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Within the first two years of the brand new golden age of hypercar racing at Le Mans, IndyCar has taken care to go away the weekend of the 24-hour basic open. That has allowed main skills from the American racing collection to race within the high class; this yr, 4 drivers who competed within the Indianapolis 500 will run within the Le Mans Hypercar class on the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The timing has been a boon to each events… however that profit appears to be over.
Each IndyCar and the Le Mans-sanctioning World Endurance Championship revealed their calendars this week, and IndyCar has scheduled a race within the St. Louis market throughout the 2025 operating of Le Mans.
Alex Palou, the reigning IndyCar champion and a debuting driver for Cadillac on this yr’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, is among the six drivers that has entered each IndyCar rounds and the French basic. In a dialog with Highway & Monitor forward of his first Le Mans, Palou referred to as the overlap “horrible.”
“Hopefully [IndyCar] modifications it, as a result of I feel it is a joke that we overlap with one of many greatest races on this planet, particularly once we can keep away from it.”
Palou’s teammate Scott Dixon, a six-time champion of the IndyCar collection and one other Cadillac driver on this yr’s 24-hour race, has skilled years the place he might run Le Mans and years the place he couldn’t. 2023 marked his first sensible likelihood at an total win, however 2024 could also be his final. Dixon tells R&T that the choice is “not good,” then famous that points with take a look at scheduling had already made operating Le Mans in 2024 a problem.
“We went by lots of drama this yr, we had an IndyCar take a look at on the Tuesday of this week that they moved for a few of us to a later date. I feel the highlight, how onerous we needed to work with the ACO for this complication this yr, that they might know the date for subsequent yr,” he stated. “It is irritating, clearly, my actual job is racing IndyCar, in order that schedule takes priority, however I figured by many of the years they tried to present leeway for Le Mans, Daytona, and Sebring. A whole lot of us drivers wish to have that crossover, so it is a bummer.”
The choice comes lower than a month after NASCAR driver Kyle Larson confirmed the facility of expertise crossing over by running the Indianapolis 500. Larson was pressured to attend two weeks to seek out out if he was eligible for the NASCAR playoffs after lacking the Coca-Cola 600 on Indy 500 day — a clumsy state of affairs that ought to have proven the significance of permitting drivers the liberty to race within the greatest races on this planet. As an alternative, IndyCar appears to have fallen again on an old problem that was seemingly already solved.
Palou and Dixon sit in second and third, respectively, within the IndyCar standings. Romain Grosjean, a driver for Lamborghini on this yr’s race, is presently sixteenth. IndyCar individuals Kyffin Simpson, Nolan Siegel, and Callum Ilott are additionally entered within the race lower than a month after getting into the Indianapolis 500. In the meanwhile, all six drivers must select between both getting into a full IndyCar season… or contesting the world’s greatest endurance race.
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