INDIANAPOLIS — The NTT IndyCar Series season doesn’t start for another two months, but it’s never too early for IndyCar Content Days.
In one of the earlier IndyCar Content Days in recent years, the IndyCar drivers, along with sponsors, partners and the media gathered at the JW Marriott Hotel on Jan. 10.
It’s the first of two days of posing for photos, doing countless media interviews, competing in social media stunts that border on the absurd and the innate, all in the interest of creating content for the series and its partners heading into the season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg on March 10.
Most of the drivers live in the Indianapolis area, but for four-time Indianapolis 500 winning driver Helio Castroneves, he didn’t arrive at the hotel until 3 a.m. ET because of the massive storms that hit the Southeastern United States on Tuesday.
Castroneves was flying out of Miami and although the weather was decent in South Florida, the flight had to go through the strong storm system that spawned tornadoes, wind gusts approaching 85 miles an hour and massive power outages in the Southern United States.
Naturally, Castroneves had to be one of the earlier drivers to begin the rotation for the first of two Content Days.
“We made it, yes, 3 a.m.,” a sleep-deprived Castroneves said. “It was interesting waiting, but I guess everything went fine. We got here safe, which is the most important thing.”
It’s the beginning of a new chapter for Castroneves in his career. Instead of full-time driver, Castroneves is an ownership partner at Meyer Shank Racing. He will compete in one race in 2024, the 108th Indianapolis 500 as the popular Brazilian attempts to become the first five-time winner of the Indy 500.
“The new role will be very interesting, a learning curve with MSR,” Castroneves said. “We are working already intensively, our group. At MSR, a lot of the people from sports car end up being on my side on the IndyCar side for the third car.”
The team’s two full-time IndyCar Series drivers are rookie Tom Blomqvist and veteran Felix Rosenqvist.
“Tom and Felix, they’re already set, which is what Simon Pagenaud, and I were able to build up from ’22 and ’23,” Castroneves explained. “It’s great to learn this new aspect of going from inside and understanding what we need to be doing to become faster and faster.
“The last two 500s basically was interesting. I felt that we worked well as a team but unfortunately weren’t able to execute with speed. We didn’t find what we are looking for, and I feel that now we are definitely on the right track, which I’m very happy to say.
“The last two years were like, I’m not sure, I’m not sure, but now we are ready to go.”
While Castroneves hopes to find clarity from the last two years as a full-time driver at Meyer Shank Racing, his former Team Penske teammate Josef Newgarden is taking a step back from his social media persona to focus more on rediscovering the “Joy of racing.”
That means the “Bus Bros” – a social media video series that featured Newgarden and Team Penske teammate Scott McLaughlin and their own unique brand of comedy – has been put on hiatus.
Newgarden and his business partner Brian Simpson, split over the offseason. Simpson dissolved his company, Dream Digital Services, and created his own content company, Stillhouse Studios. He will continue to work with several drivers in the series, including Newgarden.
“Bus Bros, right now, they’re taking a long nap,” Newgarden said. “But you just never know with those guys. Anything is possible.
“But not at the moment. They are definitely out of the game. But the future, I don’t know what that’s going to hold.”
When asked about putting Bus Bros in hiatus, McLaughlin offered his response.
“Josef is the producer, so we’ve got no producer now,” McLaughlin said. “Bus Bros is not going to happen. He is doing his thing. Brian has his new stuff at Still House, which is going to go fantastic.
“For me, either way, whether it was going to go ahead or not, it doesn’t really affect me from a driving or how I go about my racing.
“Bus Bros was fun because it was like — it was just an opportunity for people to get to know me and Josef and see who we are outside the car. We did some pretty stupid stuff, but it was fun chapter. If this is the end, it’s the end. If not, we probably might do something, I’m not sure.
“Yeah, definitely not a good start when we don’t have a producer anymore.”
Newgarden has won two NTT IndyCar Series championships in 2017 and 2019 but finished second in the championship for three-straight seasons from 2020 to 2022. This past season, Newgarden won the Indianapolis 500 for the first time in his career but finished fifth in the IndyCar Series championship.
The competitor from within said that’s simply not good enough for Newgarden. So, he is getting back to the basics, and not focusing on social media and the Bus Bros.
“I pared down this offseason a lot of things, which I think has been productive personally,” Newgarden said. “I’ve tried to refocus my task list and really my priorities, and from that standpoint, it’s been really, really positive. I’m trying to get back to some of the core things that — not that I wasn’t working on my core objectives in the past or last year, but I think there was definitely room for improvement and trying to create some better focus in areas.
“That was really my intentions by some of these changes in the off-season. In a lot of ways, just to be transparent, I want to get back to loving this. Not that I didn’t love it in the past, but I think when you get bogged down by too much, then sometimes the joy slips away.
“I’m excited to get back to why I started doing this, why I started going racing. Getting back to the track, working on race cars, and understanding how we can be faster than everybody, that’s what I care about the most, so that’s what I’m really focused on.”
Owner/driver Ed Carpenter had one of the better lines of the day when he met the media.
It involved former driver Conor Daly, who was involved in a bitter dismissal from Ed Carpenter Racing after last June’s Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix.
“It seems quiet this year,” Carpenter said. “It seems very quiet today.”
When a media member told Carpenter that was because Daly wasn’t taking part in media day, Carpenter quipped the following:
“He doesn’t talk to me these days,” Carpenter said of Daly.
Day Two is Thursday with more opportunities for snark from NTT IndyCar Series drivers.