On the Drazin index of regular elements

It is known that the existence of the group inverse a ^# of a ring element a is equivalent to the invertibility of a ² a ⁻ + 1 − aa ⁻, independently of the choice of the von Neumann inverse a ⁻ of a. In this paper, we relate the Drazin index of a to the Drazin index of a ² a ⁻ + 1 − aa ⁻. We give an alternative characterization when considering matrices over an algebraically closed field. We close with some questions and remarks.