{"id":4879,"date":"2026-03-01T00:00:01","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T06:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/?p=4879"},"modified":"2026-02-28T21:49:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T03:49:32","slug":"indycar-the-2026-season-starts-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/4879\/sports\/indycar-the-2026-season-starts-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Indycar &#8211; The 2026 Season Starts Today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sunday, March 1st, is the start to the 2026 INDYCAR season. INDYCAR, an open wheel racing series, is an 18 race series spanning March 1st to September 6th. For standard races there are anywhere from 22-27 racers with the Indianapolis 500 having 33. There are races from Washington DC to Long Beach, CA, and St. Petersburg, FL to Elkhart Lake, WI.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This year&#8217;s driver field consists of 24 drivers for the standard race from all over the world;\u00a0 11 from the Americas, 4 from New Zealand and Australia, and 9 from Europe. There are 3 rookies in the series. Some of the best drivers are Scott Dixon (number 9), Will Power (number 26), Alex Palou (number 10), and Pato O\u2019ward (number 5). These are people who have consistently done well in the series and won championships before. There are 10 teams this season. The three main teams are Chip Ganassi, Penske, and Arrow Mclaren. All of the car chassis are produced by the company Dallara and the engines are manufactured by Honda and Chevrolet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The races will always be on a Sunday, with practices and qualifying on Friday and Saturday. The first race of the year is in St. Petersburg, the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. There are 3 races here in Wisconsin this year: the Xpel Grand Prix at Road America (Elkhart Lake) on June 21st, and two races in one weekend of the Milwaukee Mile (Milwaukee) on August 29th and 30th. You can watch all the races on Fox, the practices and qualifications will be on Fox Sports 1 and 2.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are three different types of courses: oval, street, and road. There will be 6 street courses, 6 ovals, and 6 road courses. Street courses take place often in cities on the city streets. A temporary track is set up in the city. Street courses are known for being tight and bumpy. Ovals are often ovular tracks typically with 4 turns. The most famous oval race is the Indianapolis 500, which takes place on the Sunday before memorial day every year, falling on May 24th this year marking the 110th running of the Indianapolis 500. Road courses are your average track. Road courses will have lots of turns straightaways and often elevation changes. The longest road course, and longest course in the entire series, in Road America at 4.048 miles long.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While many think of Indycar as similar to F1, the two sports do differ. From having a wider variety of racing courses, to every driver having very similar cars, F1 and Indycar are quite different. While some may say Indycar is the American version of F1, Indycar both come first and is a different racing series for a reason. You can catch all Indycar races on Fox with the first being on March 1st at 12:00 pm EST or 11:00 pm CST. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><br style=\"font-weight: 400;\" \/><br style=\"font-weight: 400;\" \/><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday, March 1st, is the start to the 2026 INDYCAR season. INDYCAR, an open wheel racing series, is an 18 race series spanning March 1st to September 6th. For standard races there are anywhere from 22-27 racers with the Indianapolis 500 having 33. There are races from Washington DC to Long Beach, CA, and St&#8230;.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":4880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[340],"staff_name":[326],"class_list":["post-4879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-march-26","staff_name-charlie-plummer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4881,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4879\/revisions\/4881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4879"},{"taxonomy":"staff_name","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/staff_name?post=4879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}