Copyright RACER
With Rinus VeeKay’s confirmation last week at Juncos Hollinger Racing, the opportunities to land IndyCar seats for 2026 are finally starting to narrow. As we approach the end of October, here’s what’s left to resolve before the field of 27 – or 25 – is solidified. AJ Foyt Racing Santino Ferrucci is set to return for his fourth full season in the No. 14 Chevy, and as RACER has noted, he’s expected to have the exceptionally talented Brazilian Caio Collet as his teammate in the sister entry. Assuming the 23-year-old from Sao Paulo gets confirmed, IndyCar would have its first Brazil-born full-timer since 2022, which was the final season-long effort for four-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves at Meyer Shank Racing. Andretti Global’s Dennis Hauger won the Indy NXT championship on debut, which was nothing short of impressive, and for Collet, chasing Hauger to take second with the HMD Motorsports team – in his second NXT season – was less than what he hoped for, but the Andretti squad was on a different level than its rivals in 2025. It’s too early to say where they rank on outright talent, but don’t sleep on Collet’s runner-up output with HMD in a year where Andretti won nine of 14 races with Hauger and Lochie Hughes. Collet has been rapid in his pair of tests this month with the Foyt team, and like Hauger with Dale Coyne Racing, would be a strong candidate to earn Rookie of the Year honors in 2026. Dale Coyne Racing Hauger is locked in for the season with Coyne as part of a new relationship with Andretti Global, where the NXT champ is being farmed out for his debut campaign. The matter of who will join the 22-year-old is the main point of interest, and as Coyne told RACER last week on pit lane at the Indianapolis road course test topped by Hauger, he hopes to have the second car’s driver resolved in the next week or so. AskROI owner/sponsor Todd Ault is a self-avowed fan of former Coyne driver Romain Grosjean, who heads into the offseason with no open-wheel or sports car deals in place for the first time in ages. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see Grosjean back with Coyne in an Ault-backed car, but Linus Lundqvist is also understood to be on the team’s short list, along with Conor Daly. Jacob Abel, who had a dire rookie season with Coyne, is another driver whose name has been mentioned as a possibility for a return. PREMA Racing PREMA continues to work towards returning in 2026. Nothing official has come from the team regarding its future in IndyCar, but its employees continue to turn up for work each day, which is a positive sign. Chevy is understood to have full-season engine leases earmarked for PREMA and awaits confirmation of the program moving forward. Famous last words, but if the team was going to collapse, it likely would have happened in the days and weeks after the August 31 season finale. Here we are, almost two months out from the last race, and the team is going about its business like it will be racing next year. And it has Callum Ilott and Robert Shwarzman under contract if it returns. Ilott was present at the last few IMSA races, but I wouldn’t take that as proof of anything related to PREMA since I ran into a few open-wheel drivers who were hunting for LMP2 opportunities at the Indy IMSA race and at Petit Le Mans. The LMP2 calendar is a friendly one that would allow the Briton –and any other IndyCar or Road To Indy driver with an interest – to do the full season in both championships without calendar conflicts. It’s worth clarifying that Michael Andretti isn’t trying to buy into PREMA. An aggregator site made a mistake in taking a section from my podcast last week and claiming I said Michael was in talks to buy the team. I didn’t, and he isn’t. Nonetheless, the fake news made the rounds and, sadly, Michael felt compelled to respond. He sent me a text on Monday that was clear and emphatic, saying, “I have zero interest in PREMA or any other team.” The aggregator site apologized for mischaracterizing what was (and wasn’t) said before deleting the post and making a correction a few hours later. The real story to follow is whether IndyCar’s 27-car grid from 2025 will hold firm at 27 with the inclusion of PREMA in whatever new or identical guise it finds itself, or drop to 25 entries without the spirited program. If we’re fortunate, the team will be back, and with long-term financial support. And if PREMA returns, it will settle some of the extra-car ambitions held for the Indy 500 by a few Chevy-powered teams. If PREMA’s out, other teams in the Chevy camp would have the ability to secure additional leases for the month of May, but if PREMA’s in, Chevy’s footprint at the 500 would look nearly identical to what it supported at Indy in 2025. Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing The Mick Schumacher test (main image) wasn’t done for the sake of publicity, which has been a popular question of late. Schumacher wanted to test an IndyCar, his manager made outreaches to all the teams with available seats at the end of the season, and RLL was the only organization to make it happen. The team and the son of seven-time F1 champion Michael Schumacher hit it off over the four days they spent together, and there is a desire to see if the relationship could expand into something serious in the third RLL entry. But there’s no commitment that I know of for Schumacher to race alongside Graham Rahal and Louis Foster. Not yet. A lot that would need to happen to get to that point, and while it could come together, the first test happened one week ago and more time is needed to gauge whether he wants to switch to IndyCar. Conducting an oval test would be the next step in the process. Unrelated to Schumacher, the team is determined to pull its third car up to a state of competitiveness with its other entries and move away from the seat-for-hire model that has made the entry irrelevant. Other than Lundqvist or Daly, the pickings are slim when it comes to experienced and fast IndyCar drivers sitting on the sidelines – at least those who’d be considered current and readily available – with experience on all five types of tracks on the schedule. The rest, including RLL test and reserve drivers Juri Vips and Toby Sowery, have speed, but aren’t proven in the same way as a Lundqvist or Daly. Schumacher also fits that unproven description, but with the 2020 Formula 2 championship to his credit, plus two seasons in F1 to draw from, you can see why RLL has interest in looking outside the well-known options. It would appear that Foyt has its second driver and Coyne is on the clock to name his, leaving RLL as the team that could be last to complete its roster.
