Oilpressure

After this weekend, we will be at (sort of) the halfway point of the 2023 NTT IndyCar Series season. Road America will mark the eighth race in the seventeen race season. At that point, many in the media will be coming up with their mid-season “report cards”, where each team will be issued a grade on where certain people think they stand.

I am going to preempt that method, by doing a more condensed version to where I see teams after seven races. I will not systematically go down the list of teams and assign grades. Some teams will hardly be mentioned here. Instead, being the ultimate ray of sunshine that I am – I am going to discuss who the pleasant surprise teams are. For that reason, I am not going to discuss Team Penske or Chip Ganassi Racing. They are both where we thought they would be. Penske has three wins, including the Indianapolis 500, while Ganassi has three wins and the lead in the championship.

This discussion has to start with AJ Foyt Enterprises. On paper, things don’t look that great for this team. Santino Ferrucci is sixteenth in points, while rookie driver Benjamin Pedersen is twenty-sixth. But you have to look beyond the box score with this team, and you also have to keep in mind where they’ve been in recent years.

The opening race at St. Petersburg was a disastrous start for the Foyt team. Ferrucci qualified sixteenth, but Pedersen qualified twenty-seventh. It didn’t matter as neither driver made it past Turn Three. They were both taken out in the first lap accident, which brought out a red flag to start the season. Texas showed promise, as both cars qualified mid-pack – a victory for this team. Pedersen finished fifteenth, while Ferrucci finished twenty-first after running in the Top-Ten much of the day.

Ferrucci had a good run at Long Beach, but both cars had a very forgettable weekend at Barber. You could say the same for the GMR Grand Prix. But it was the Indianapolis 500, along with the practice and qualifying leading up to it where this team shined. Both cars made the Top-Twelve in qualifying, and Ferrucci started fourth for the race.

Ferrucci was a factor all day, never running lower than sixth after pit stop shuffling. Benjamin Pedersen was running in the Top-Fifteen most of the day, until getting tangled up with Ed Carpenter on the next-to-last re-start on Lap 196, and finishing twenty-first.

Despite a not-so-good weekend at Detroit this past week, I still feel like this is a team that is finally on the rise. Pedersen is slightly better than expected, and Ferrucci seems to have brought a new spirit to the team. Add in the expertise of engineer Michael Cannon, and this group may finally live up to the preseason expectations that is placed on this group each year. I’m looking forward to watching them.

Another team that really raised eyebrows early in the season has cooled off somewhat. Juncos Hollinger Racing (JHR) was expected to really struggle this season. They were expanding to a two-car team and the driver they were bringing in for the second car had no experience in open-wheel racing and had never raced on an oval in any type car. But Argentina’s Agustin Canapino proved doubters wrong, as he exceeded expectations on all types of tracks – of course, the bar was pretty low.

Canapino finished twelfth at St. Petersburg and at Texas. The end result for the next four races were finishes of twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth, twenty-first and twenty-sixth. Things improved at Detroit last week as he finished fourteenth. While none of that sounds ultra-spectacular, Canapino was expected to be so far off the pace in each race that not finishing last is almost a victory.

His teammate, Callum Ilott had different expectations going into the season. After a few decent runs with a small one-car team in 2022, Ilott was expected to make a small jump as the leader of a two-car team. A fifth-place finish at St. Petersburg and a ninth place finish at Texas, gave Ilott two Top-Ten finishes to start the season. With his new teammate performing much better than expected, and Ilott’s excellent performance in two races, JHR was the big buzz heading into Long Beach.

It was there that reality showed itself. Ilott finished nineteenth, while Canapino finished twenty-fifth. Add to that some internal controversy, when Ilott was perceived to have slowed up Canapino. Argentineans were seemingly outraged at this, and reported death threats were allegedly received by Ilott. That seemed to be the beginning of a very mediocre stretch by Ilott. Since his nineteenth at Long Beach, Ilott had had finishes of thirteenth (Barber), eighteenth (IMS road course), twelfth (Indianapolis 500) and twenty-seventh (Detroit).

Ilott also dealt with an evil car in the Indianapolis 500 Open Test in April, and in the week of practice. The team finally decided to abandon the car on Fast Friday. The new car wasn’t particularly fast, but they got it in and Ilott carried it to a twelfth-place finish.

Last weekend’s race at Detroit lasted three corners for Ilott, as he climbed up the rear-wing of Kyle Kirkwood in the Turn Three complex on the opening lap. So, after a quick start from Ilott, it’s been something of a mixed bag for the British driver. But when you combine his results from the first two races, with the better than expected results of his teammate, I think you have to call JHR one of the surprise teams at this point.

It may sound like a back-handed compliment to call Andretti Autosport a pleasant surprise, but they have struggled over the last few years. Colton Herta has been their only bright spot for the last two seasons. Ironically, Herta is a non-factor for this team after seven races. The new Nashville resident currently sits in ninth in points, and has been quiet for most of this young season.

In seven races, Andretti has three poles and a race win – thanks to the efforts of Romain Grosjean and Kyle Kirkwood. Grosjean has won two poles and has contended for the race win in at least three races. All he has to show for his efforts are two podium finishes and four crashed race cars. Kirkwood won the pole at Long Beach and led fifty-three of eighty-five laps to win the race in dominating fashion. The Andretti cars have been fast, but they’ve dealt with some bad luck and some inconsistent driving over the past seven races. But considering where they came from over the past couple of seasons, they are definitely a surprise team.

Unfortunately, there are as many disappointments as there are surprises in the first seven races of the 2023 IndyCar season. I will touch on a few of those on Wednesday. Stay tuned.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on June 12, 2023 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.