The state at Foyt: Ferrucci’s stability, Collet’s IndyCar step & NXT expansion
- Archie O’Reilly
- 17 hours ago
- 7 min read
With both drivers in place by early November and primary season-long partners for their two entries secured, the mood is up again at AJ Foyt Racing ahead of the 2026 IndyCar season.
It was announced two months into the off-season that, after successful evaluation tests with the team, Indy NXT runner-up Caio Collet would be joining the team in place of Team Penske-bound David Malukas. Alongside the Brazilian rookie, Santino Ferrucci is returning for a fourth season: the longest-tenured Foyt driver since Takuma Sato from 2013 to 2016.
“Having both cars buttoned up, all the drivers, everybody ready to go, I feel like we’re in a good spot early in the off-season,” said team president Larry Foyt in November. “We know what we’re doing. We know what the goal is. We’re focused on the racing side now.
“I think the Penske things are good - I think I see that [technical alliance] continuing. So far, everything looks really good for next year to pick up right where we left off.”
Foyt was speaking in the wake of an announcement that the striking stars-and-stripes Homes For Our Troops livery is set to expand beyond the Indianapolis 500 for 2026 and be run for the entire season on Ferrucci’s No.14 entry.
The initiative for this coming season is being backed by Hendricks Commercial Properties to raise funds in Homes For Our Troops’ continued mission to build homes for veterans. Over the past four editions of the Indy 500, ABC Supply’s $1 million annual matching pledge has led to the raising of nearly $15 million for the campaign.
“We were carrying the Sexton livery most of the [2025] season, then obviously with the tragic passing of Marlyne Sexton, we knew we had to get to work to secure something for the primary,” Foyt explained. “It really didn’t take that long.
“We were wanting to expand this programme because it’s been so successful with Homes For Our Troops. We put it together pretty quickly. We obviously knew we wanted Santino as the driver. He’s been really the face of our team for the last few years, has helped lead this revival for us, getting us back toward the front.”
Foyt’s loss of Malukas is not ideal but felt an inevitability when he joined the team with the near-guarantee of stepping up to Penske, whether it was to indeed be next year or later. In keeping hold of Ferrucci, the team still maintains stability which it has not often had in recent times.
In the past nine years, 14 different drivers have run at least two races in any given season for Foyt. For Ferrucci himself, a journeyman in the early days of his IndyCar career, forced to endure bulks of seasons sidelined, similar times of uncertainty look to be behind him.
“It’s been really good,” Ferrucci admitted, speaking alongside Foyt in November. “I really thank Larry for trusting me to drive the No.14 car year after year.
“This past season, we had a lot of ups and a lot of downs. I made probably a couple more mistakes than I’m used to. The team’s gone through some changes as well; Larry has moved the entire team up to Indianapolis this past year. So it’s a completely new crew of mechanics, switched engineers midway through the season in ’25.
“This [in 2026] is the first real season of stability, continuity with everything inside the team. I think a lot of the races that we had good success at we can build on. The races I made some mistakes, things that we learned with the car, the Penske alliance, we know we can definitely make better. I really look forward to what we can do this season.”
Ferrucci finished 19th in the standings in his first season with Foyt in 2023, rising a stunning 10 positions to ninth in 2024, owing to 11 top-10 results in the 17 races. But after logging the best championship result for a Foyt driver in 22 years, he regressed to 16th in 2025.
That said, had he not been docked 25 points for an illegality on his car in Detroit, he would have finished level with teammate Malukas in 11th. But aside from the peaks of podiums in Detroit and at Road America in a four-race stretch of top-five results, Malukas often emerged as the more reliable pair of hands, particularly across a single lap.
Impressive highs were present in 2025 but need to be more regularly replicated, while scruffiness that crept in with too-frequent errors require eradication. Too often in races, with an average qualifying finish of 17.5 across the season, Ferrucci was left to recover.
Up against a rookie in 2026, he undoubtedly wants to restore the mantle of outright team leadership via the consistent form that caught the eye so greatly in 2024.
“Part of the learning curve this coming season, we had a slight difference in dampers and book build from Penske,” Ferrucci suggested. “The alliance, it’s really, really good for us [but] all of my references and everything we built the previous year had shifted quite a bit.
“We struggled to figure out how to adjust to that shift accordingly. It took us longer than we anticipated. We did have some races where we were really quick - we nailed it. But having to understand what you’re doing with the car, it’s not always easy. Some of the reads I was getting were a little bit skewed.
“[Malukas] and I both had different ways of being competitive. He struggled a lot less in qualifying than I did but in the racing I was a lot happier with the cars at times. We were averaging 15-plus positions passing a race, which is not something we want to be doing.”
Now with Collet lining up alongside Ferrucci, there is hope from Foyt that there has been an unearthing of another high-calibre young talent.
The Brazilian’s initial car racing background came in the European single-seater series, where he was a product of the Renault-turned-Alpine Formula One academy. This European chapter climaxed with three years in FIA Formula 3, bringing three victories, a total of 11 podiums and championship results of ninth, eighth and ninth.
For 2024, Collet changed tack and moved stateside to race in Indy NXT, where he finished third in the standings as a rookie. Building on a solitary win and six podiums in that debut season, he notched nine more podiums, including three victories, en-route to progressing to finish runner-up to Dennis Hauger in 2025.
This caught the eye of IndyCar teams - namely Foyt.
“We were impressed with what he did in Indy NXT with HMD,” Foyt assessed. “It was great that we had a great year as a team; there was a lot of interest from a bunch of drivers.
“Getting to meet Caio, also met the sponsor Combitrans, we started talking about things. We did a rookie test with him - he was really impressive. That really made us decide that was the way we wanted to go there. So we put it together after that.”
In October, Collet tested for Foyt at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course - his first taste of the Indy car - and again on the road course at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. On November 6th, the day of his maiden oval test, Collet was unveiled as the new driver of Foyt’s No.4 Chevy.
Ferrucci was on hand to support his new teammate on that autumn day at Nashville Super Speedway: his first taste of working with the 23-year-old.
“I’m actually really looking forward to working with Caio,” he said. “He’s honestly probably among the easier drivers I’ve worked with in the last couple of years. I like the driving style. He’s very open-minded - like myself - when it comes to the race car, which I found quite unique and really easy.
“So just debriefing things with him, him actually being receptive to some of my feedback immediately was cool. I think we’ll be able to do and accomplish great things.”
Following Collet’s move up from Indy NXT with HMD Motorsports, Foyt have also partnered with HMD to expand into IndyCar’s premier feeder series with a two-car effort in 2026. With teams capped at four-car squads from this season and HMD having run as many as 10 in recent years, they have had to seek out teams to ally with, for which Foyt fit the billing.
With drivers Alessandro De Tullio and Nicholas Monteiro, plus other budding team personnel, this move solidifies a pipeline up to the IndyCar outfit.
“It gives us the opportunity to do a lot of things,” Foyt acknowledged of the NXT expansion. “It’s really a great resource for us to keep an eye on the young drivers coming up through, young mechanics that we want to train that maybe we’re looking at in the future for IndyCar, to keep that pipeline going with young mechanics and things of that nature.
“For us, it was really a no-brainer and made a lot of sense. You’re seeing a lot of the IndyCar teams are getting involved; you get a little bit extra testing. You can really have a pipeline to keep your programme healthy. That was the main reason we wanted to do it.”
On the IndyCar side, Foyt are looking to continue the upwards trajectory from the past two seasons. The main goal? Returning to the winners’ circle. And where better to achieve that than the Indianapolis 500, where Malukas was runner-up in 2025 - with Ferrucci fifth - and Ferrucci has never finished outside the top 10 in seven attempts?
“I’ve got a lot of personal goals,” Ferrucci disclosed, “because I want to run up front, be in the media for all the right reasons. A lot of pressure on myself to do that.
“I feel really good coming back to Indy this year. We struggled a lot this past 500 with some weird things going on. Just trying to perfect and work with the team, make sure that we build the cars correctly, make sure we’ve done all the little details. Hopefully this year is going to be our year. I know the team’s working harder than ever.”
As a team, Foyt have not won since Takuma Sato’s Long Beach success in 2013 - their only victory in the past 23 seasons. It is a run they see as imperative to end.
“The goal this year is to get back to Victory Lane,” Foyt insisted. “We’re ready to win a race. Obviously we’d like to win the big one in May. We showed that we had the pace last year. It’s hard to say that we can contend for a championship. That’s very difficult.
“Santino, we were on the podium a couple times - so close to getting that win. If we don’t win a race next year, I’ll be really disappointed. I think Caio will fight for Rookie of the Year. Getting Santino back in the top 10… if you take away that penalty at Detroit last year, he was close to the top 10 again. We’re now consistently fighting for the top 10 in the championship.
“So getting that and getting to Victory Lane would be a successful season.”
