Dear Papaya Fans,

As we enter the offseason for the NTT INDYCAR SERIES, there’s a huge amount to look back on and be proud of.

We’ve seen some awesome racing and on-track battles this season, and the Arrow McLaren IndyCar Team delivered one of its strongest campaigns yet with two race wins, three pole positions and 12 podiums. Pato O’Ward finished in second place in the championship and Christian Lundgaard in fifth – a fantastic result and testament to how far we’ve come as a team in a year where one driver was absolutely dominant.

Tony Kanaan has made a big impact in his first year as Team Principal. He’s embedded a high-performance culture and a winning mindset across the team, bringing great energy to the role. Tony and President Kevin Thimjon make a strong duo, and their positive influence, alongside the whole leadership team, will continue to push the team forward.

While the team rightfully takes pride in what we’ve accomplished in 2025, we’re already fully focused on the 2026 season, and we’ve set our sights on going bigger and better next year.

We’ll be vying for that coveted Indy 500 win after coming so close the past few years, and we want to not only race for the series championship but target the top-ten for all three cars. We know consistency has been key to our success this year across two of the three cars, so building up Nolan this off-season and getting full race weekends from the 6 crew will strengthen results.

We’ve also taken the keys to our new shop – previously home of Andretti Autosport - and will be moving in at the end of the year. The new, much larger facility, the McLaren Racing Center, will accommodate the growth of the team and give us the right infrastructure and setup to be fit for the future and compete for wins and championships. I know our new home is going to make a big difference to the whole team.

Across our sport meanwhile, the FOX broadcast deal has been a real step change, and their team has done an incredible job in spotlighting all the great action at and away from track. Eric Shanks, CEO and Executive Producer of FOX Sports, loves this sport; he’s creative, energetic and passionate and leads a talented production team. This season, FOX delivered a 27% increase in viewers, averaging almost 1.4 million across the series and - most importantly - attracting a younger audience and more women, making it the fastest growing sport. 

It also brought viewers closer to the action with better graphics and camera angles and by using drones in the broadcast, and their Super Bowl campaign was genuinely game-changing. I’m sure we will continue to see FOX raise the bar as we go into next year and beyond. 

But there’s also work to be done, and we need to now focus our attention on future-proofing the series to keep up momentum, continue to grow and attract new audiences. There are three areas I’d like to see some genuine progress in over the coming months.

We need to shake up our racing calendar to be more impactful. How can we bring the blockbuster energy of the Indy 500 to the rest of the schedule? What can we learn from other series? The new race in Arlington, Texas is going to be awesome. But we still have a gap by not having a race in the Northeast, and we need to shift away from some of the smaller markets and trend toward bigger markets where we can turn the whole race weekend into truly unmissable events. I fully get the concern over not going up against the NFL – so perhaps we should look at pulling the calendar forward a bit to avoid a short season with currently too much downtime from September to March.

We need to get the car right. While we’ll have to wait beyond next year for the new chassis, we need to make sure fans feel the excitement of the new car when it finally debuts on track. The end result needs to be worth the wait. It would be great to get a bit more sound out of the engine to really add to that visceral experience of being at the track and experiencing the thrill of the race. We already have a great partner in Chevrolet, I hope that Honda will remain, and it would be great to add another manufacturer in the series to get the car right.

Finally, we’ve got so much room for growth in the digital space. We’re still far from where we need to be to attract a younger audience and are missing out on the opportunity to attract the new motorsport fandom that Formula 1 has created in North America. For the millions of fans who may never attend a race in person, we need to bring the sport closer by offering more engaging content across our digital platforms. Let’s find ways to expose this new generation of fans to our great racing in INDYCAR and tap into that incredible momentum.

All of this will help us grow our fan base and tell the incredible stories our sport has to offer. We’ve taken some real steps forward, and I am definitely encouraged by the direction the NTT INDYCAR SERIES is heading in, but let’s stay laser focused on what needs to be done.

Finally, I want to thank our partners for supporting us on this exciting journey, and of course, our amazing fans for cheering us along and bringing great energy and passion to the series.

We’ll see you in St. Pete in March!

Cheers,

Zak