IF YOU aren’t yet on board, now is a very good time to get on board the sailing ship that is IndyCar.
Because right now it’s got the wind at it’s back and it’s properly flying.
The 2021 season concluded at Long Beach last weekend, culminating the most unpredictable and competitive season of motorsport the world has to offer at the moment – and that’s including the properly incredible battle we’re witnessing in Formula One.
The fact is that IndyCar right now is perhaps the most competitive it has ever been – and that’s including at the very peak of the CART era in the early to mid 1990s when people like Nigel Mansell and Emerson Fittipaldi went and took on the likes of the Andretti’s.
The surnames might not have quite the same household appeal at the moment, but the level of talent is outrageously high, the cars are visibly very exciting to watch and the depth of competition between teams and parity between brands is as tight as ever.
This year, nine different drivers representing seven teams shared the 16 race wins available.
15 different drivers stood on the podium – but perhaps more impressively is the stat that 12 of them did it more than once, which shows real depth in the field and not just a host of fluke, one-off results. Oh yeah, one of the one-time podium finishers was a guy from Brazil named Helio.. he won a kind of big race back in May this year.
The championship came down to the final round for the fifteenth straight season and was battled out by a driver from Chip Ganassi Racing, Team Penske and Arrow McLarenSP – but the driver who won the equal most races of the season came from Andretti Autosport.
However, the storylines go further than just the stats and facts that prove a remarkably competitive year.
How about Alex Palou? A young Spaniard picked up from relative obscurity by Dale Coyne two years ago gets a shot at the big time with Ganassi’s powerhouse team and converts to a championship in just his second year.
Then there’s Josef Newgarden, who didn’t win a race until Mid Ohio’s 10th stop on the tour but showed how good he and Penske are – even in a lean year for the storied squad – by keeping his title hopes alive into the final round.
And Pato O’Ward, the hope of Mexico, who not only proved his own bone’ fides but those of McLaren as they invest harder and harder into IndyCar racing. They are now a regular force.
Much has been made of IndyCar’s youth movement and just behind Palou and O’Ward is Colton Herta, who could be the fastest guy in the championship now. His wins at Laguna Seca and Long Beach in the final two events were as impressive and dominant as anyone has seen in the series and should he string a full season together next year, he’ll be hard to beat.
Swede Marcus Ericsson found form with two wins, Rinus VeeKay starred at the IndyGP before his unfortunate concussion in Detroit – and then of course, there’s Scott McLaughlin.
The 2021 Rookie of the year had an impressive season. It started strongly – perhaps too strongly, raising the expectations of some – but after that remarkable second place finish in Texas he put a challenging middle stanza of the season behind him to finish the year very strongly to claim the rookie crown he so coveted. And let’s not forget, without a speeding miscue entering the pits, he could have been fourth – or better – in his Indianapolis debut. With a year under his belt, he will unquestionably be a force in 2022.
And in that rookie battle came another remarkable story, the from-the-ashes journey of Romain Grosjean, who not only rejuvenated his own career with a stirring season but created a new legion of fans stateside by so enthusiastically embracing his IndyCar journey. That he has signed a full-season deal with Andretti next year almost instantly makes him a legitimate contender – and watching him tackle the Indy500 will be special, too.
There’s an irony now that at 35, Grosjean can be considered the ‘old guard’ of open-wheel racing, but one of the great appeals of IndyCar is that age doesn’t seem to stop them from performing superbly.
Take Scott Dixon, for example, who turned 41 this year. Though 2021 was a quiet season by his usual, win-it-all standards, Dixon still won in Texas and grabbed four other podium finishes to finish fourth in the championship.
Will Power, who is somehow now 40 years old, remains as fast as anyone to have ever driven an IndyCar, and you can only wonder what his season could have been had things gone his way at times. He should have won in Detroit had it not been for his car failing to re-fire following a red flag, but he still won superbly the second IndyGP and finished ninth overall.
And what of Castroneves? Some might say his Indy 500 win was a flash in the pan effort, but then he popped up at Long Beach and qualified third, proving the now 46-year-old Brazilian is just as fast as ever. With the 37-year-old Simon Pagenaud alongside him at Meyer-Shank Racing next year they may well form a very formidable team.
There’s so many other drivers to talk about, too – we haven’t touched on Alex Rossi, or Graham Rahal who can’t qualify but passed more cars than anyone to record seven top five finishes this year, despite not qualifying there once. Or Takuma Sato who is still fast and wild.
Perhaps it’s worth ending this story by talking about the other remarkable tale in this year’s field, that of Jimmie Johnson.
Now 46, the Californian could have retired a very rich, very satisfied man following his seven NASCAR titles, but he wanted more and IndyCar was the answer.
A cursory glance at the results sheets that indicate a pair of 17th place finishes as season highlights doesn’t indicate much – but the rate of improvement across the season was remarkable and he is now genuinely competitive which is incredible, given the quantum shift between the two racing disciplines he is tackling.
With the Captain at the helm, the IndyCar ship is truly flying. They’ve got their best ever TV deal locked in for next year, and a strong 17-race tour that adds another oval – important for the diversity in the series.
The cars are fire-breathing, 800hp animals that slide around, can race closely and do nothing but go flat out and the breadth and depth of talent and personalities in the field are at least the equal to anything else in our sport right now.
So if your are finding your early Monday mornings are a little dull, I’d suggest next year you flick your TV on to Sky Sport NZ and check out the world of IndyCar racing.
If you are even an on-the-fence motorsport fan, I doubt very much you’ll come away regretting it.
Comments