressed concerns with Penske and Ganassi being so heavily involved in the initial stages of the testing.

There were concerns, even then, about how much testing time some teams would receive in the leadup to St. Pete.

“Ganassi has a big jump-start on all of us. They’ve got the best guy in the series (six-time champ Scott Dixon) doing the testing,” Bobby Rahal told IndyStar in early September. “I think it’s going to be a huge demand on the teams this fall to understand the systems, whereas guys like Penske and Ganassi definitely have a big leg up on everybody.

“We’ve all got to catch up, and they probably pretty much know where they need to be. You would hope we’ll get (the amount of testing time) the others have gotten.”

In late August, Mike Shank told IndyStar he was expecting his team to get between 3-5 test outings with the new system before the start of the 2024 campaign, a substantial upgrade in traditional offseason testing allowances in recent years, though nowhere near the number of days some individual drivers among the series’ top-four teams have gotten in recent months.

Back in the shop, teams unable to get on-track with the new hybrid units have been able to engage in static testing of their new gearboxes, but they’re awaiting well over 100 other parts to prep for a season that’s just over three months away.

“We’re all trying to be prepared for it, but there’s so much we don’t know,” owner/driver Ed Carpenter told IndyStar ahead of Laguna Seca. “When we don’t have our hands on it, it’s hard to even really do anything other than project what we’ll try to be doing with it.”

Behind the scenes, though, supply chain concerns had continued to linger. Progress has continued to be made with the hybrid system and its integration with the rest of the car – albeit with the expected level of occasional teething pains, multiple sources said – but teams inside and outside IndyCar’s inner circle have begun to see the writing on the wall with the lack of a finalized unit and so many parts needing to be mass-produced by March, let alone by February to allow teams ample test time.

After it became clear IndyCar’s manufacturers would be unable to outfit each team with a full unit in time for this week’s test, decisionmakers initially scaled back testing plans to just include the four teams that have been involved since early-fall. Then that test plan was scrapped. Those who’ve yet to test believe they’ll get a chance in January, but even that remains uncertain.

With just four power units in rotation, sources suggest IndyCar and its manufacturers would likely need to produce an additional 50 kits for St. Pete – one for each of the 27 full-time entries as well as a backup. Though so much of Indy cars are "spec" parts, teams have emphasized just how many parts need to be massaged and rubbed on to properly fit and operate on their cars in peak condition – eliminating the idea of IndyCar hosting a pool of backup parts related to the hybrid that teams could pull off the shelf if they crashed or experienced failures at St. Pete.

Two weeks after the season opener, IndyCar is scheduled to visit The Thermal Club for its non-points, $1 Million Challenge, considerably shortening a post-St. Pete window to produce additional parts.

Sources have insisted that whether the electric hybrid motors are hooked into the 27 cars at St. Pete or not, teams will be forced to run the rest of the updated kit that, even without the central focus of the package, amounts to a “pretty significant upgrade package,” expenses for which could’ve been delayed a year if IndyCar fails to debut its full hybrid package until 2025. This added expense comes a year after IndyCar elected to deduct somewhere around $100,000 from each of its Leaders Circle entrants' annual prize pools in order to help support an additional boost in the series' marketing plan.

Independently, multiple sources have pointed to the possibility of IndyCar rolling out the hybrid electric motor after the Indy 500 to both ensure all 27 cars can be properly outfitted with the new kit – leading to a seemingly unprecedented move in modern-day racing of running with two engine formulas across a single season.

“We’re all very smart people, and a lot of us have been through stuff like this before,” one source said. “It’s got some ramifications if it doesn’t get done.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: Production concerns could delay hybrid rollout, sources say