The New IndyCar is No Accident
The new IndyCar IR-28 didn't come from nowhere. Paul Pfanner traces the forces that shaped it, and the cars that were drawn but never built, to show how the sport arrived here and the choice it faces next.
What Comes After Faster?
Paul Pfanner on what the next Indy car should be built to prove once raw speed has reached its useful limit. Third in his series on the future of the sport.
The Fastest Thing Off the Shelf?
Paul Pfanner asks whether IndyCar has permanently turned its race car into standard equipment, what that trades away, and why the choice that builds what comes next has to be made now.
The Museum and the Paddock
Paul Pfanner sets the reimagined IMS Museum against today's paddock and asks what the Indy car after the IR-28 should add to a century of cars that made change visible
The Art of Thinking Faster
Paul Pfanner renders the Formula 1 car he drew in 1987 for engineer Paul Van Valkenburgh, and remembers a brilliant friend the sport lost in 2024.
Brands as Publishers: The Rise of Owned Media
Bill Sparks on how a handful of brands became publishers, why owning an audience beats renting one, and where most companies go wrong.
Invent the Future
Paul Pfanner on why the new 2028 IndyCar sent him back to the race-car designs he drew as a teenager, now rendered with AI, and what a sport loses when it settles for being a show.
What You're Here to Do
Paul Pfanner on the one thing still standing between you and the work you're here to build.
I’m Never Going There Again…
In his latest Long Views column, Bill Long looks at the quiet sentence that costs brands the most, "I'm never going there again," and why the word that should worry you is "again."
Standing Still at 230 Miles Per Hour
Paul Pfanner on why IndyCar's new car is frozen on purpose, now that a broadcaster owns a third of the series, and what that costs in a world moving faster than 230 mph.
The Trust Problem: From Threat to Opportunity
Companies have never had more ways to reach us, or been trusted less. Bill Sparks on how brands lost the public's trust, and what the smart ones are doing to earn it back.
A Moonshot Run Out of a Race Shop
Paul Pfanner was in the All American Racers shop in 2018 when this car's corroded, unfinished monocoque came down from the rafters. Now it's finished, and he explains why its fifty-eight-year wait matters to anyone with an idea on the bench.
The Future Arrived Looking Familiar
Paul Pfanner on IndyCar's new IR-28, and what a race car is for once the meaning leaves the machine.
The Age of Distribuption is Now
Paul Pfanner on the word he coined in 2017 for IndyCar's leadership, and the decade of evidence that has since caught up with it.
Why the Old Branding Playbook Stopped Working
Bill Sparks opens a new series on how the old branding playbook broke — and what's replacing it.
Open Track
Paul Pfanner on the barrier that used to make ideas expensive to build — the people, the capital, the years — and why its collapse is the most open stretch of track he's seen in five decades
Who Pays The Witness?
Motorsport no longer needs magazines to reach its fans. Paul Pfanner on the independent people who make the work worth saving — and the spirit of RACER magazine he still believes in.
The Trillion Dollar Question
Bill Sparks asks whether the AI boom is a bubble waiting to pop — and lays out what the hyperscalers pouring hundreds of billions into infrastructure still have to prove before the checks stop clearing.
Are Creators Formula One’s Most Effective Media?
Racing was once sold as "The Sport of the Seventies." Fifty years later, Paul Pfanner looks at why Formula One's creators are reaching an audience its traditional media never could.
Jeff Krosnoff Has Been Gone Almost as Long as He Lived
Paul Pfanner remembers his friend Jeff Krosnoff, thirty years on from his tragic death.