It was a day of days on Sunday. After 945 fruitless sunrises, seven-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton awoke and won a grand prix for the first time since 2021. Hours later, Pato O’Ward, IndyCar’s most popular driver, led the field to the checkered flag for the first time in 715 days, ending a winless streak dating back to 2022.
And at the same event, IndyCar crossed an important developmental finish line of its own. Exactly 1,802 days after the series announced in 2019 that it would shift to hybrid powertrains, it finally raced them.
Joining the likes of F1, IMSA and the WRC as a championship with a combination of internal combustion engines (ICE) and battery-based energy recovery systems (ERS), IndyCar is hoping the launch of its hybrid era will spur newfound interest among auto manufacturers and tech companies to join its series.
Its vast history includes all manner of innovative engine solutions in the 1900s ranging from early racing diesels to jet turbine propulsion and even a few twin-engine cars. But the new marriage of small and powerful 700-plus-horsepower turbo V6 engine with electricity-generating motors, giving IndyCar drivers an extra 60-horsepower kick, is a first for America’s defining open-wheel racing series.
Marcus Ericsson, the five-year F1 veteran who joined IndyCar in 2019 and won the Indianapolis 500 in 2022, has more hybrid experience than most in the series and raced his way to fifth place on Sunday at the Mid-Ohio road course set in the center of the Buckeye State.
“I think IndyCar should get some credit,” Ericsson told ESPN. “I think me and many others, we were worried about introducing the hybrids midseason in a hectic schedule, but all cars finished the race, and that’s very impressive. From the driving perspective, it’s very different to what I’ve driven before, because it’s a lot more manual. When I was in Formula One, the hybrid was always very automated into the combustion engine so you didn’t really think that you had a hybrid. It was very engineer driven; they optimized the settings of the hybrid system and there is very little that the driver can do with inputs.
“Whereas in IndyCar, they made it so the system is automated in some ways, but it’s a lot more manual,…
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