American open-wheel racing has just come off its most-watched season in years, and if the 2026 campaign was the one that finally caught your eye, you are not alone. Here is IndyCar explained — what the series is, how a season works, who runs at the front and why the sport’s audience has grown faster than almost anything else in motorsport.
What is IndyCar?
The NTT IndyCar Series is the top tier of open-wheel racing in the United States, run commercially by Penske Entertainment Corp. Unlike Formula 1, it is a largely spec category: every team races an identically homologated chassis built by Italian constructor Dallara, and engines come from just two manufacturers, Chevrolet and Honda. Teams choose their engine partner and develop setup, strategy and personnel around a common platform.
That parity is the whole point. With the machinery closely matched, results tend to be decided by execution rather than by budget-driven aerodynamic advantage, and the racing is habitually closer than in categories where constructors build their own cars.
IndyCar explained: the shape of a season
The 2026 season ran to 18 rounds and finished in September at Laguna Seca, where Scott McLaughlin took the final win of the year. What makes the calendar unusual is its variety: in a single championship, drivers race on a 2.5-mile superspeedway at Indianapolis, on short ovals such as Milwaukee, on permanent road courses including Mid-Ohio and Laguna Seca, and on temporary street circuits — among them the Freedom 250 Grand Prix in Washington, D.C.
No other major single-seater series asks its drivers to master that spread of disciplines in the same car across the same year. A superspeedway demands trust in flat-out running in traffic; a street race demands precision between concrete walls; a road course rewards braking and tyre management. A champion has to be competent everywhere and excellent somewhere.
If you want a sense of what that means in practice, our guide to the Corkscrew at Laguna Seca covers one of the sport’s genuinely intimidating corners.
The Indianapolis 500
One race towers over the rest. The Indianapolis 500 is the crown jewel not only of IndyCar but arguably of motor racing anywhere, and the 110th running took place in 2026. It carries its own month-long build-up, its own qualifying format and, for many drivers, a career’s worth of meaning in a single afternoon.
The 2026 edition delivered the closest finish in the race’s history, won by Felix Rosenqvist. It also drew an average television audience of 6.635 million viewers in the United States — comfortably the biggest number the series produces all year, and the reason so many drivers from other categories eventually make the pilgrimage.
Who to watch
Alex Palou is the defining driver of the era. The Spaniard won the 2026 title — his fifth championship in six years — and also has an Indianapolis 500 victory to his name from 2025. Chip Ganassi Racing and Team Penske remain the benchmark organisations, with Arrow McLaren and Ed Carpenter Racing among the established names further down the paddock.
Palou’s latest title is examined in full in our 2026 IndyCar season review, which sets out how a championship that looked settled early still produced one of the most-watched years on record.
Below the main series sits Indy NXT, the official development ladder. It functions as IndyCar’s feeder category in the way Formula 2 does for F1, and its 2026 title went to Nikita Johnson. Indy NXT’s own audience grew by 14 per cent year-on-year to an average of 127,000 viewers, which is a useful indicator that interest is deepening rather than simply spiking around the Indy 500.
How to watch, and why the numbers matter
In the United States, IndyCar is broadcast exclusively by FOX Sports, a partnership now in its second season. The 2026 figures were emphatic: an average of 1.681 million viewers per race, up 23 per cent on 2025 and 57 per cent on 2024. Nine of the 18 rounds cleared a million viewers, something that had not happened since 2008, and the Washington, D.C. race averaged 3.282 million — a record for any non-Indy 500 round since 1995.
“The final numbers are in and they confirm what we already know – it was a historic, memorable and breakout season for the NTT IndyCar Series,” said Penske Entertainment Corp. President and CEO Mark Miles. “Our growth is not just impressive, it’s best in class and sits at the forefront of our entire industry.”
Viewers outside the United States should check local listings, as international rights vary by territory and are not consistent season to season.
What comes next
The series is preparing its biggest technical change in more than a decade. A next-generation Dallara chassis, designated the IR-28, is scheduled to arrive for the 2028 season and has already begun on-track validation work — first on the road course at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, then in superspeedway configuration on the IMS oval, with Alexander Rossi running for Chevrolet and Palou for Honda across two days of testing in September 2026.
Early testing has concentrated on aerodynamic configurations and ride-height extremes rather than headline lap times. “We got a lot more laps than I expected with the weather, and the car felt good,” Palou said after his day in the car, noting that the oval version felt closer to the current machine than the road-course specification had.
For a newcomer, that is the encouraging part. IndyCar is at a rare moment where the audience is climbing, the racing is close by design, and a new car is on the horizon to reset the competitive order again. It is a good time to start watching.
Viewership and season figures via Motorsport.com, per Nielsen Media Research.
