Oilpressure

The other night, I was reading Robin Miller’s Mailbag. Someone had asked a question about potential crash damage after the Texas race, heading into the Month of May. Their question centered on how much this would affect the small-budget teams in the NTT IndyCar Series. Normally I would not have paid much attention to this question, because Miller’s answer was fairly predictable – saying that it would affect the smaller teams much more than the larger teams.

That’s not too hard to figure out, but there was a phrase that he used in his answer that caught my eye. Instead of saying the larger teams, he used the phrase “Big 4” to describe the larger teams.

My question is…which teams make up the Big Four?

He used the number “4” instead of spelling out F-o-u-r. Did he just hit the wrong key, or was this his way of saying one team had jumped to the level of the Big Three?

For years, we have referred to the Big Three teams of the NTT IndyCar Series – Team Penske, Chip Ganassi Racing and Andretti Autosport (in no particular order). But who is the other member of the Big Four? Until this week, I had never heard anyone associated with IndyCar, refer to the Big Four.

Since 2010, the vast majority of race wins have been won by one of those three teams. No other teams even come close to collecting as many wins as any of those three. In fact, no team outside of those three teams has more than nine wins since 2010.

What would put a team into the Big Four? Would it be the number of wins? Is it how many cars they run? Is it stability in drivers or sponsorships? Is it the amount of resources a team, has at its disposal? What exactly would one consider in grouping a team with Andretti, Penske and Ganassi?

Winning is the name of the game, so I’m going to say it is how many wins a team has.

Since 2010, Carlin and Foyt have one win between them – that was Takuma Sato’s win at Long Beach in 2013, when Sato was driving for Foyt; so we know Robin Miller wasn’t talking about them. Meyer Shank Racing has no wins yet, but they are a team on the rise. Still, I don’t they are in the Big Four yet.

Some might say it’s McLaren, simply because they are…McLaren. I know, the name is still Arrow McLaren SP. I don’t really consider them the same team as the Schmidt Peterson Motorsports that collected seven wins between 2013 and 2018, with drivers Simon Pagenaud and James Hinchcliffe doing the winning. Their last race win was in 2018, when Hinch won at Iowa. They have now remade their driver lineup, their engine manufacturer, their engineering staff and their management and ownership group. They are practically unrecognizable from their last win three years ago. Do we give them seven wins since 2010, or re-start the clock to the McLaren takeover and say this current team hasn’t won anything yet. Regardless, I don’t think they are in the Big Four.

That leaves three other teams; Ed Carpenter Racing (ECR), Dale Coyne Racing (DCR) and Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLLR).

ECR has won five races since 2010, but the last one was in 2016 when Josef Newgarden dominated the field at Iowa. It’s hard to believe but that was five seasons ago. Newgarden has moved on to Team Penske and has won two championships. ECR hasn’t won since. Scratch them out of the Big Four.

Dale Coyne has also won five races since 2010, most recently in 2018. Some seasons they can be strong and challenge for wins, other seasons they are a laughing stock. They need to amass a lot more wins and gain greater consistency before they can ever be considered part of the Big Four.

That leaves Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. Over the last decade, they have collected nine wins, and they have all come since 2015. Graham Rahal won one of the most epic races I can remember – the exciting 2015 race at Fontana. He has won five of those nine, but hasn’t won a race since sweeping the double-header at Belle Isle in 2017. The team’s last four races have been won by teammate Takuma Sato, including the 2020 Indianapolis 500 this past August.

Does winning nine races in six seasons, including an Indianapolis 500 put you in the same elite company with Penske, Ganassi and Andretti; or did Robin Miller accidentally hit a “4” instead of a “3”? Is there any reason to go beyond the Big Three in the first place, while there is still a large gap between the Big Three and RLLR. To be honest, I’m not sure of the answer. I am curious to hear what some of you think. It’s too bad we no longer have poll questions.

Speaking of which…a couple of weeks ago, one of the loyal readers of this site offered to send me a check for $180 to continue the poll questions for a year. While I was flattered at his generous offer, I politely turned him down. There have to be free options out there. One of these days, I am going to explore other options. In the meantime, we’ll have to use the comment section to see what everyone thinks.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on February 26, 2021 at 4:02 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.