Gears And Roaming In St. Petersburg: A Trip To IndyCar's Season Opener
The 2025 NTT IndyCar Series season is officially underway with the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg now in the books.
This season is a massive one for the series. A new year is always a big deal, but this season, the series is starting a new TV deal with Fox that will see every single race broadcast on network television.
I’m not sure how up-to-date you stay on that sort of thing, but it’s practically unheard of in the current media climate where most companies are trying to drive viewers to streaming platforms.
This is a key part of this year’s IndyCar season because it does something that will without a doubt help the series in the long run and that is simply getting people in the proverbial door,
Once they're in, they'll stay because the series offers some of the most entertaining racing out there.
Like NASCAR’s ovals? Indy has those.
Like a nice helping of F1-style road and street circuits? Those are also on the menu.
Fancy not having a pretty good guess of who is going to win on any given weekend? Check.
The only thing better than catching a race on TV? Catching one in person; which is what I did over the weekend.
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I’m not a morning guy. I like the idea of being a morning guy — waking up early to tackle the day; to be the early bird that catches the worm — but I like sleeping a whole hell of a lot more.
This is why when I rolled out of bed on Saturday, got dressed, and walked out the door before 6 am, my dog looked at me from his bed in the corner of the room with a look that combined confusion over seeing me up so early, with disgust that I had woken him up.
He was — to make up a word — "confusted" with me.
So, not my favorite thing to do, but it was easy that day because I had a quick drive down I-4 from Orlando to St. Petersburg for the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, a race I had always wanted to check out.
I have been to a couple of IndyCar races before. When I was a kid I went with my family to see a race at Pocono and then in 2021 I went to the Indianapolis 500, a pilgrimage I think every American sports fan — even if you’re not super into motorsports — should make at least once.
About an hour and a half after I woke up my dog (much to his dismay, but he’ll get over it) I pulled into the parking lot of the currently roofless Tropicana Field, then hopped on a shuttle to the track.
Until visiting St. Pete, I had never been to a race on a street circuit and was kind of dreading the obvious logistic issues that can come from plopping a race circuit in a city. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was remarkably easy to get around, something I assume is the product of 20 years' worth of trial and error.
I’m telling you, I didn’t run into a single issue all weekend, which is nothing short of remarkable. I’m The Gripe Report guy. I will go down as one of history’s greatest complainers and can do 20 minutes about why buying a new toaster and getting it dialed in is a total nightmare.
But it was hard to complain in such a cool atmosphere. The street circuit’s pit straight uses a runway at Albert Whitted Airport before veering onto city streets through some tricky opening corners.
The track then makes its way past and around Al Lang Stadium — home to the USL Championship’s Tampa Bay Rowdies — as well as the Salvador Dalí Museum — home to a lot of melting clocks and goofy mustaches.
It then makes its way to Dan Wheldon Way, named in honor of the late IndyCar great who won the inaugural Grand Prix of St. Petersburg in 2005 and takes the cars past the harbor with yachts parked with great views of the circuit.
It’s kind of like Monaco, with overtaking.
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This weekend I found myself in the paddock and the pits, which was kind of mind-boggling.
I’m a big racing fan. I watch a ton of races (sometimes to my fiancée's dismay if there is something else she wants to watch) and the scale of these operations blew my mind to pieces.
The haulers and team garages are massive and you can see right in to check out everything that’s happening.
I was fortunate to get a tour od the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing haulers and while I was familiar with what went into running a racing team, I found myself nearly in the throes of a panic attack thanks to all of the tiny details and considerations needed to keep a team not just competitive, but simply operating.
You know how you'll see a car clip a wall and break its front wing then return to the pits for a new one? Those wings are tens of thousands of dollars alone.
During a tour of the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing hauler I learned that front wings like those on the left for rookie Louis Foster's No. 45 Honda — which you see get broken all the time - cost tens of thousands of dollars each. (Photo Credit: Matt Reigle)
In the paddock, there are fans and team personnel everywhere and a seemingly unending sound of golf cart horns (I swear, I’ll be hearing them in my sleep) as teams try to move stacks of tires or even tow their cars to and from pit lane.
This is without a doubt the coolest thing about the IndyCar series: The accessibility.
But Matt, you had pit and paddock access, and you are also very handsome and talented.
True — and thank you for the compliment, by the way — but you don’t need it. I promise, if you go to a race you will encounter drivers, team personnel, and media members all over the place.
Why, I even had my Fox Sports’ phenomenal pit reporter Jamie Little walk right past me while I was standing behind a trailer frantically stuffing pulled pork in my dumb face so I could get down to the pits.
You’ll even see plenty of them cruising around on scooters everywhere, and I mean everywhere.
On Saturday, I was walking around through the food booth trying to decide what I wanted to eat (that day I went with a burger and a Diet Coke), when the person walking in front of me stepped to the side, leaving a guy riding a scooter and wearing an Arrow McLaren shirt right in front of me. He expertly slammed on the brakes and weaved around me with a flick of his wrists like he had driven a car at over 220mph around Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
That's probably because he did exactly that quite a few times. That guy IndyCar legend and McLaren team principal Tony Kanaan.
There’s so much access at these races, that you might literally bump into a legend… or almost run into you on a scooter.
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Speaking of legends, I had the surreal opportunity of speaking with one: four-time Indy 500 champ Helio Castroneves.
He still gets back in an IndyCar from time to time, but is also a minority partner with Meyer Shank Racing.
I asked about the energy that I was picking up on as I walked through the paddock.
"Even though I’m not in the car, it’s the first race of the season —as you mentioned — so, everybody’s vibes, everybody’s energy, everybody is getting ready, excited to go," he said. "It’s something that is hard to explain, but only when you’re here that you feel like that."
I couldn’t agree more.
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Of course, we were all there to see some action on track, and it was practically non-stop with support from the Mazda MX-5 Cup, USF 2000, USF Pro 2000, and the direct feeder series to IndyCar, Indy NXT (which has a phenomenal field this season).
But of course, IndyCar is the centerpiece of the weekend, and it’d be tough to argue that, as far as marketable drivers and compelling storylines, IndyCar is tough to beat.
Take Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin’s weekend for instance. The 31-year-old Kiwi is looking to pick up where he left off last season and get a strong, potential championship campaign underway.
But that solid started out with a big crash during Friday practice.
Was that crash going to compromise his weekend?
Nope, McLaughlin stormed through qualifying and put his No. 3 Chevrolet on pole.
Unfortunately, he didn’t get the bounces he needed strategy-wise and came home just off the podium in P4.
What a roller coaster.
There are stories like that up and down the grid.
This weekend alone you had Alex Palou of Chip Ganassi Racing trying to get off to a strong start in what could prove to be his third-straight championship season and fourth overall.
You had his teammate, six-time champ Scott Dixon, trying to win his first Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.
You had Prema, a team with an unbelievable track record and reputation in series like Formula 2 making their IndyCar debut.
And, of course, you had numerous drivers up and down the grid making their first start with new teams including 2016 Indianapolis 500 winner Alexander Rossi who jumped from Arrow McLaren to Ed Carpenter Racing.
So if you want intrigue up and down the grid, IndyCar is a good place to look.
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After a thrilling qualifying session that saw only Meyer Shank Racing put more than one car in the Fast 6, Scott McLaughlin started on pole.
Just before noon, teams made their way out of the paddock and onto the grid which was flooded with people.
After a flyover, the command to fire up the engines from the fellas in the band Shinedown, and a few pace laps (including a lap in the two-seater for Fox MLB analyst and Big League legend Alex Rodriguez, the green flag waved, and it didn't take more than a few corners before the notoriously tricky street course claimed its first victims of the afternoon Team Penske's Will Power, McLaren's Nolan Siegel, and Rahal Letterman Lanigan rookie Louis Foster.
However, despite that early trouble and a later suspension issue for MSR's Marcus Armstrong (such a bummer because they were looking great this weekend), once the green flag came back out, it didn't go away until the checkered flag, which meant that this turned into a battle of strategies.
As much as I love a strategic duel, my favorite part of the race came in the final 10 to 15 laps and illustrated one of my favorite rules that separates IndyCar from Formula 1.
You know in Formula 1 they wave a blue flag so a driver knows to move aside and let the leader through, even if doing so means he'll go a lap down?
Well, not in IndyCar. Drivers are allowed to fight to stay on the lead lap, and boy, did Juncos Hollinger Racing's Stingray Robb (possibly the greatest name in sports right now) do exactly that.
He made it hard for leader Alex Palou to get past him that it allowed Team Penske's Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin, as well as Palou's teammate Scott Dixon (who we would later learn ran all 100 laps with no radio communication; otherwise he'd have probably one this race) to catch up.
While Palou managed to hang onto the win, Dixon — again, with no radio — got around Newgarden for P2 on the final lap.
What a finish.
So, Palou is off to a solid start in his chase for another title, but what's even more exciting is that some of his biggest competitors — Newgarden, Dixon, McLaughlin — are right there with him through one race.
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That was quite the weekend in St. Petersburg, and I can tell you now, in a year's time, I'll be making that drive down I-4 again because it was such a great event.
I went to the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix the first year it was held back in 2022, and I talked with a few people about whether I'd recommend it or St. Petersburg if someone was looking to pick up a ticket to one or the other.
St. Petersburg was the pretty easy answer for me. The cost is a fraction of what it cost to go to F1 and as great as the Miami Grand Prix was, the bang for your buck at St. Pete isn't even close. The amount of racing — there was almost always something happening on track — and the access you have to teams and drivers, far exceeds what you'll find at an F1 race (unless, of course, *spits in spittoon* your willin' to pay…).
Plus, the racing in IndyCar is just so good with plenty of overtaking, something still is at a premium in F1.
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Fortunately, people are catching on, and this year's Grand Prix of St. Petersburg was the most-watched non-Indy 500 race the series has had in well over a decade.
The next race for the NTT IndyCar Season will be the Thermal Club IndyCar Grand Prix on March 23, which will be followed by another signature IndyCar race, the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, on April 13.
After that it's a trip to Barber Motorsports Park and a race on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, then it's time to gear up for the 109th Running of the Indianapolis 500 on May 25.
You catch every single race this season — including the Indy 500 — on Fox.