Josef Newgarden explains how hybrid engines will impact the 2025 Indy 500

In addition to the usual challenge of actually winning the Indy 500, for 2025 drivers and teams must now contend with a new and potentially decisive factor for this year’s edition of the Greatest Spectacle In Racing: the hybrid unit has its formal premiere at the 2.5 mile oval of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

IndyCar introduced its new hybrid drivetrain on July 2024 at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. Since then, it has raced on every type of racetrack, except a superspeedway. This is changing at the Indy 500, where competitors are trying to tame the hybrid unit and understand its effect on qualifying trim and, more importantly, the race on May 25.

While teams have been able to test the hybrid at IMS since last year, and everyone ran it during April’s Open Test, the formal practice for the Indianapolis 500 marks the point at which everything must work perfectly, as the most important race on IndyCar’s schedule approaches.

Added weight

For Josef Newgarden, the two -time reigning Indy 500 champion who strives for the three-peat driving Team Penske Chevrolet #2 car, the most important thing is not what the hybrid itself does, but the added mass to the cars.

“The big reason it’s driving differently is not necessarily the hybrid interacting with the car. It is the weight of the hybrid. That’s where you are getting all the comments”, Newgarden said on Wednesday after practice.

Newgarden commented on how the extra weight of the hybrid system challenges the tires, and forces teams to adjust the weight distribution. This is one of the main issues everyone is trying to solve before the green flag.

Josef Newgarden, Team Penske

Photo by: Penske Entertainment

“Why is the car different? It is just the weight is up. You’re 100, 110 pounds heavier. That’s a lot of mass percentage-wise that you are adding to this car. It’s saturating the tires more. It’s just moving around. The CG changes a little bit. It raises slightly. Your weight distribution is shifted depending on where teams are putting it. That’s what people are trying to figure out right now.”

“You add 100 pounds to this thing, it’s almost like adding 200, 250 pounds to a stock car. If you said, Hey, guys, we’re going to bolt 250 pounds to these stock cars, see what you think, I bet they would all go, Okay, this drives differently, and now we have to counteract it.”

Hybrids will be more important at Indy than any other race

IndyCar has already used the hybrid on road and street courses, as well as on different kinds of ovals at Iowa Speedway, WWT Raceway, and the Milwaukee Mile last year. However, according to Newgarden, the impact it will have on racing will be unlike anything seen at other facilities.

“The hybrid itself and the utilization, I have said this. I do think it’s very important here. It’s more important at this track than anywhere we’ve gone because of the drag level. We’ve not run in a superspeedway configuration yet with this hybrid, so it’s very, very low drag on the cars. Because of that, they’re very power-sensitive.”

“Any time you use something to add power, you feel the magnification of it here more than anywhere else. When you are using the hybrid on the straightaway, it makes a very big difference.”

When to deploy and when to regen

Indycar Hybrid decal

Photo by: Penske Entertainment

The way drivers deploy and regenerate the hybrid during the Indianapolis 500 could also impact the outcome, especially if the race ends in a close finish, as has been seen many times before.

“Where are you are regenerating it and where you are using it, to either pass or defend or for whatever situation, I think there’s repercussions for burning it, and there’s certainly reward for utilizing it correctly,” Newgarden concluded.

Who will master the hybrid for the first time in the Indy 500? The answer will come in less than ten days.