Alexander Rossi gets 100% real about the two big 'unknowns' for IndyCar's first-ever Thermal Club GP

IndyCar driver Alexander Rossi shared his clear opinion on the upcoming IndyCar race at the Thermal Club. The Ed Carpenter Racing driver detailed the two key factors that will affect the drivers at the maiden championship race at the circuit in California.

Motorsport reporter Bob Pockrass uploaded a clip of Alexander Rossi talking about the IndyCar race at Thermal Club on March 20. The circuit first featured on the IndyCar calendar in 2024, but it was a non-championship exhibition race named the $1 Million challenge.

The 2025 event will be the first time teams will take to the track for a championship race, with the format set as per the other road course events. Alexander Rossi detailed how the introduction of the hybrid system, which was introduced midway through 2024 (months after the Thermal race in March of 2024) will be crucial along with the new tires in determining which driver comes out on top.

“As we saw at the Barber test, for those of us that were there, the hybrid is a big X-Factor in terms of... it's not necessarily plug-and-play with pre-existing setups. So I think that's an unknown,” Alexander Rossi said.

"Firestone, this year, is bringing different tires to all these events to create a bigger separation between the primary and the alternate, so that's an unknown. So you can take the fundamental concept of the track and apply it to this year, but in terms of all the finer details, everyone's gonna be experiencing it for the first time," he added.

The Thermal Club race will be held on March 23 and the race weekend begins on Friday, March 21 with the first practice session. Saturday, March 22 will be the qualifying session to set the grid for the race on Sunday.

Rossi also detailed how the track temperatures will massively shift during the day, with over a 20⁰C difference between the warm-up on Sunday morning and the race in the afternoon.

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“Anyone's Ballgame”: Alexander Rossi on the 2025 IndyCar race at Thermal being a “guesstimate”

The 2025 race at Thermal will be the first time that drivers will be racing around the track in the preset championship format. With a boatload of unknowns going into the weekend, and no previous real track data, Alexander Rossi believes that anyone can win the race. Speaking with the media about the same, he said (via Autoweek):

“Everyone is going to be kind of experiencing it for the first time. All of us are going into Sunday kind of with a guesstimate of what the race is going to be like.”

“Those types of events are super-exciting because there's really no preconceived notion who is going to be strong, what's worked before. It's really anyone's ballgame in terms of having success come Sunday afternoon,” Rossi added.

The Thermal Club circuit is 3.067 miles long and features 17 turns, which are a mixture of slow, medium, and high-speed corners combined with four straights. Finding the balance between straight-line performance and downforce will be crucial in deciding who comes out on top.