Change is needed... does IndyCar have the solution?

Short answer: no, not in the least.

Long answer: What do you do that either hasn't been done or is too expensive to do? (I'll get back to this in a moment.)

On a side note: why is there all this apparent hate towards Ganassi Racing's Alex Palou? The man is showing a master-class on how to dominate a racing series as his teammate Scott Dixon, probably the GOAT of his generation of IndyCar racers, once did in years past. Three wins in four races is a thumping and yet people want to blame the driver for, as David Land above points out, doing his job out on track?

As to the long answer, it boils down to one thing, cost. It costs a lot more money nowadays to run an IndyCar team than it has in past years and a lot of that goes back to the bazillions of dollars sponsors/suppliers pumped into the sport in the late 1990's/early 2000's....that money is gone and ain't returning; the sponsors ain't returning either. Nowadays its' a sponsor-a-rama which isn't not so bad (Heck, NASCAR, which once prided itself on single-sponsor entries, now does the sponsor-a-rama regularly as well and no one seems to complain about it.)

The other problem is on the supplier side; yes, we have a semi-spec series (semi-spec as in all Dallara chassis' and either a Honda or Chevrolet twin-turbo hybrid engine) but its' not the fault of the suppliers. That fault lies squarely under Roger Penske and Penske Entertainment for not providing a justification for other suppliers to want to enter the IndyCar Series.

On the chassis side, Dallara is akin to Boeing & Airbus in the airplane industry - they are the 1,000 lb. elephant and no one, not Swift or Taatus or Lola, is going to knock them off that perch. On that, I've got no problem. On the engine side, though, its' another story. I can think of several different potential IndyCar engine suppliers offhand - Ford Racing, Toyota, Cosworth, Lotus, AER, Mercedes - and other than Toyota, none of them are likely headed to 16th and Georgetown anytime soon. That needs to change and quickly.

So what needs to be done? I would say "take a page from the former Grand-Am Series." 

How? Instead of building a chassis and dictating an engine formula, put out RFPs (Requests for Proposals) stating what formula you're looking for in terms of the engine and in terms of the chassis and then see who bites. Grand-Am did that and throughout all three iterations of the Daytona Prototype class, they had a minimum of 4-5 different engine and chassis suppliers and these were well-known: Doran, Fabcar, Multimatic, Coyote, Crawford, Dallara and Riley for the chassis;, two different BMW, Ford and Porsche engine builds each, along with Nissan (via Infiniti), Toyota (via. Lexus) and Honda....and guess what? The racing was damn good during the 12-13 years of the Daytona Prototype era.

IndyCar could take a page out of it....otherwise? I'm afraid to ask.