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When the 2017 Verizon IndyCar Series came to an end at Sonoma back in mid-September, there was a lot of anxiety about the car count for 2018. There were twenty-one full-time entries for the 2017 season. Although not confirmed by the respective teams involved, it was common knowledge among fans that the grid was going to lose three full-time cars in the offseason. Of course, they were also gaining one with Takuma Sato having already announced he was moving to a new second car with Rahal-Letterman-Lanigan; so the net loss was going to be two cars for 2018.

Chip Ganassi Racing was going to go from four full-time cars down to two for 2018. Tony Kanaan, Charlie Kimball and Max Chilton were all leaving on bitter terms. The teams for Chilton and Kimball would be dismantled, while the car driven by Kanaan would have a new driver. At Team Penske, Helio Castroneves was given a not-so-gentle nudge to move from his familiar No.3 IndyCar ride to join Penske’s new Acura sports car program for 2018. It was correctly presumed that no one would be replacing Castroneves and Penske would go from four full-time cars to three.

There were some fairly loud rumors that there would be some new teams coming on board to soften the blow of losing three cars from the grid at each race, but nothing in the fall was substantial.

In the last couple of weeks, those rumors became reality. There will be at least three new full-time cars among two new teams, while one of those teams could still add another full-time car. On top of that, there will be two more teams that debuted in this past year’s Indianapolis 500 expanding to multiple races next season. That’s four new teams to welcome to the party next season.

We pretty well knew that Gabby Chaves would be returning with Harding Racing, the up and coming team that ran three races this past season; the Indianapolis 500, Texas and Pocono. That was confirmed two or three weeks ago, so the result on the net loss on the car count went from two to one.

Earlier this week, we got another strong rumor confirmed when Trevor Carlin announced his team would move up from Indy Lights to the Verizon IndyCar Series with two full-time efforts that will feature the two drivers from Chip Ganassi Racing – Max Chilton and Charlie Kimball both with the same funding they had at Ganassi.

With these two announcements, the IndyCar grid will now have at least one additional full-time car for 2018. Of course, that’s assuming Dale Coyne runs a second full-time car which probably won’t be confirmed until March. The last time Dale Coyne did not run two full-time cars was the 2009 season. He was all set to run two for 2018 before Ed Jones signed with Ganassi to replace Kanaan, so I think it’s a fairly safe assumption to say Coyne will run two cars next season. I am also assuming that Ed Carpenter will name a non-oval driver for his No.20 car to team with Spencer Pigot.

So with two announcements, The Verizon IndyCar Series already has one additional full-time car over this past season. But there’s even more good news.

Juncos Racing, who also made their IndyCar debut this past May in the Indianapolis 500, will return for at least four races this season with 2017 Indy Lights champion Kyle Kaiser in the cockpit.

Then just last week, we learned that Michael Shank Racing will return for at least six races this season with Jack Harvey driving. If you’ll recall, Shank and Harvey both made their debut in the 2017 Indianapolis 500 in conjunction with Andretti Autosport. This season, they will have an association with Schmidt Peterson Motorsports.

Two of these four new teams are moving up from Indy Lights – Juncos and Carlin. Juncos first entered Indy Lights in 2012, running in six races. Two years later, they entered full-time and won the 2015 championship with Spencer Pigot. They also won the 2017 championship with Kyle Kaiser.

After winning championships in many European series, Carlin joined Indy Lights in 2015 with two full-time cars driven by Ed Jones and Max Chilton. In 2016, Carlin won the Indy Lights championship with Ed Jones. In 2017, they ran four full-time cars including Matheus Leist, who will be piloting the No.4 ABC Supply car for AJ Foyt Enterprises.

Shank and Harding both made their debut in the 101st Running of the Indianapolis 500 this past May. Gabby Chaves was impressive the entire month of May and earned a ninth-place finish for Harding in their very first race. Harvey and Shank didn’t fare so well. Jack Harvey got caught up in Conor Daly’s crash on Lap 65, hitting both the outside and inside retaining wall in Turn Three.

If you listened to Trackside this week, you heard Brian Barnhart tell Curt Cavin and Kevin Lee that their focus was on the No.88 car of Gabby Chaves and that there were no current plans for a second car at Harding next season. But if you read between the lines, he also indicated that if the right situation came along they would certainly take a look at it. That tells me that Harding would like to do it, but they are not going to do it without sponsorship and a lot of it.

It seems like all of these teams have a history of doing things the right way. Harding is the only team of the four that doesn’t come from another series. This time last year, there was no such thing as Harding Racing. But they have a strong group of people involved and they also have a three-race history in IndyCar that the others don’t have. The other three have all had success in other series and are taking a slow-growth approach to entering IndyCar.

I don’t expect any of these teams to compete for the championship or even win a race next season. For one thing, it would be impossible for the part-time teams to compete for the championship when running only four to six races. But the two full-time teams will have their growing pains too. If I had to bet on which one would be the most successful, I’d say Carlin, mainly because Chilton and Kimball have worked together for the past two seasons.

Things are now looking up on the car count front, just a few months after it looked like IndyCar could lose a few grid spots for next season. It’s safe to say there will always be at least twenty-two cars at every race and possibly a few more. With the common body kit, maybe another engine manufacturer might see an easier path to competing in IndyCar than existed just a couple of years ago.

Now if they could just do something about those double-point races…

George Phillips

This entry was posted on December 15, 2017 at 4:03 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.