Shifting Into A New Season: 2025 St. Petersburg Preview

By: Derek Pierce

This Sunday marks the start for what should be an incredible IndyCar season as the cars hit the streets of St. Petersburg. The season will take the green flag on FOX, a partnership that came as a shock to many with the incredible coverage from NBC. Nonetheless, this season will mark the first time ever that all 17 races will air on the same network as not a single race will be moved to FS1 or other affiliate networks. 

Driver Changes

There have been more changes in the offseason that have created a huge shake up for the 2025 season. 

Callum Ilot, formally seen as F1 bound, will be making his return as a full-time driver for a new Prema Racing team that's operating two cars. Ilot has put up some solid results in the past, just looking for some more consistency and the 25-year old looks to deliver just that for his new team.

The drivers that finished 1-2 in the Indy NXT championship last season are getting their shots with Louis Foster being paired with series veteran Graham Rahal at Rahal Letterman Racing and Jacob Abel getting signed to Dale Coyne Racing, a driver and team dynamic of learning to grow and find consistent speed.

Marcus Armstrong has found a new home as a part of the downsizing of Chip Ganassi Racing, going from five to three cars. He's moved over to their alliance team, Meyer Shank Racing. For a sophomore driver, Armstrong put together a decently strong season with a podium. If he can continue to build and hone his skills at a new team, perhaps he could crack into the top-10 in the standings and even compete for a win soon. 

Alexander Rossi looked like someone who was poised for success from the start in the series. After winning two races between his first two seasons, he jumped to being a championship threat in 2018 and 2019. However, he hasn't been able to do much since then, finishing between 9th and 10th in each of his last five seasons with Andretti and Arrow McLaren. He looks for a fresh start this season with a move to Ed Carpenter Racing. Whether he can find success or not is up to question as the teams best finish last season was 5th. Regardless, I think there are a lot of people out there that would like to see this duo light up the series and be a championship threat.

There are tons of more changes like Robert Schwartzman to Prema, David Malukas to AJ Foyt Racing, and Christian Lundgaard to McLaren. Although there's not a blockbuster move that saw one of the top drivers change teams, we're for sure going to have a shake up in the mid field that may even leak into some more of the top of the grid.

Reviewing Last Season

If you were paying attention to last year's season opener, you'll have been locked in to the scandal that rocked the landscape of the series off the bat. For those unfamiliar, Josef Newgarden, who was the initial winner, his teammate Scott McLaughlin were both disqualified for having the ability and using the Push to Pass feature on the same lap as the race start and restart which is against the rules. The other Team Penske driver, Will Power, also had the ability to do this, however he didn't and therefore was only given a fine. All of this awarded the win to Patricio O'Ward which sparked a good campaign that resulted in a 5th place finish in the standings.

While it's not necessarily impossible that something huge like this happens again, I would highly doubt it so don't get your hopes up if you love drama. 

Drivers to Watch

Josef Newgarden - I don't care if it was found that he was "cheating" in this race last season, he did more than just lead off the jump. He straight up dominated this race, leading all but eight laps and just looked untouchable. What makes me hesitant about this is that his only wins, that he kept, last season were on ovals. He had other strong showings with podiums on road courses, but that is something to note for the guy who cruised to a tainted victory lane just a year ago.

 Patricio O'Ward - While Newgarden looked much better than the rest last year, if anyone was gonna match him, it was going to be O'Ward. There were moments the two went toe to toe, but at the end of the day O'Ward was awarded the victory. After this he went on to win two more races, one at Mid-Ohio, another road course. He has proven he can be competitive and a winning threat at these tracks and I would expect him to do such on Sunday.

Alex Palou - Palou is going to pop up on these lists a lot. Simply put, he's the best driver in the series. Coming off back to back championships, three in the last four years, Palou shows no signs of slowing down and looks capable of winning just about any race. With the championship winning momentum, I'll be looking for this car competing for the win.

Colton Herta - Last is my personal pick to win this race. For years Herta has been seen as one of the best raw talents in the series. However, we're all waiting for that raw talent to simply just become talent. Last year was exactly that jump he needed to take, only having four finishes outside of the top ten, only one of which was a DNF. In fact, he closed out the season on a major push for the championship which led to a win on the closing race at Nashville. I think this is the year that Herta becomes a true threat to the championship and it's all going to start with a win at St. Pete.