Written by Archie O’Reilly
Several months of uncertainty loomed for Jacob Abel after he wrapped up second place in the 2024 Indy NXT championship.
It has been an off-season of uncharted territory for the 23-year-old from Louisville, Kentucky, who has long been bound to Abel Motorsports during his rise through the Road to Indy. But as he targeted IndyCar, the security of his family team was no more.
For months, Abel was inundated with tireless work trying to get an IndyCar deal together, taking a position at the heart of conversations aplenty about his future.
“It was very stressful, just not knowing what was coming next,” Abel says. “I’d go to the gym every day - like I always do - and try and be as prepared and ready for whatever it may be. But you don’t really truly know what you’re actually preparing for.”
Abel does not have a manager but had the fortune of being supported in his many calls by business-savvy father Bill Abel, who is the heart and soul of the Abel Motorsports operation.
The Abel Motorsports team prides itself on the family feel, and while Abel is no longer a direct part of the furniture after graduating from Indy NXT, he maintained support from team manager John Brunner in his bid to step up to IndyCar for 2025.
“[He] knows every single person in the paddock,” Abel says. “He’s been in the IndyCar paddock for a long time, so he can act as the guy on the team side of things a little bit more with the industry knowledge. My dad can pick up on the business side and I can merge everything together. So I feel like we do have a pretty good little team put together.
“I do have people helping me on the corporate side of things and the sponsorship finding things and stuff like that because I do need to focus on being a race car driver. But it’s really important to get the car on track before you can focus on getting the car faster.”
In the past, Abel’s contract negotiations have been straightforward - all with his father and the family team which he has led forward alongside his own rise through the ranks. Entering the pre-2025 off-season as a free agent, it was bound to be an unsettling period.
“There hasn’t been a lot of negotiating and a lot of push-pull at all [in the past],” he says. “So that was something that I wasn’t super reassured about because I thought I was doing as much as I could and talking to as many teams as I could.
“But at the end of the day, I didn’t really know what it was supposed to feel like and didn’t really know what the reactions I was supposed to be getting.”
As early as the final few rounds of the Indy NXT season, in which Abel won three times and stepped on the podium in 10 of the 14 races, planning commenced for the future. There is a feeling that commencing negotiations in-season can be beneficial as on-track performance on any given weekend helps to catch the eye of teams amid meetings.
There is also naturally apprehension as contracts are being negotiated and re-signed for the following year even months before the close of the season.
“It seems to happen in May or June every year for the following year,” Abel says. “So you always feel like you’re a little bit behind in it, no matter how early you start. And the seats just start getting snatched up left and right - there’s not that many of them.
“So just trying to have as many meetings as possible with all the options, with all the teams. Regardless of if they’re even realistic or not, it’s just getting in the door and using that time to make introductions and spend as much time as possible with people; if it’s not for this coming season, maybe a season in the future.”
Creating relationships with teams over time paid dividends in earning Abel a first oval test in an Indy car with Chip Ganassi Racing at Texas Motor Speedway in November. This was never an indication of securing a seat at the team but was valuable experience nonetheless.
Available seats did quickly diminish throughout the off-season. But all through the process, there was one option that continued to rise to the fore for Abel.
He first got in contact with long-time team owner Dale Coyne as many as four months before a deal was finally struck days in advance of IndyCar’s annual mid-January media days in Indianapolis. It was encouragement enough for Abel that Coyne was willing to continue to have follow-up calls after their initial conversations.
“It was just always a: ‘Let’s keep in touch,’ ending to all of our phone calls and all of our discussions,” Abel says. “And I don’t think we ever had really a negative discussion with Dale and their whole programme.
“It’s always been that I’ve wanted to be there and seemingly they’ve wanted me to be there as well. It’s just figuring out all the logistics and all of that stuff on the financial and corporate side of things.”
There were possibly plausible vacancies at teams such as Juncos Hollinger Racing and Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. But while he held discussions with multiple teams throughout the off-season, Abel maintains he always wanted to sign with Dale Coyne Racing (DCR), which has long established itself as a proving ground for young talent.
In recent years, DCR has seen young talents such as Alex Palou and David Malukas, plus Formula One veteran Romain Grosjean in the infancy of his IndyCar career, move on to front-running outfits.
Palou has won the championship in three of four seasons with Chip Ganassi Racing after spending his rookie season with DCR in 2020.
“Dale really prides himself on developing young drivers and developing champions,” Abel says. “Even on the engineering side and the team side, there’s been tonnes of super successful engineers that are now on very big championship-winning teams.
“He does have an eye for talent and particularly young talent. And you’ve seen once they have drivers that are good and committed to the organisation - like Grosjean, like Malukas, like Palou - they can finish on the podium and they can ultimately win races.”
Coyne’s desire to follow IndyCar’s junior series was a significant selling point for Abel. Malukas is the latest Indy NXT export to have thrived at DCR - similarly after finishing second in the standings - and now resides in a Team Penske-linked AJ Foyt Racing entry.
“[It] is really comforting as a driver,” Abel says. “Some of the team owners aren’t looking at that every single week in and week out because a lot of teams honestly aren’t necessarily looking to pull drivers from that series just because some teams want more proven drivers and drivers that have won races and proven themselves in IndyCar.
“It is nice that Dale does pay attention and recognise those teams and it really makes me feel appreciated.”
Abel’s personal relationship with Coyne can be dated back to his first IndyCar test, at Sebring International Raceway, in late 2023. Since testing with DCR on the famed, bumpy Floridian track, a line of communication has remained open.
“Just preparing for a test, you always spend a lot of time together,” Abel says. “And he was at the test and felt very good about it. I think with that test in particular, we always knew that we were racing Indy NXT in 2024. But it was a really cool opportunity. And ever since leaving that test, there was always: ‘Let’s keep in touch. Let’s keep moving forward for the future.’”
Through the many discussions that ensued with Coyne when IndyCar became his primary consideration after competing in Indy NXT in 2024, Abel maintained confidence about his chances of landing a seat.
“Dale’s words were very reassuring,” he says. “But at the end of the day, it’s racing and we all know how it goes. Nothing’s done until it’s done. So that made it a little bit uncomfortable but I obviously feel good now that everything is assigned and sealed and finished.”
Abel long earmarked IndyCar’s media days as a tangible thing to work towards in terms of getting a deal over the line, avoiding being the latest last-minute signing for the DCR team, as has sometimes unfortunately been the case in advance of the season-opening race.
With everything finalised in early January, Abel has been able to have a comfortable amount of bedding-in time and a chance to prepare for his rookie season alongside his team.
“We were able to use that as a bit of a deadline to try and get an announcement out, get a final contract signed, so that I could go there and begin marketing myself for more future sponsors and partners throughout the year, which I think will be helpful,” Abel says.
“It was very slowly progressing throughout the two or three months before the announcement. And all just came together very, very quickly in that last week, week-and-a-half or so.”
The overwhelming emotion for Abel is now relief at having a clear focus for the future - and the excitement that comes with that prospect.
“Now for the foreseeable future, there will be a next time on track,” he says. “So that’s definitely the biggest thing I mean when I say I’m feeling myself and having something to look forward to and having that light a little bit at the end of the tunnel.”
Abel has already been hard at work as he adapts to life as an IndyCar driver. He closed January with a first test as a confirmed IndyCar driver at the Thermal Club and has frequently been commuting from Indianapolis to the team’s base in Chicago.
Abel is keen to recreate the family feel he became so accustomed to at Abel Motorsports so has been eager to spend as much time as possible with the team, whether going to lunches or dinners or spending casual time together.
“That’s very helpful when we all know each other and can get that level of communication up there,” Abel says. “[It is] trying to break that barrier of driver and engineer/mechanic and just merge us all into one team.”
The Thermal test day - Abel’s third outing in an Indy car and second on a road course - was his first time driving the complete layout after shaking down a GT3 car on one of the facility’s many other layouts a few years prior. Having that chance to get to know the track before it debuts as a points-paying race in 2025 is not insignificant.
There was a lot on Abel’s plate as he both learned the track and, still with limited IndyCar test days, continued to adapt to the car. But it was a productive test day.
“I think we have to look at everything in a little bit of a different light than a lot of the teams do,” Abel says. “That team wasn’t necessarily where they wanted to be last year and I’m a rookie - I don’t have a lot of experience.”
Abel is plenty mature enough to realise the challenge he has on his hands.
DCR is coming off the back of a turbulent and uncertain 2024, which saw the team field nine drivers across its two cars throughout the year. Jack Harvey ran 14 races in the No.18 Honda but the No.51 entry, which Abel inherits in 2025, never had a confirmed driver.
It is a major step in the right direction that, with Rinus VeeKay now signed to the No.18, DCR has the stability of two full-season drivers. But everybody involved is aware that a performative upturn is needed after a best result of 13th in 2024 and with neither car coming close to securing a Leaders’ Circle contract.
“Everything’s not going to be perfect right out of the gates and it’s going to take a little bit to get everything to where we want to be,” Abel says. “But I’m just happy to be an IndyCar driver and happy to embark on that journey.
“It’s a really exciting process and something that I’m looking forward to building on day by day together with this group of people.”
Abel was the slowest of the six drivers on track at Thermal but no alarm bells are ringing. Simply, a big focus of the Thermal test was to become more familiar with many of the intricacies that can trip rookie drivers up.
“That’s going to be the biggest change for me, all of the pit stops, the strategy, managing a car over a long run in a full tyre life,” Abel says. “So it’s a lot of that, a lot of longer running, a lot of changes focused on long-run pace.
“And hitting the box - they had all the cones set out for me of worst case scenario where there’s a car in front of me pitted in, a car behind us pitted as well - we got a tonne of practice with that.
“Those smaller things were honestly just as much of a target for us to go through as the outright pace was.”
From a driving side, it was the first proper road course Abel had driven in an Indy car given Sebring is often a better simulation for street courses. One learning curve for Abel was a first true experience of high-speed cornering, for instance.
Thermal is one of a select few tracks on the IndyCar calendar that Abel has not driven, with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval one noteworthy track he has no experience on. The same applies for Long Beach, albeit he has driven it in a Stadium Super Truck.
Before officially signing for the team, VeeKay was on hand to support Abel at Thermal - a first opportunity for the now-teammates to work together. Abel has been keen to have a teammate with experience, which VeeKay possesses after five seasons with Ed Carpenter Racing.
“He was just trying to come and help me out a little bit with my first test with the team really,” Abel says. “So very helpful. He’s someone with a lot of experience. He’s a race-winning driver and he’s a super helpful resource to have.”
Thermal was a different experience to Abel’s previous two IndyCar tests. There was a focus on actually preparing for a race weekend of which Abel would be a part and practicing skills that were for his benefit rather than merely logging data as a one-off test driver.
“It’s nice to leave the test and really continue that preparation,” Abel says. “It’s been, we leave the track and: ‘See you never,’ basically. But this time it’s really digesting everything that we learned, every lap, all the data, all the video. I’m trying to maximise that and really take in everything.”
Looking ahead, as always for a rookie, it is nigh on impossible for Abel to set any defined goals aside from the simple fact of improving with more repetitions as the year progresses and maximising what is at his disposal each weekend.
The team itself has a number of unknowns after its tricky 2024, with new personnel onboard in addition to an overhauled driver lineup.
“Regardless of what team I was at or where I’m going to be, it’s going to be a learning process,” Abel says. “It’s a tonne of change. Luckily the tracks are the same and the tyres the same, the car is relatively similar and I feel as prepared as I’m going to be.
“But naturally there’s always going to be those learning curves and surprises and different things that are going to come at me. And I think that’s something in my mentality that I am going to have to keep in mind because it’s not like last year where we’re going out expecting to fight for the podium and win every single weekend.
“Those expectations are going to be changed a little bit. I’m still going to be my same self as a driver and trying to maximise every single thing I can and trying to be the best driver out there. But I need to recognise that this is IndyCar, this is the big stage and everything is very, very competitive.”
If his car is good enough for 15th, that is what Abel will target; he knows finishing in that position is better than trying to force something that is not possible and finding the wall instead. He is aware that there may be weekends where he is not in contention too, but it will be about maximising those weekends where a favourable result is possible.
For now, it is only a one-year deal for Abel at DCR, which adds an extra complexion to the year.
“There is interest to expand beyond that,” Abel says. “But the way we looked at it is if it’s going to be mutually agreed, let’s let it just be mutually agreed when that time comes. And we’ll see when we get there.”
Having no security beyond a single season is bound to add some more pressure on any driver. But IndyCar has been a volatile climate in recent years, so there is no escaping the need to perform even in a longer-term agreement.
“The pressure is always on,” Abel says. “And I think last year I had a very similar level of pressure. I knew it was my last year in Indy NXT. It was my third year in the series. It was a make or break time - really needed to go out and win races and prove myself.
“And I ended up doing that and I actually really enjoyed the pressure of that. We had no plans after 2024 and that’s somewhere I’ve never really been in my career. So to get that again, I’m okay with it because it puts the pressure on me.
“It allows me to focus on really maximising every single lap I have on track and fully preparing for it and basically spending every lap like it’s my last because you never know this year. The sport is so not reassuring that you do have to succeed.”
Ahead of his debut weekend, Abel has been knuckling down and trying to spend as much time in the simulator as possible, focusing particularly on the tracks that he has the least experience on.
There remain some more rookie test days, which will be used in the less congested early part of the season, plus a final outing ahead of St. Pete at Sebring. For Abel, the priority is to learn and learn and learn.
It is not going to be an easy year ahead. But Abel is wise enough to acknowledge and attack head-on the challenges that await him. He has worked his whole racing career for this dream opportunity, so why not relish it now it is here?
Comments