Speaking prior to this weekend’s season-opener in St Petersburg, the US star explains how he managed to pull himself from the mire of IndyCar despondency and go again.

Rowe’s 2024 team HMD runs an unprecedented number of cars – it had 10 out of a 23-car field last year – and it’s proved a successful formula with a number of titles in recent seasons.

However in his first stab at Indy NXT Rowe found himself getting less quality out of a team characterised by quantity.

“It was a lot more about being focused on myself,” he says of his HMD-to-Abel switch.

“There are some positives that come with having more cars, but with Abel being a ‘normal’ sized team, you could say there is a lot more of a clear focus on what everybody wants. There’s less people, less ideas to go through, and everything becomes a lot more centred around a clear result, rather than having so many engineers and so many drivers and so many different styles and backgrounds.”

Rowe says his issues at the HMD mega team manifested itself through a difficulty in working through any set-up headaches.

“Anytime it didn’t come out the box well, we struggled severely,” he says. “After St Petersburg, we just couldn’t get it to work anymore.”

While confident enough to hold himself in a world he was parachuted into with the help of Penske, Rowe says a bit more self-belief and being firmer in his demands to HMD would have helped him through last year’s pains.

“When you’re really in that bubble, [you accept] it’s just things way are. I needed to be more of a leader, take more initiative.

“But you don’t want to be that guy, the one who’s always got a problem. Especially when I wasn’t the top driver [in the championship standings] in the team anymore, it’s like ‘Where are you getting these notions?’”

Rowe credits the Force Indy programme leader Rod Reid as helping him see the light and deciding to switch to Abel.

“Rod has been a crucial figure for me this year,” he stresses. “I didn’t even know if I wanted to change teams.

“He was just able to help bring my foot out of ‘the bubble’ a little bit because I was honestly too reserved and too committed to it [staying with HMD] – like a CEO who’s committed to his failing business even when the numbers are trending downwards.”

Reid convinced Rowe that a change was necessary and, similar to George Russell’s recent quote that you know within five laps of driving a new car whether it’s going to be a good season or not, the young charge said he immediately had a good feeling behind the wheel of an Abel Indy NXT car.

He showed as much by going quickest in the 2024 Indy NXT post season test for Abel at Indianapolis – Rowe immediately felt right at home.

“When I got in the car and started the engine, I kid you not, the vibrations were so different,” he says. “It’s so weird, because how could it be like that with the same kind of chassis?

“As soon as I left the pits, hung the right out of pit lane – I knew, I just knew that this was by far the right move.

“Even on pit lane on cold frickin’ tires, it just worked. I could just tell this thing is hooked. I don’t think I came P1 in any session last year, and at Indianapolis on the first run I thought it was gonna be P6, P7, kind of cruising – I get in and it’s P1, just like that.”

The result is that Rowe is more charged than ever for the upcoming season, in a 2025 Indy NXT grid packed with talent. It includes his Abel team-mate and NZ Porsche Carrera Cup champ Callum Hedge, former F2 star Denis Hauger, 2024 USF Pro 2000 series winner Lochie Hughes and Alpine Academy driver Sophia Floersch.

“I’m really excited because there’s a lot of good drivers – I think everyone’s gonna feel like they have a rival,” says Rowe.

“There’s nothing less I’m going for [than the title win]. I’m going to finish all the races, do everything within my control.”

With Fox taking over the broadcast of not only IndyCar races but also Indy NXT, Rowe has the potential to be linked with a groundswell in popularity for the sport.

“Fox is lighting it up!” he exclaims. “The commercials for Josef, Alex and Pato – those were great. They’re really going to promote us, make the stories and create that vision for the sport that I think’s been there, but is going to enhance it the way it’s supposed to be and needed to be for a while.”

Acknowledging his Indy NXT contemporaries that made it to the top – as well as Force Indy alumni Derrick Morris, now a mechanic at AJ Foyt – Rowe knows that IndyCar is within his grasp. He just needs to keep the Hollywood story line going one more year.