Ford Is Looking at IndyCar. The 2028 Engine Isn’t Waiting for It

Ford has said the polite version of the thing every series wants to hear from a car company. Mark Rushbrook, global director of Ford Racing, said this month that Ford is “continuously evaluating every series, including IndyCar,” and that the lack of a Ford engine in the series so far comes down to timing, not a closed door: “the timing hasn’t been right. But that doesn’t mean it will stay that way.”

That is not an engine program. There’s no announced budget, no named engine builder, no partner team and no target season. It’s a manufacturer saying out loud that it reads the calendar, and the date IndyCar has circled is 2028, when a new 2.4-liter twin-turbo V6 hybrid formula arrives with the IR-28 car. Every manufacturer with a motorsport department looks at every series. The useful question is whether the opening Ford is looking at is open right now, and if it isn’t, when it might be.

The formula Ford would be buying into

IndyCar’s published outline for 2028 swaps today’s 2.2-liter twin-turbo V6 for a 2.4-liter twin-turbo V6 rated at up to 760 horsepower, with more torque and an “evolved” low-voltage hybrid system that stores more energy and gives drivers more ways to deploy it. The series says the complete power unit package comes in about 20 pounds lighter than the current one. It all goes into the IR-28, a new chassis IndyCar describes as the safest monocoque it has ever raced, with a target of beating the Indianapolis qualifying records Arie Luyendyk set in 1996.

That car isn’t a rendering anymore. The IR-28 made its on-track debut on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course in August, ran its first oval laps at IMS in September, and spent October 12 and 13 at Sebring with Alex Palou and Alexander Rossi. It was the car’s first test away from Indianapolis, and IndyCar picked Sebring’s bumpy mix of asphalt and concrete because it mimics the street circuits that fill the schedule.

For a newcomer, a regulation reset is the only sensible way in. Showing up to race today’s 2.2-liter engine would mean chasing Chevrolet and Honda, who have been developing it since 2012, with no chance of catching up before the rules change. A new formula starts everyone from a clean sheet. The problem is that this clean sheet isn’t blank any longer. Chevrolet and Honda are building their 2.4-liter engines right now, against a 2028 deadline. A manufacturer with nothing announced in October 2026 would have to design, build, durability-test and supply a competitive Indy engine in about a year and a half to make the 2028 opener. That’s a long shot. Rushbrook’s own “five-year plan” language fits 2029 or later much more naturally than the first year of the new formula.

IndyCar built its deals with room for a third manufacturer

The sweetener IndyCar used to keep its current suppliers is worth understanding. In February, Chevrolet and Honda each signed multiyear commitments, and in return each manufacturer gets its own team charter starting in 2028. Those charters sit on top of the 25 already given to teams based on full-time participation in 2022 and 2023, with a cap of three per organization.

IndyCar president Doug Boles said at the time that the agreements don’t rule out a third manufacturer, and he described the new engine formula as a chance for any newcomer to compete on more even terms. That’s the official position, and there’s no reason to doubt it. What IndyCar hasn’t said publicly is what a third manufacturer would get: whether it would receive a charter like Chevrolet and Honda, or would have to find chartered teams willing to switch.

That second route is getting narrower. Arrow McLaren re-signed with Chevrolet for the 2.4-liter era on October 6. Two days later, Team Penske extended its Chevrolet partnership, which dates to 1986 and has produced 125 wins. There’s an irony in that second deal. Team Penske is one of Ford’s flagship teams in the NASCAR Cup Series, and Penske Entertainment owns IndyCar itself. Ford couldn’t ask for a better-connected paddock contact, and that contact has just committed its IndyCar program to Chevrolet for several more years.

An engine supplier is only as good as the cars it powers. A Ford program that arrived with one or two midfield entries would spend its first season showing how far it was from the front. That doesn’t sell Mustangs.

Ford’s racing budget is already committed

Rushbrook opened his comments with “We race almost everywhere,” and that’s barely an exaggeration. Ford’s 2026 factory program covers NASCAR, Mustang sports car racing, off-road events including Dakar and Baja, and Formula 1 with Red Bull. The F1 project, the most expensive item on that list, has just paid off: Max Verstappen won on October 4 for the first victory of the Red Bull Ford Powertrains power unit and Ford’s first F1 win since 2003. (We broke down that first win here.) Next up is a Hypercar program with ORECA, due to start in the FIA World Endurance Championship in 2027. Ford chief executive Jim Farley announced that one at Le Mans with the line “We are coming back to Le Mans to win.”

An IndyCar engine is a different kind of spend from a sports car entry. The manufacturer doesn’t just build engines for its own cars. It leases and services engines for every team it supplies, and it rebuilds them all season long under a multiyear commitment. Adding that in 2027 or 2028, while a brand-new Hypercar is learning to survive 24 hours, would stretch any racing department. Most of all, it would stretch the engineers.

The engineering case for IndyCar is weaker than it sounds, too. Ford’s own description of the F1 partnership talks about learning from “high-voltage propulsion systems.” IndyCar’s hybrid is deliberately low-voltage, a cost-controlled energy recovery system rather than a showcase for road-car battery tech. If Ford comes to IndyCar, it will be for the reasons manufacturers have always come: the Indianapolis 500, an American audience, and another weekend where Ford can beat Chevrolet in public. Those are good reasons. They just sit with the marketing budget, and the marketing budget answers to sales.

Ford’s Indy history is old, and that’s the selling point

Ford has a real claim to having helped create the modern Indy car. Jim Clark’s Ford-powered Lotus won the 1965 Indianapolis 500, the first rear-engined car to win the race, and Ford power remained part of American open-wheel racing for decades after that, right up to Champ Car’s Cosworth-built spec engine.

But Ford has never supplied an engine to the IndyCar Series as it exists today. When American open-wheel racing reunified in 2008, the merged series raced Honda power alone, and Chevrolet returned in 2012. So an entry would be a comeback for the brand and a debut in this series, and that gives Ford a better story to tell than “we’re back.” Ford could take on Chevrolet at Indianapolis again with a hybrid engine. In a year when its F1 engine has just won a race, that story is easy to pitch to the board.

What would show Ford is serious

• A change in Ford’s language. “Evaluating” is what Ford says about every series. If Ford starts talking about an engine builder, a technical partner or a target year, the conversation has moved from strategy meetings to budget meetings.
• IndyCar spelling out terms for a newcomer. If the series says when a third manufacturer could join the 2.4-liter formula, and whether it would get a charter, that would be the clearest signal the door is truly open.
• Which teams are left uncommitted. Each Chevrolet or Honda extension announced this fall leaves fewer chartered teams a newcomer could approach. Keep track of who hasn’t re-signed.
• How the Hypercar debut goes. Ford’s WEC program starts in 2027. A smooth first season makes another major program easier to justify, and a rough one makes it harder.

For now, the 2028 car is lapping Sebring with Chevrolet and Honda in the paddock and nobody from Ford holding a stopwatch, at least not publicly. Ford’s comments don’t commit it to anything, but they don’t rule anything out either. IndyCar now needs to make joining look worth the trouble.

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Elle Puckett

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Elle Puckett covers Formula 1, IndyCar, and endurance racing, with a focus on championship analysis and long-form storytelling.

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