The halfway point of the 2026 INDYCAR Thrustmaster iRacing Pro Series season has been reached, and the competition is as tight as ever atop of the leaderboard.

Team Redline's Luke McKeown, winner of the opening round on the streets of Long Beach, leads the way by a single point over Drago Racing's Michael Romanidis. While Romanidis has yet to win, he has the most podium finishes this season, scoring two runner-up finishes so far, at Portland International Raceway in the second race and at the most recent event, in Mugello, Italy.

Both drivers are thriving with new teams this season. McKeown raced (and won a race) with Apex Racing Team in 2024, while Romanidis was on Coanda Esports. However, their new respective teams look to be the formed powerhouses this year, with 13 drivers represented among the two — eight drivers on Team Redline, five on Drago Racing -- and four of the top five places in the standings representing both teams with two drivers apiece.

Officially, Team Redline has two wins, while Drago Racing has two pole positions but no checkered flags. The other two wins belong to WSR Esports, with Jaden Munoz capitalizing at Portland, and Team VRS, with Michele Costantini sniping the victory from Powerslide Motorsports' Alexander Russell on the final lap in a three-wide photo finish at Indianapolis (photo, below).

Thrustmaster INDYCAR Pro Series

While Indianapolis offers a specialized discipline even among all the ovals on the schedule, the 66-lap event earlier this season proved one thing: There is a clear divide among the 33 drivers between oval and road specialty. Most of the drivers that were in the mix the entire day at Indy have been struggling on the road and street courses. Meanwhile, the drivers often found at the front of those tracks with left and right turns were mostly outside the top 10 for the majority of the 66 laps in Speedway, Indiana.

Costantini could prove to be the master of both disciplines, despite only having two career oval wins, this season at Indy and two years ago at the Milwaukee Mile. He enters the next two races only 21 points back of McKeown. A 10th place at Mugello keeps him in the conversation.

Despite the season having a road slant with the schedule, both Costantini and Team Hype w/ Powerslide's Philip Kraus find themselves in a much better position than the driver who won the inaugural title, Team Redline's Diogo Pinto. The 2024 champion started his defense with a runner-up day at Long Beach, but it's been downhill ever since. At Portland, Pinto was punted early in the going and couldn't recover to get more than the minimum amount of points available, finishing 26th. Finishing 11th at Indianapolis was likely a best-case scenario for Pinto on the oval, but he followed that up with a speeding penalty to finish 28th at Mugello, which puts him in 14th place halfway through the year.

After oval races at Phoenix and Nashville shake up the status quo, the season will end with back-to-back road courses. Race 7 will take place at the fan vote-winning track Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, and WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca will conclude the season in Race 8. Mid-Ohio was a race won by Edoardo Leo in the first season, while Laguna Seca was Pinto's only victory enroute to the title. That's a pretty good sign for Team Redline to close the year out, but then again, Drago Racing has proven to have the pace to keep up so far.

How much will the next two oval races mix up the order? Can the oval specialists build up enough of a gap to hold off the road warriors? Will Drago Racing and Team Redline continue their head-to-head battle into the final two races of the season? Tune in Thursday night, Feb. 5 to see how the second half of the season begins! All of the action from Phoenix starts at 8 p.m. ET, and will be live on INDYCAR's YouTube channel, as well as across all of iRacing’s social media channels.

For more information on the INDYCAR Thrustmaster iRacing Pro Series, visit www.iracing.com/indycar-esports/.

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