Twenty INDY NXT by Firestone drivers prepared for the start of the 2025 season March 2 on the Streets of St. Petersburg by testing Jan. 15-16 at Sebring International Raceway in Florida.
It was the first chance for most of the drivers on the grid for the INDYCAR development series in 2025 to stack up against each other. While times and speeds are not officially released from private tests, various media reports and social media feeds have given an opportunity to try to make some itemized deductions:
Hauger Verifies Title Credentials
The competitiveness of the series in 2025 figured to jump a notch when Andretti Global announced last Oct. 18 that Dennis Hauger would join its INDY NXT by Firestone lineup for this season.
Hauger, from Norway, won the FIA Formula 3 Championship in 2021 and secured five wins and 13 podium finishes in FIA Formula 2 – the last official ladder step before Formula One – in the last three seasons. He also served as a Red Bull Junior Driver for six years and was named a Red Bull Reserve Driver for the 2022 and 2023 FIA Formula One World Championship season.
Those are the credentials of a serious title contender as a rookie, and Hauger’s performance Wednesday and Thursday did nothing to dispel that.
Hauger led overall in the No. 28 Andretti Global machine and was nearly a quarter-second quicker than his closest full-time competitor in the series, veteran Callum Hedge in the No. 17 Abel Motorsports entry.
Hedge was third overall. 2024 INDY NXT by Firestone runner-up Jacob Abel – named this week to a 2025 NTT INDYCAR SERIES seat with Dale Coyne Racing – lent a hand to his family team in testing and ended up second, about four-hundredths of a second behind Hauger. The Abel team plans to run four full-time cars this season in INDY NXT, with one open seat remaining, and Abel shook down the available car.
Andretti-Abel Rivalry To Continue with New Faces?
The rivalry between Andretti Global and Abel Motorsports played out over all 14 rounds last season, as Louis Foster of Andretti Global pulled away from Jacob Abel of Abel Motorsports in the second half of the season to claim the championship.
Don’t expect that rivalry to simmer this season, even with many new faces behind the wheel for both teams.
Hauger and fellow rookie teammate Lochie Hughes put Andretti Global 1-3, respectively, among series full-timers on the final combined time sheets. Guess who was 2-4, respectively? Hedge and Myles Rowe of Abel Motorsports.
Floersch Flourishes
Rookie Sophia Floersch, who joined HMD Motorsports in December, made quite an impression by ending up sixth overall and fifth among full-time drivers in the No. 24 machine.
German driver Floersch was less than a half-second behind overall leader Hauger and was the quickest driver for series powerhouse HMD, including ending up slightly less than a hundredth of a second ahead of teammate Caio Collet, the 2024 INDY NXT by Firestone Rookie of the Year.
Floersch is the first woman to score points in the FIA Formula 3 Championship, one of the premier junior open-wheel series in the world. She also has competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Deegan Making Progress
Sometimes the final timing numbers don’t tell the whole story, and that certainly was the case at Sebring for HMD Motorsports rookie Hailie Deegan.
Deegan is moving from NASCAR and ARCA stock car series to INDY NXT by Firestone in 2025, her first-ever season in an open-wheel car. That’s a huge challenge, whether it’s learning of the role of aerodynamics in a winged car or figuring out how the INDY NXT car handles compared to a much heavier stock car.
She ended up at the bottom of the time sheets this week at Sebring, but that’s deceiving. Deegan made real progress through each of the four sessions as she drinks from a fire hose.
After the afternoon session Wednesday, Deegan was nearly 2.9 seconds off the pace. By the end of the test Thursday, she reduced that gap to 1.8 seconds from Hauger.
That’s an improvement of almost 1.1 seconds in 24 hours. Deegan still has much to learn and many more laps to turn, but she’s getting up to speed and absorbing lessons quickly.