Nolan Siegel looking for a ‘simple’ first season in IndyCar

The 2024 motorsport season pulled Nolan Siegel in almost every direction possible.

The young driver started 12 races in IndyCar, ten of those with Arrow McLaren, one with Juncos Hollinger Racing, and one more with Dale Coyne Racing. He started five races in the Indy NXT series, winning one and finishing with three podiums. He even drove in the 24 Hours of Daytona in the IMSA series, and alongside Oliver Jarvis and Bijoy Garg was part of a winning team in the LMP2 category at the 2024 24 Hours of Le Mans.

While it was a busy season for Siegel, it was rather hectic, with the young driver often not knowing where he would be from week to week.

The upcoming year promises to be something different, as Siegel described on Tuesday ahead of the 2025 IndyCar season. Siegel earned a full-time seat for Arrow McLaren for the year ahead and is looking forward to his first full season in IndyCar.

That might make for a “simple” season.

“Yeah, last year, I mean, really all year, I’d go to the racetrack, and whether it was I didn’t know if I was racing the next weekend or didn’t know what I was driving or something new came up, there was so much to think about apart from driving the race car,” said Siegel to the media, including SB Nation, during IndyCar’s Content Days on Tuesday.

“That brought a lot of challenges that I won’t have this year. So I think it’s going to be really nice to know what I have and know what I’m doing and be able to focus on driving the race car instead of focusing on finding a ride for the next weekend or finding a ride in INDYCAR or WEC or IMSA, INDY NXT.

“There’s so much less going on in a way, which sounds weird to say given that it’s my first full season in IndyCar and first full season at Arrow McLaren, but it’s actually much more simple than it was last year.”

However, that has also meant an offseason preparing for a big step up in the motorsport world. Siegel addressed that preparation on Tuesday.

“Going into my first full season in IndyCar, there was a big focus on physical preparation. I’ve gained like 15 pounds, which was a — I don’t think it was an issue last year, but I feel like I’m in a better spot physically now to drive in IndyCar than I was last year,” began Siegel.

“We’ve reviewed at this point almost every race of the season from a strategy standpoint, just to help me better understand IndyCar strategy and the IndyCar rules. I think it was a challenge last year for me to be thinking about strategy in the car just because I didn’t have the experience and didn’t know what different scenarios really meant for our race.

“So I think I’ll have a much better understanding of that and be able to be more involved in the strategy while I’m driving a race car,” continued Siegel. “It’s hard, right; we don’t have very much testing so it’s hard to really work on driving-specific things, but there’s so much more to it than that.”

As for what a good first full season in IndyCar looks like, Siegel believes it involves some Sunday celebrations.

“The goal is to be on the podium and win races,” said Siegel. “It’s super competitive. It’s an incredibly competitive race series, and it’s by no means easy and every weekend isn’t going to be smooth, but I think if we capitalize on the weekends where we have a strong race car and we’re in the positions that we want to be in, we’re going to have chances to be up front and be celebrating on Sundays.”