The 11th round of the 2026 NTT IndyCar Series season has the series spending Independence Day weekend from Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. This is the sixth consecutive year IndyCar has spent this holiday in Lexington, Ohio. Each year, there has been a different winner, in fact, there has been a different winner in all seven Mid-Ohio races since the introduction of the aeroscreen. Through the first ten races of this season, there have been five different winners. Each winner ranks in the top eight of the championship.
Coverage
Time: Coverage begins at 12:30 p.m. ET on Sunday July 5 with green flag scheduled for 12:52 p.m. ET.
Channel: Fox
Announcers: Will Buxton, Townsend Bell and James Hinchcliffe will be in the booth. Kevin Lee, Georgia Henneberry and Jack Harvey will work pit lane.
Channel: Fox
Announcers: Will Buxton, Townsend Bell and James Hinchcliffe will be in the booth. Kevin Lee, Georgia Henneberry and Jack Harvey will work pit lane.
IndyCar Weekend Schedule
Friday:
First Practice: 3:05 p.m. ET (75 minutes)
Saturday:
Second Practice: 10:05 a.m. ET (75 minutes)
Qualifying: 2:30 p.m. ET
Sunday:
Warm-up: 9:35 a.m. ET (30 minutes)
Race: 12:52 p.m. ET (90 laps)
Qualifying: 2:30 p.m. ET
Sunday:
Warm-up: 9:35 a.m. ET (30 minutes)
Race: 12:52 p.m. ET (90 laps)
Lucky Lundgaard
Maybe it is better to be lucky than good. Maybe it is good to be both. Christian Lundgaard straddles that divide.
At Road America, Lundgaard was last after the opening lap due to front wing damage from contact with Scott Dixon. The pit stop for repairs put the Dane close to a lap down. However, that misfortune, the cautions that fell and the pit strategy that followed allowed Lundgaard to be position for a podium finish, and it put Lundgaard in the right position to benefit when another driver stumbled. Marcus Armstrong lost his engine, and Lundgaard was there to inherit the lead.
The record book will say it was a victory from 12th on the grid, only the second time a Road America race has been won from outside the top ten, but it was for more difficult than that.
The triumph was Lundgaard's second of the season, and this one kept him fourth in the championship. It was his second victory of the season when combined with the Grand Prix of Indianapolis in May. Since the end of March, Lundgaard has been alternating top five finishes, and two of those results in-between have been finishes outside the top fifteen. The good is counterweighting the bad. Lundgaard is 40 points clear of his Arrow McLaren teammate Patricio O'Ward, who has six top five finishes this season, tied for the second-most in IndyCar.
Lundgaard has been pulling out some incredible results. For starters, he has not been qualifying well. Only twice this season has he started in the top five. On both occasions, he finished in the top five, including going from fourth to first in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis. Road America was the fourth time this season Lundgaard has made up at least eight spots from his grid position. In three of those he has driven into the top five. His average starting position is 12.2, tenth-best in IndyCar, but his average finish is 7.9, fourth-best in IndyCar.
In each of the three natural-terrain road course races this season, Lundgaard has finished second, first and first. Even Álex Palou is not quite keeping up with that output, though Palou has finished first, fifth and fifth in those three events, and Palou has started on pole position for all three events.
Now Lundgaard will look to break a pattern. He has not had consecutive top five finishes since last season when he was runner-up in consecutive races at Laguna Seca and Portland. Back in May, Lundgaard became the first Arrow McLaren not named Patricio O'Ward to win for the organization since its IndyCar return in 2020. Lundgaard has now won twice, and he will look to become the first McLaren driver to win consecutive IndyCar race since Johnny Rutherford swept the 1979 CART doubleheader at Atlanta. It would be the first time a McLaren driver won consecutive races at different tracks since 1977 when Rutherford won at Texas World Speedway and Milwaukee.
In four Mid-Ohio starts, Lundgaard's worst finish is 11th. He has twice finished in the top five, including last year when he was third after starting second.
Armstrong Seeking Redemption
It will be difficult for Marcus Armstrong to shake the Road America result. Leading with only four laps remaining, Armstrong's engine ran out of steam and brought the New Zealander to a halt. Instead of standing on the top step of the podium, Armstrong was relegated to 24th in the record books with 14 laps led from third grid position.
It was a rather tough punch to the gut for Armstrong. While he does have a pair of top five finishes and five total top ten finishes, he has been on the edge of victory. Armstrong led the field to the green flag for the final restart, a one-lap dash at the Indianapolis 500. He spent much of that lap side-by-side with his Meyer Shank Racing teammate Felix Rosenqvist. At the checkered flag, Rosenqvist was first by 0.0233 seconds. Armstrong had dropped to fifth, falling only 0.0155 behind fellow Kiwi Scott McLaughlin for third.
There is plenty for Armstrong to be positive about. He has an average starting position of 9.9, only one of seven drivers to average a starting position better than tenth through the first ten races. He is ahead of the likes of Kyle Kirkwood, Scott Dixon, Christian Lundgaard, Josef Newgarden and Will Power in this category.
Regardless, losing as he did at Road America is quite a shock, and history shows first time winners are usually coming off an encouraging result.
Ten of the last 11 first-time winners in IndyCar finished in the top fifteen in the race prior to their first career victory. The only exception is Kirkwood, who was 27th at Texas in 2023 after an accident before he took victory at Long Beach in the following race.
Of those other ten first-time winners, five had finished in the top ten of the race prior, two had finished 11th, one was 12th, another was 13th and the other was 15th. Even with those driver, none of them were leading and within five laps of victory in the race prior to their first career victory. Looking back since the CART-USAC split in 1979, there has never been an instance of a driver, who was looking for a first career victory, losing the lead with five laps or fewer remaining, and then winning the next race.
Armstrong has started in the top ten in the last three races, but he has finished worse than his starting position in each of those three races. He has actually finished worse than his starting position in all six races he has started in the top ten this season. The race where Armstrong fell the least was at Barber Motorsports Park, starting fourth and finishing sixth. His only two top five finishes this season have come in race where he has started outside the top ten.
This will mark Armstrong's 57th start of his career. Twenty-one drivers have taken at least 57 starts to get their first career victory. The only driver to take exactly 57 starts was Buddy Lazier, whose first career victory was the 1996 Indianapolis 500. The only driver to pick up a first career victory at Mid-Ohio was Charlie Kimball in 2013.
All-Americans
Not only is its Independence Day weekend, but it is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. For this year's holiday festivities, eight American drivers are entered for this race from Mid-Ohio.
The top American in the championship is David Malukas in second, but Malukas is still looking for his first career victory. The Illinois-native has finished runner-up three times this season. The only other driver with multiple runner-up finishes this season is Florida's Kyle Kirkwood, who is third in the championship. Only a point separates these two drivers.
For Malukas, this will be his 72nd career start. Only 12 drivers in IndyCar history have taken at least 72 starts to get their first career victory. The last driver to have their first career victory fall on Independence Day weekend, which for this sake we will consider when Independence Day falls between Thursday and Monday, creating at least a four-day weekend, was Bobby Rahal at Cleveland on July 4, 1982. That was Rahal's fourth career start.
Malukas does have the second-best average starting position this season at 5.9, and he is tied with Álex Palou for second-best average finish at 6.4. Kirkwood holds the best average finish through the first ten races. The Andretti Global driver has an average finish of 5.9. He has finished outside the top five in four of the last five races after opening the season with five consecutive top five results.
Kirkwood does enter this weekend with six career victories, but he is still looking for his first victory on a permanent road course. In fact, he has never finished on a podium in a permanent road course race. His best finish was fourth at Road America last summer.
While Malukas and Kirkwood are the top two Americans in the championship, Josef Newgarden is the only American driver with multiple victories this season. Newgarden won at Phoenix and Gateway. However, his only other top five finish was fourth on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course in May. The Tennessean has not had a podium finish on a permanent road course since he was third at Portland in 2024. He has finished outside the top twenty in his last two Mid-Ohio visits, and he has three consecutive results outside the top ten at the circuit.
Graham Rahal was about three corners away from his fourth podium finish of the season at Road America. Instead, Rahal enters his home race off the back of consecutive 23rd-place finishes. In three of the last four Mid-Ohio races, Rahal has finished outside the top ten.
Alexander Rossi heads to Mid-Ohio off matching his best finish of the season in sixth. Rossi had finished 17th or worse in the previous four races. he has not finished on the podium since Laguna Seca in June 2024.
Santino Ferrucci scored his third top ten finish of the season at Road America, where he finished ninth. Ferrucci has not had a top five finish since he was third at Road America last year. In seven Mid-Ohio starts, his best finish was ninth in 2021.
This will be Nolan Siegel's 39th career start, and the Californian has finished 20th and 11th in his first two Mid-Ohio trips. Siegel's only top ten finish this season was tenth in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis.
Rounding out the American lineup is Sting Ray Robb. Robb had finished outside the top twenty in the first five races of the season. He has since finished in the top twenty in four of the last five results, but only one of those has been a top fifteen finish. He was 14th at Detroit.
American drivers have combined to win four of the last ten Mid-Ohio races. Prior to this stretch, American drivers had combined to win only two of the previous 18 Mid-Ohio races, including going 14 consecutive races without a victory at this circuit.
Dixon's Slump
Scott Dixon's woes have been well-documented.
In the last four races, Dixon has failed to crack the top ten, his longest slump in over 20 years. He has only one top five finish this season, and he has only one top five start this season. Surprisingly, despite this string of results, Dixon's 11th-place finish at Road America lifted him to tenth in the championship. That was also helped due to some other results.
While Dixon enters on a historic low, IndyCar heads to the location of Dixon's most recent victory. A brief off-track excursion cost Álex Palou the lead in last year's Mid-Ohio race after leading 75 of the first 84 laps. Dixon was the man on the scene to sweep on through and hold off a reeling Palou to take the victory. It was a record-extending seventh victory for Dixon on the 2.25-mile road course, but it does follow a pattern for the New Zealander.
Last year's victory ended a 22-race winless streak for Dixon. It was the third time since the start of the 2021 season Dixon had a winless streak greater than 15 races. He went 22 races between victories at Texas in 2021 and Toronto in 2022. He had a 16-race slump from Nashville in 2022 to the summer Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course race in 2023. This current dry-spell is up to 17 races.
There isn't a better place for Dixon to be heading than Mid-Ohio. Along with having a record seven victories, Dixon has nine podium finishes in 22 races. He has 14 top five finishes at the circuit, including in four of the last five starts. Only three times has he finished outside the top ten at the track.
He has started outside the top five in his last three Mid-Ohio races, however, four of Dixon's seven Mid-Ohio victories have seen him start outside the top five, including his last three victories from the circuit. He started sixth for his first victory in 2007. In 2014, he won from 22nd before he won from eighth in 2019. Last year, he won from ninth on the grid.
Only one of Dixon's last seven victories have come from a top five starting position. He won from fifth at Detroit in 2024. Four of his last seven victories came from a starting position outside the top ten.
Dixon led 11 laps in last year's race, but he had only led two laps in his previous six Mid-Ohio starts. While the results have not been brilliant this season, Dixon has led 78 laps, the sixth-most in IndyCar through ten races. He led exactly 32 laps in the Indianapolis 500 and at Gateway. However, he has only led two laps on road and street courses this season, and those two laps were at St. Petersburg. His other 12 laps led were at Phoenix.
In each of the last two seasons, Dixon has led 98 laps and 91 laps respectively. In the previous nine seasons, he had led at least 100 laps. With ten more laps led, he would reach the 7,000 laps led milestone in his career.
This weekend will mark the 430th start in Dixon's IndyCar career, and it will be his 367th consecutive start.
Road to Indy
The Road to Indy fills the holiday weekend with another seven races alongside IndyCar's main event.
Nikita Johnson extended his Indy Lights championship lead with finishes of sixth and third at Road America, and Johnson is six points ahead of Tymek Kucharczyk, who was eighth and second in Elkhart Lake. A cut tire in the first race left Enzo Fittipaldi 22nd, and Fittipaldi recovered to fourth in the second race, but he dropped to third in the championship on 323 points, 27 points behind Johnson.
Max Taylor had a dismal Road America weekend with finishes of 12th and 17th, and Taylor is now on 289 points in fourth. That is still 20 points ahead of Lochie Hughes, who won the first race from Road America before finishing 20th in the next race. Myles Rowe had finishes of ninth and fifth and that places him on 264 points.
Alessandro de Tullio was first on the road in the second Road America race, but de Tullio was disqualified after it was found he had the wrong tires mounted on his car. A.J. Foyt Racing had the tires mounted on the wrong cars for de Tullio and Nicholas Monteiro. Monteiro was also disqualified. De Tullio won pole position for both Road America races, and he has won seven pole positions this season. De Tullio is seventh on 249 points.
Juan Manuel Correa was seventh on both Road America races, and he has 224 points. Matteo Nannini inherited the Road America victory after de Tullio's expulsion. Nannini had scored his first top five finish of the season in the first Road America race when he was fifth. Nannini has 209 points, two more than Josh Pierson in tenth, who was second in the first Mid-Ohio race. Jack Beeton is on 200 points.
The first Indy Lights race will be at 1:00 p.m. ET on Saturday July 4. That race is scheduled for 35 laps or 55 minutes. The second race on Sunday July 5 at 10:00 a.m. ET will be 30 laps or 55 minutes.
It will be a triple-header weekend for USF Pro 2000.
Jack Jeffers maintained the USF Pro 2000 championship lead with finishes of fourth and second at Road America, but G3 Argyros took a chunk out of the deficit as Argyros swept the Road America weekend. Jeffers has 155 points, 20 clear of Argyros. Leonardo Escorpioni was fifth in both races, and he is third in the championship on 131 points, one more than Frankie Mossman, who was third and fourth.
Michael Costello could not finish better than eighth and 12th in Road America, and Costello is fifth on 125 points. Andrés Cárdenas was second and third in Road America, and Cárdenas is now on 113 points. Thomas Schrage scored a pair of sixth-place finishes last round. This has Schrage seventh in the championship on 100 points, 12 points clear of Teddy Musella, who was seventh in both Road America races.
Brady Golan is back after skipping Road America. Golan has 80 points this season, two points ahead of Christian Cameron.
The first two races of the USF Pro 2000 triple-header will be run on Saturday July 4, first at 11:40 a.m. ET and then at 5:15 p.m. ET. The final race will be at 8:00 a.m. on Sunday July 5. All three races are scheduled for 30 laps. The Saturday races have a 50-minute time limit and the Sunday race has a 45-minute time limit.
In U.S. F2000, Sebastián Garzón had three top five finishes at Road America, and Garzón has scored 234 points, 30 more than Brad Majman, who was second, second and first in Elkhart Lake. Eddie Beswick won the first race at Road America, and he is 64 points behind Garzón in the championship.
Evan Cooley was fourth and third in the first two races, but a nasty accident that saw Cooley flip ended his weekend. Cooley is fourth in the championship on 156 points, 29 points ahead of João Vergara. Anthony Martella won the second Road America race, his second victory of the season. Martella is on 121 points.
Oliver Wheldon was third, sixth and fourth over the Road America triple-header, and Wheldon has 119 points despite missing the opening round. Wheldon is ahead of Ayrton Cahan and Garbiel Cahan, who have scored 115 points and 101 points respectively. Liam Loiacono rounds out the top ten on 98 points, two ahead of Wian Boshoff and five ahead of Ryan Giannetta.
U.S. F2000 will race at 4:45 p.m. ET on Friday July 3 with the second race at 4:20 p.m. ET on Saturday July 4. Both races are scheduled for 20 laps or 40 minutes.
Fast Facts
This will be the 17th IndyCar race on July 5th, and the first since Justin Wilson won at Watkins Glen in 2009. That was Dale Coyne Racing's first IndyCar victory.
Twice previously has the state of Ohio hosted a race on July 5. Emerson Fittipaldi won at Cleveland on July 5, 1987, and Sébastien Bourdais won on July 5, 2003 from Cleveland.
This year's Mid-Ohio race falls on the 89th anniversary of the only IndyCar race with a German winner. On July 5, 1937, Bernd Rosemeyer won the Vanderbilt Cup race from Roosevelt Raceway from Westbury, New York. Rosemeyer was driving an Auto Union and finished ahead of the Mercedes of Richard Seaman and the Alfa Romeo of Rex Mays.
The most recent American to win on July 5 was Bobby Rahal, who won on that day in 1992. It was the first race held at New Hampshire International Speedway in Loudon, New Hampshire.
Chip Ganassi Racing won its 13th Mid-Ohio race last year, breaking a tie with Team Penske for most at the circuit.
The only other active teams that have won at Mid-Ohio are Andretti Global, which won in 2018 and 2020, and Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, which won in 2015.
Chip Ganassi Racing has won consecutive Mid-Ohio races on two occasions. It won in 1996 and 1997 with Alex Zanardi. The team also won in six consecutive years from 2009 through 2014.
The fewest laps led for a Mid-Ohio winner is ten by Bobby Rahal in 1986. In only five Mid-Ohio races has the winner led fewer than 20 laps (Johnny Rutherford 1980, Rahal 1986, Roberto Guerrero 1987, Al Unser, Jr. 1995, Scott Dixon 2025).
Last year, Scott Dixon taking the lead with six laps remaining was the first time since 2016 the final lead change in a Mid-Ohio race came with fewer than 20 laps remaining.
Last year was the sixth Mid-Ohio races where the final lead change occurred with ten laps or fewer remaining (1986 - ten laps to go, 1987 - ten laps to go, 1995 - four laps to go, 2007 - nine laps to go, 2016 - six laps to go).
The average starting position for a Mid-Ohio winner is 3.547 with a median of second.
Eight of the last 11 Mid-Ohio races have been won from the front row.
Sixteen of 42 Mid-Ohio races have been won from pole position. Twenty-five Mid-Ohio races have been won from the front row, including five of the last seven races.
The average number of lead changes in a Mid-Ohio race is 4.7857 with a median of five.
Last year's Mid-Ohio race had a record-tying eight lead changes. The other Mid-Ohio races with eight lead changes were in 1988, 2007 and 2017.
Every Mid-Ohio race has had at least one lead change.
The average number of cautions for a Mid-Ohio race is 1.9024 with a median of two. The average number of caution laps is 7.17 with a median of seven.
Seven Mid-Ohio races have been caution-free. Another ten Mid-Ohio races have had only one caution, including the last two of the last three Mid-Ohio races. Ten of the last 11 Mid-Ohio races have had two cautions or fewer.
Predictions
Álex Palou, and if it isn't Álex Palou, it will be Álex Palou. If you twisted my arm and made me pick someone else, give me Felix Rosenqvist and the feel-good story of a Meyer Shank Racing home victory. Will Power and Graham Rahal will not make contact. Kyle Kirkwood is the best Andretti Global driver but never factors for the victory. Christian Lundgaard will be the best Arrow McLaren qualifier, but the second-best Arrow McLaren finisher. Josef Newgarden makes it through lap one. Scott Dixon ends the top ten finish slump. At least two Chevrolet engines fail before the completion of qualifying. Sleeper: Dennis Hauger.
