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The Indy Lights championship is targeting the involvement of Andretti Autosport, Chip Ganassi Racing and Team Penske when the top three in its championship get an IndyCar test next year.
Owing to a single-digit grid and then the outbreak of the coronavirus, Indy Lights – owned by IndyCar and operated by Andersen Promotions – elected to take a sabbatical for 2020 and return next year.
The Road to Indy’s top championship recently announced said return with its car featuring a halo for the first time, an IndyCar test day for its top three drivers in the points and a $1.2million prize pot towards outings in IndyCar for the champion – a prize which 2019 title winner Oliver Askew (below) received towards his 2020 Arrow McLaren SP seat.
In an exclusive interview, Andersen Promotions’ Dan Andersen told The Race that he was hopeful that IndyCar’s top three teams – responsible for every IndyCar championship victory since the reunification of the series with Champ Car in 2008 – will take part at an Indianapolis road-course based event where drivers would rotate cars.
Other American sports often employ a ‘scouting combine’ where athletes hopeful of being drafted into a championship/league/series take part in a number of assessments to impress those teams doing the drafting.
Andersen is hopeful that the IndyCar test for the Indy Lights standouts will work in the same way – as it has been a proven training ground for current IndyCar drivers for a number of years.
“Jay Frye and Roger Penske are both indicating that they would like both Honda and Chevrolet engine manufacturers to be involved in the test,” Andersen told The Race.
“I’d like it to be kind of a scouting combine type of a thing, where the drivers all test on the same day with three different teams.
“I know all of us would like it to be Penske, Ganassi and Andretti – not positive that’s going to be worked out but we’re hopeful that we can get a car from each of those top three teams and do this test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“We’d like it to happen in October of 2021. Shortly after the season concludes we will work on finalising the details sooner rather than later.”
One of the discussions in the off-season had been over whether more IndyCar teams can be persuaded to join Indy Lights in the future.
Currently Andretti runs a Lights team and Andersen told The Race earlier in the year that he would like more IndyCar teams to join it and increase competition in the feeder series.
Asked for an update on that, Andersen said: “We are actively pursuing additional teams from IndyCar. Hopeful, but no news until a team makes the commitment and announces.”
Will Indy Lights run IndyCars in the future?
During this year, it had been heavily rumoured that using the DW12 IndyCar could be a possibility for the Indy Lights championship in the future.
Andersen confirmed to The Race that discussions took place surrounding it, but the delay for the new engine formula to 2023 and the uncertainty over when and how the new IndyCar chassis will be introduced means that idea has been postponed, but not ruled out.
“I was involved in conversations about future cars and what it would be, and use of the current generation IndyCar as a future Indy Lights car was definitely discussed and it may happen one day,” Andersen said, also explaining the decision to stick with an improved version of its current Dallara IL15.
“The issue right now is that no one really knows when the next generation IndyCar is coming along. So, we know it’s not happening in the next few years so there needs to be some solution – and the current solution, the IL15 is a brilliant race car, it really performs well.
“The engine package we have with AER [Advanced Engine Research] is running flawlessly. The folks at Dallara looked it over and indicated that they could do a strengthening of the tub and the addition of a titanium halo which would actually bring this car up to more current standards and with that, we can commit to the teams that we’re going to use the car for a number of more seasons.
“So the, even though the halo cost is not really all that expensive, the car will be in use for several more seasons, at least.”
The sabbatical
Taking a sabbatical is a difficult decision for any championship and one IndyCar and Indy Lights did not take lightly.
The other Road to Indy Championships have continued though, and with the addition of a Formula Regional scholarship, three drivers instead of one will race with a scholarship in Indy Lights next year.
The series has also kept its commitment to 2019 Indy Pro 2000 graduate Kyle Kirkwood (above), who should have raced for Andretti in the championship for 2020. He’ll be joined by this year’s Indy Pro 2000 winner Sting Ray Rob, and Formula Regional Americas champion Linus Lundqvist as the trio of scholarship winners.
Andersen believes the package Indy Lights has put together as a collective has made the decision to delay the season worthwhile.
“I think things are looking very positive for a number of reasons,” he said.
“First off, with regard to the pausing of Indy Lights for the 2020 season, things were happening very quickly and in hindsight it was the right decision, for sure.
“We were not sure where things were heading, events were starting to get cancelled, television was starting to become a problem for Indy Lights because we need to be on pretty much the same days on a weekend as IndyCar for the NBC Sports television.
“We also knew that some teams and drivers were having issues getting people into the country.
“At that point, our field was was weak to begin with and if we lost more cars, there would be no point – so Roger Penske and I had a long conversation and decided that for Indy Lights the right decision was to take the season off.
“Let the COVID thing run through, and in hindsight it was absolutely the right decision.”
The calendar for Road to Indy in 2020 is almost finalised and is due to be released before this weekend’s St Petersburg IndyCar event.
