Oilpressure

The 107th Running of the Indianapolis 500 is still almost six months away, but the dominos continue to fall as available seats continue to fill up. One such seat was filled a couple of weeks ago, and I’ll admit it caught me by surprise.

Sage Karam has nine Indianapolis 500 starts on his resume. Eight of those starts were with Dreyer & Reinbold Racing (DRR), a one-time fulltime team in the NTT IndyCar Series that has been scaled back to appearances at IMS since 2013. DRR ran Karam as a nineteen year-old rookie in the 2014 Indianapolis 500, where he turned heads with a ninth-place finish. The following year, he shared driving duties in the fulltime No. 8 Chip Ganassi entry; splitting time with Sebastian Saavedra. Karam and Ganassi parted ways at the end of the 2015 season for reasons other than his on-track performance, and we’ll just leave it at that.

Since 2016, Karam has been a regular with DRR at the Indianapolis 500. His best finish for the team in eight starts was in 2021, when he finished seventh. He has had JR Hildebrand and Santino Ferrucci as teammates for a few of those years, but Karam was always the constant – until now.

In mid-November, we learned that Sage Karam had been told he would not be returning to Dreyer & Reinbold. Instead, they have forged a relationship with Cusick Motorsports and driver Stefan Wilson.

I normally don’t seek out controversy, but what I am about to say will sound like I am – because some will silently agree with me, while others will find my opinion somewhat unpopular.

While he is widely popular, Stefan Wilson is a marginal driver, at best. He is the brother of Justin Wilson, who was fatally injured in a crash at Pocono that was initiated (ironically) by Sage Karam.

People complain that Helio Castroneves and Tony Kanaan continue to hang on and prolong their careers, thus preventing young and very qualified drivers from getting rides. Yet they have no problem with a very mediocre Stefan Wilson annually taking up a seat in the Indianapolis 500 that could go toward jump-starting the career of a much more deserving driver.

I have been told that you will not meet a nicer person than Stefan Wilson in the IndyCar paddock. When he qualified for the 2016 Indianapolis 500, less than a year after his brother’s tragic death – I thought it was a wonderful story. He had fulfilled his own dream while perpetuating his late brother’s legacy. Two years later, he actually led four laps from Lap 193-196 before having to dive into the pits for fuel creating another great story.

But being the nicest guy in the paddock doesn’t count for much in fielding a car for the Indianapolis 500. For the last couple of years, Wilson has become little more than a field-filler, in my opinion – starting twenty-eighth and finishing thirty-third in 2021, and starting thirty-third and finishing twenty-seventh this past May.

Granted, it’s unfair to judge any driver under the circumstances of his 2022 entry. In order to fill the field at thirty-three, Cusick Motorsports put together a partnership that also involved DragonSpeed and AJ Foyt’s team. They thrashed a car together that had little track time before qualifying. Wilson was credited with qualifying in the thirty-third starting spot, but he officially posted no time because his qualifying run was incomplete. He probably deserves some credit for nursing that creation around all day and still running at the end. Wilson was not even the last car running; that honor went to Dalton Kellett.

The younger Wilson’s record at the 500 is not awful, but it certainly is not eye-popping. Alexander Rossi won the 2016 on fumes and Wilson came within four laps of doing the same thing two years later. Rossi is now in Indianapolis 500 lore, while Wilson is little more than an afterthought. That’s how cruel fate can be sometimes.

But getting back to Dreyer & Reinbold’s decision for the 2023 Indianapolis 500 – this is a perfect example of money having more of a say, than results on the track. I’ve never considered myself a huge Sage Karam fan. However, I think Karam is a much better and accomplished Indianapolis 500 driver than Stefan Wilson. But Wilson continues to get rides for the 500, when there are far more qualified drivers available and sitting on the sidelines.

As I said earlier, I will receive flack for this opinion from some for throwing shade at the popular not-so-young little brother to the late Justin Wilson, but I also know many will agree with me, even if they won’t publicly acknowledge it. I have been unimpressed with Wilson’s driving ability for a while, but I kept silent about it – not wanting to ruffle the feathers of his many fans. I figured why stir things up, over a very popular driver who lost his brother to racing a few years ago. But after seeing Sage Karam brushed aside in favor of a driver whose best finish in the Indianapolis 500 was fifteenth in 2018 – I felt it was time to publicly question, why?

We all know that there is more to landing a lower tier Indianapolis 500 ride, than driving ability. It is just as dependent on a driver’s ability to raise money, as it is to turn left with their foot on the floor. But it bothers me to see cash being the overriding factor with Dreyer & Reinbold, as they end a long-term relationship with a more proven commodity like Sage Karam. I found this to be a very curious decision by DRR, but I guess I’m just being a little too naïve.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on December 2, 2022 at 4:04 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.