It actually came in the lead up to the Laguna Seca weekend when IndyCar released defined standards for licensing drivers entering the series.
IndyCar president Doug Boles announced the standards for the qualification process, specifically focused on drivers competing in Indy Lights.
A driver must compete in a minimum of 12 races in the series for IndyCar eligibility to be established.
The top three finishers in the championship as well as any drivers with at least two victories in the previous 24 months will be considered "competitively qualified."
Drivers with only one victory in the developments series will be considered "Evaluation Eligible."
The remaining winless drivers will be listed as "Résumé Review Required."
Drivers at the "Evaluation Eligible" level will be considered for an evaluation test to decide licensing while "Résumé Review Required" drivers will face a greater scrutinizing process to be approved for competition.
Evaluation from other series, whether that be Formula One, Formula Two, sports cars and so on, will be separate from the three-tier process IndyCar has established for drivers coming from the Road to Indy system.
There has been praise over a written standard for driver approval, but there are flaws to this system, and motorsports is not as clean of a meritocracy as we all wish.
This evaluation process doesn't really matter until it turns a driver down. As far as we know, nothing has changed from how evaluations were conducted prior to IndyCar announcing these standards. What we do know is IndyCar has given us a list of drivers that it will clear more quickly or essentially automatically if a team would like to hire them. Teams are still free to pursue any driver they wish and potentially run them through an additional test or possibly interview before being allowed to drive in the series.
We should not ignore it all comes down to money.
Just because you win in Indy Lights and are one of the top drivers does not mean you have the money required to help a team keeps the lights on. It sounds great, but we know sponsors are not dying to tie themselves to a top Indy Lights driver. Winning that championship does not lead a company to make a three-year, $10-million annual investment in sponsoring that driver. All the money comes from the family or through that drivers own fundraising. If you win the championship and don't have the money needed, an IndyCar team will gladly take on a driver ranked 11th in the same championship but with $25 million in funding.
See, Josh Pierson, and Pierson has been the driver connected most with this announced evaluation process.
The 20-year-old Oregonian has finished his fourth season in Indy Lights, and it has been a fluid time in the junior series. In 2023, Pierson ran a part-time season at 16 years old as he continued to compete regularly in sports cars. In 2024, he turned to full-time Indy Lights competition and was 14th but improved to sixth in the championship in 2025. Moving to Andretti Global, Pierson took a dip this season, but he did have three podium finishes, an increase from 2025, and he won at Laguna Seca. He did fall to 11th in the championship.
Pay drivers are nothing new to IndyCar, and based on the announced standard, Pierson is "Evaluation Eligible," one step away from being approved.
There is plenty of pushback to Pierson being approved because he has not been stellar in the junior series. He has some good results. Along with his time in Indy Lights, Pierson has raced in IMSA and the FIA World Endurance Championship in the LMP2 class. He has a pair of WEC class victories and he has a a pair of podiums in IMSA. However, Pierson has not been a driver consistently at the top of this championship and given the impression he should be granted an opportunity at IndyCar.
But the standard is not perfect.
Pierson has not finish in the top three of the championship. He has only one victory in 54 starts. You know who would have been considered "Competitively Qualified" based on this standard? Sting Ray Robb, who was second in the 2022 Indy Lights championship with one victory in 44 starts. In 69 IndyCar starts over four seasons, Robb has two top ten finishes with 39 finishes outside the top twenty and 21 lead lap finishes.
However, a driver who has driven respectably well in three full IndyCar seasons and who had a better average finish than Scott Dixon this season, would have been in the "Résumé Review Required" status when he attempted to enter IndyCar. That would be Kyffin Simpson, 13th in the IndyCar championship in 2026 with two top five finishes and eight top ten finishes. Simpson took the checkered flag in all 18 races this season and he finished on the lead lap 16 times. However, in Simpson's two full Indy Lights seasons, he was ninth and tenth in the championship with zero victories to his name and only two podium finishes in 27 starts.
Let's also consider IndyCar approved Jimmie Johnson, a seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion, and in his rookie year he had an average finish of 21.0833 in 12 road/street course starts. Johnson caused three cautions in his first two races and he was involved in six cautions over his 12 starts. Of course, a seven-time NASCAR Cup champion will be approved for IndyCar, but we have seen that a driver of that caliber can struggle in IndyCar and ran just as bad as drivers coming out of the IndyCar ladder system.
We can set a standard, but just because a driver is qualified doesn't mean they will be comfortable in IndyCar, and a standard can fail to consider the actual talent of the driver pool. Simply checking off an accomplishment doesn't mean the grid isn't necessarily going to improve including this driver. We should be asking the question many are not comfortable asking.
Is Indy Lights that good of a series?
Just because you have a development series doesn't mean it is a good series, and for as celebrated as Indy Lights has been as producing drivers, we cannot ignore the flaws nor should we ignore how IndyCar teams view the series.
Of the 23 champions since IndyCar took over sanctioning Indy Lights in 2002, only two drivers made at least 100 IndyCar starts, Josef Newgarden and Patricio O'Ward. Expand that to the 54 drivers that have finished in the top three of the Indy Lights championship from 2002 to 2025, and only Ed Carpenter, James Hinchcliffe, Colton Herta and Rinus VeeKay have exceeded 100 IndyCar starts. Those 54 drivers have made an average of 43 IndyCar starts, and 19 of those drivers have made five IndyCar starts or fewer. Of those 54 drivers, 49 of them could have made at least 50 IndyCar starts. Thirty of those 49 drivers have made fewer than 50 IndyCar starts, essentially three full seasons in the series.
Of the last 13 champions, five competed full-time in IndyCar this season, which isn't bad, but the six champions from the 2012 to 2017 seasons have competed in one IndyCar since the start of the 2022 season, and that was Tristan Vautier receiving a surprise call-up with Dale Coyne Racing for Detroit nearly seven years after Vautier's previous start.
A series with 15 average-to-bad drivers in it must have someone win the championship. That doesn't mean that championship makes that driver competitive enough to compete at the next level. IndyCar team hiring practices suggest they know the level. We don't see IndyCar teams throw themselves behind a driver in development. No one in the Road to Indy has the level of support Andrea Kimi Antonelli had from Mercedes-Benz or Charles Leclerc had from Ferrari or Max Verstappen had from Red Bull in the Formula One ladder system. Is some talent missed or is none of the talent worth it?
An objective standards has been perceived as set, but this is still a subjective process approving a driver, and it is likely a driver in the "Evaluation Eligible" level or "Résumé Review Required" level will end up on the IndyCar grid. We want the money not to matter, but that is what keeps cars on the grid and fields full. With the charter system in place, there are only 25 spots available. The sense of scarcity should increase value, but if teams cannot afford to field a car, it will sell it for whatever it can get, and I don't know how many suitors are interested in mid-September 2026 looking toward the 2027 season.
If A.J. Foyt Racing wants Josh Pierson and it is the difference between 25 cars or 24 cars and a charter effectively dying on the vine, IndyCar is going to approve Pierson. Has Pierson earned it? Has he been the best driver in Indy Lights and in the junior series? No, but we have a driver who was no better than what we have seen from Pierson run adequately in IndyCar.
IndyCar admirably announced a standard for junior drivers entering the series as it attempts to make sure the most talented drivers end up receiving opportunities at the next level, but IndyCar can only influence so much when teams are hiring drivers to remain on the grid. This could help a driver who has a fraction of the funding but better results get an opportunity over someone with a lot of cash but who hasn't been dazzling. It doesn't fully eliminate the requirement for funding to help that driver get to the next level, and it doesn't stop a team from chasing dollar signs. After all, $12 million a year is more than $3 million a year.
Again, this standard doesn't matter until a driver is turned away. Do not hold your breath on that occurring this winter. Drivers are going to end up in IndyCar and look like a fish out of water. Someone must finish 20th in this series whether they bring millions of dollars or they were hired on ability alone.
