2024 IndyCar drivers and teams | McLaren releases Malukas | GRR

McLaren drops Malukas

Updated: Monday 29^th April. McLaren has released David Malukas from his IndyCar contract after its brand-new signing for 2024 failed to race in any of the first four rounds of the season.

Malukas suffered a fractured left wrist in a mountain bike accident just before the season and was initially ruled out of just the opening race at St. Petersburg. He was replaced there by former F2 runner-up Callum Ilott, and then again at the non-points round at Thermal Club.

McLaren had expected see Malukas back for Long Beach, but with the injury turning out to be worse than first thought, reigning F2 champion Theo Pourchaire has stepped into the #6 car for the past two races at Long Beach and Barber Motorsport Park.

Speaking in McLaren’s statement Malukas said: "The past three months have been challenging. I felt privileged to have had the opportunity to drive for Arrow McLaren and regret that it never materialised.

"I would have loved to have continued representing the team and its partners going forward. They have been good, and I appreciate all they have done for me.

"I've done everything possible to speed up the rehab process – treatments, physiotherapy, strength training – but my recovery has taken longer than anticipated. Every injury is different, and everybody heals at a different pace. I'll turn my full attention to getting back to 100 per cent and then prove that I am ready and able to compete to win."

McLaren has not announced who will replace Malukas for the rest of the 2024 season.

Ghiotto to race for Dale Coyne at Barber and Indy.

Updated: Friday 26^th April. Formula 2 veteran and GT racer Luca Ghiotto will make his IndyCar debut for Dale Coyne Racing at Barber Motorsports Park and the Indianapolis road course.

He fills the seat in Coyne’s second car, under the Dale Coyne Racing with Rick Ware Racing banner, which has yet to be associated with a full time driver yet in 2024. Sportscar driver Colin Braun was in the cockpit at St. Petersburg and the non-championship round at Thermal Club, while the team has announced that Katharine Legge will jump into the #51 car for the Indy 500. But so far no other announcement has been made about who will drive alongside Jack Harvey and Nolan Siegel, who share the #18 car.

Ghiotto, who has seven F2 wins under his belt, will race for Coyne in the next two rounds, but it remains to be seen who will drive in the remaining 12 races. So late was the announcement of Ghiotto’s drive at Barber, that it came just a couple of days before cars were due on track for first practice.

Pourchaire to continue racing for McLaren in IndyCar

Updated: Wednesday 24th April. Reigning F2 champion Theo Pourchaire will continue his IndyCar journey with McLaren at the upcoming Barber Motorsport Park round. The Frenchman made his series debut last weekend at Long Beach and impressed – gaining more places over the race than any other driver – and has been retained for the second of the back-to-back races.

Pourchaire is standing in for regular driver David Malukas, who has yet to race for McLaren after injuring his wrist pre-season. McLaren recently admitted that the injury was worse than first feared revealing Malukas would miss more rounds than the initially expected one.

McLaren had used Callum llott for the first round of the season at St Petersburg and the non-points race at Thermal Club, but llott’s priority for 2024 is racing with JOTA in the World Endurance Championship and a clash meant he couldn’t race at Long Beach.

Theo Pourchaire to make IndyCar debut at Long Beach for McLaren

Updated: Thursday 18^th April. Formula 2 champion Theo Pourchaire will step into McLaren's third IndyCar entry for the Long Beach Grand Prix. The switch comes after it was confirmed that regular driver David Malukas would not recover from his hand injury in time to return to the cockpit of the number 6 car.

Callum Ilott, who had replaced Malukas for the last two rounds of the series at St. Petersburg and the non-points event at Thermal Club, is unable to race this weekend at Long Beach due to his commitments racing for Jota in the World Endurance Championship at Imola.

Illot to race for McLaren at St Petersburg.

Updated: Tuesday 5^th March. World Endurance Championship driver and former Ferrari junior Callum Ilott will step in to replace David Malukas at the first race of the IndyCar season. Illot spent last season racing for Juncos Hollinger but lost his seat at the end of the 2023 season.

Malukas broke his hand wile biking in the off season, and was ruled out of the first race of the season. Illot has already tested for the team around his Jota sportscar commitments and will be a quick ready-made replacement for the St Petersburg race.

Dale Coyne completes IndyCar grid

Updated: Tuesday 5^th March. Dale Coyne has announced its three drivers for the 2024 IndyCar championship, as Jack Harvey, Nolan Siegel and Colin Braun join the team.

Romain Grosjean had already been announced in the team’s Rick Ware Racing-badged car, but with commitments with Lamborghini outside of the championship he is set to miss at least two rounds. He will be replaced in the #51 car by Braun, who will make his IndyCar debut having raced over 150 times in the IMSA Sportscar Championship, including wins at Daytona and Petit Le Mans last year.

Harvey and Siegel will share the #18 Dale Coyne Racing car. Siegel was the Indy NXT rookie of the year in 2023 and will step up to the top level for the four races that don’t clash with his Indy NXT schedule in 2024. Harvey, who is a veteran of over 70 IndyCar races, will fill in for the races that Siegel is unable to do.

Hunter-Reay, Daly and Sato all confirm 2024 Indy 500 appearances

Updated: Thursday 22^nd February. Dreyer and Reinbold will field Conor Daly and former IndyCar champion Ryan Hunter-Reay in the Indy 500 in 2024 while two-time 500 winner Takuma Sato will return for the race with Rahal Letterman Lanigan.

Dreyer and Reinbold will only contest the Indy 500 for the 2024 season, and it is set to serve as both Hunter-Reay and Daly’s only drives in IndyCar this year. Forty-seven-year-old Sato has not raced full time in IndyCar since 2022. He competed five times in 2023 with Chip Ganassi Racing and switches to RLL for 2024 to return to the race which brought two of his six IndyCar race wins so far.

Elsewhere, David Malukas has confirmed that he will not take part in the season opening round at St. Petersburg after fracturing his hand in a mountain biking accident. McLaren will run Callum Illot in its upcoming hybrid IndyCar test before it announces a replacement for Malukas in the coming weeks.

Ferrucci to race for AJ Foyt in 2024

Updated: Wednesday 10^th January at 15:00. Santino Ferrucci will return to the AJ Foyt IndyCar team for the 2024 season. The American will partner Sting Ray Robb for the full season, driving the #14 car in every round.

The 25-year-old former Haas F1 junior has raced for Dale Coyne, Rahal Letterman Lanigan, Dreyer and Reinbold and Juncos Hollinger across five seasons in the IndyCar championship. In his first full season with AJ Foyt last year he finished in the top ten only once, but that was an impressive third place finish in the Indy 500.

The news means that only Dale Coyne and Dreyer and Reinbold are still to confirm their 2024 IndyCar drivers.

Didn’t Alex Palou join McLaren?

This was quite the melodrama. The answer is yes. But also no. Palou’s stark statement via Twitter in 2022 that he had absolutely not re-signed for Chip Ganassi Racing (despite the team’s announcement that he had) caused a storm.

He was angling for a move to the McLaren team for 2023, but by the end of the 2022 season it had been agreed after some legal wrangling that Palou would remain with Ganassi for one more year.

Fast forward to August 2023, when Palou was on the verge of claiming his second IndyCar title, and the Spaniard had now informed McLaren that he had no intention of fulfilling his agreement to race for the team in 2024.

He lines up once more with Ganassi this season. And you thought F1’s driver market was complex.

So who is racing for McLaren then?

Pato O’Ward and Alexander Rossi remain. Neither driver won a race in 2023, with O’Ward coming closest and finishing fourth in the title race. That’s not good enough for a team like McLaren in IndyCar. Expectations will be high on both to step back up in 2023 – a fifth straight season finishing below eighth in the standings really wouldn’t be good enough for Rossi.

Replacing Palou wasn’t ever going to be easy. Felix Rosenqvist has been popular with the team but hasn’t delivered a single victory since joining from Ganassi himself. He has been let go after 2023 and joined Meyer Shank Racing to replace Helio Castroneves – who will race only at the Indy 500. 

Instead McLaren has turned to promising American racer David Malukas. The 22-year-old from Chicago will race the #6 car after leaving Dale Coyne Racing. Two finishes of 16^th and 17^th in the championship don’t sound particularly exciting, but Coyne is a plucky but underfunded team. Without massive budgets Malukas pulled three podiums out of the DCR Dallara in two years and nine top ten finishes overall.  

There will also be a fourth McLaren racing at the Indy 500, with none-other than 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson at the wheel. 

Any change at Ganassi or Andretti?

Far from it. In fact one of the very first things to be confirmed for 2024 was that Andretti had poached 2022 Indy 500 winner, and former Sauber F1 driver, Marcus Ericsson from Ganassi. Over his five seasons in IndyCar so far the Swede has shown consistency in top ten finishes and a knack for nabbing wins, bringing in four victories during his time at Ganassi. But it seems like his former team spent too much attention on retaining its other European star, and while Ganassi dithered Andretti swooped in and nabbed Ericsson.

As he arrives, so another former F1 driver departs. Romain Grosjean’s time in IndyCar so far could perhaps be described as ‘fruitlessly box office’. Zero wins in three seasons, including two in a highly financed Ganassi outfit. But numerous public spats, confrontations and the odd near miss on victory lane. Two 13^th place finishes weren’t enough to overcome the growing discontentment within Andretti, and Grosjean found himself looking elsewhere. He’ll join Juncos Hollinger for 2024, replacing Callum Illot and hoping to impress enough again in low-grid machinery to find a way back to the top table. 

Elsewhere Ganassi retains Scott Dixon, for which he has driven since it was racing in CART in 2002, and given Marcus Armstrong and Linus Lundqvist full seasons. Armstrong was rookie of the year in 2023 despite only doing a part season, so will now need to learn the oval craft. Lundqvist has raced three times in IndyCar – with Meyer Shank last year – but he has been largely on the sidelines after winning the Indy Lights (now Indy NXT) title in 2022. Finally a fifth Ganassi car will race for Kyffin Simpson, the Barbadian/Caymanian driver who won the European Le Mans Series with United Autosport in 2023 while finishing 10^th in Indy NXT.

Andretti retains both Kyle Kirkwood and Colton Herta and will run Marco Andretti in the Indy 500. Kirkwood was the only Andretti driver to win a race in 2023 – he won twice – and should be one to keep an eye on this year, while Herta will be desperate to re-find the form that made him one of the most exciting prospects in IndyCar just a few years ago. He is still only 23.

What other rookies are making their IndyCar debuts in 2024?

Christian Rasmussen has blasted his way through the IndyCar junior ladder. US F2000 champion in 2020, Indy Pro 2000 champion in 2021, Indy NXT victor in 2023. Now he makes the big move to IndyCar with a part-time season with Ed Carpenter Racing. The Dane will race in all road course rounds and the Indy 500. Team owner Ed Carpenter will share the drive, racing in all oval rounds.

Also making his full-season debut is Tom Blomqvist. The son of legendary rally driver Stig has made his name pretty much totally in sportscars over the last few years, including some stellar drives in the IMSA Sportscar Championship. He will race for Meyer Shank Racing, the team with which he raced in IMSA last year, as it switches its full-time focus from sportscars to IndyCar. 

What about Penske?

Can’t ever forget about Penske can we? We’ve not mentioned it so far simply because nothing has changed. And really why would it? Penske might not have won the title in 2023, but two of its drivers were in heavy contention and its third was the reigning champ from 2022.

Perhaps surprisingly Scott McLaughlin was the top Penske finisher in 2023, coming home third behind the two Ganassis of Palou and Dixon. Josef Newgarden ended his season fifth, despite seeming to be Palou’s main challenger for much of the year. Two-time champion Will Power ended his season seventh, without a single victory. But with his wife suffering a near fatal illness at the start of the year it’s impressive that he was able to achieve so much.

And what about the rest?

You’ll forgive us for dedicating so much time to the machinations at the top of the IndyCar table, it’s been quite the six months for the championship. But there are of course other teams away from Ganassi, Andretti, Penske and McLaren. 

Rinus Veekay, who might be the most interesting talent not yet mentioned, will race again for Ed Carpenter Racing, hoping to rediscover the form that saw him win one race in 2021 and add more podiums in ’22. Augustin Canapino will return to Juncos Hollinger alongside Grosjean.

Rahal Letterman Lanigan will field son-of-team-owner Graham again (despite much speculation that he might walk away after a disastrous season which saw one top five finish and a failure to qualify for the Indy 500). He’ll be partnered again by Christian Lundgaard, whose season was the exact opposite to Rahal’s as he took his first IndyCar victory. Pietro Fittipaldi completes the RLL line-up for his first full season in IndyCar.

A.J. Foyt racing has signed Sting Ray Robb, who raced for Dale Coyne in 2023, and is yet to announce the drivers for its second car. Dreyer and Reinbold Racing will again race in the Indy 500, but is yet to announce which drivers will fill its cars. Abel Racing will also be back for the Indy500. The team expanded from Indy NXT to run a car in the Indy 500 in 2023 and now hopes to run the #50 again.

Finally, as for Dale Coyne Racing, the team that has launched so many IndyCar careers over the years and scrapped well above its means, who knows. There’s been absolutely no information yet about its plans for 2024.

2024 IndyCar drivers and teams

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.