Oilpressure

Yesterday we learned of another addition to a trend that I am finding annoying at best, and possibly detrimental to the NTT IndyCar Series as a whole – at least in my opinion.

Arrow McLaren and Juncos Hollinger Racing (JHR) have formed an alliance, the latest of many such alliances that have popped up in recent years. Sometimes they are billed as a technical alliance, while other times they are referred to as this one as simply an alliance.

Andretti Global once had an alliance with Bryan Herta Autosport. The next thing you knew, Michael Andretti had essentially absorbed the team. He did the same thing with Harding Racing a few years later. Now Andretti is in a technical alliance with Meyer Shank Racing.

A month or so ago, Team Penske formed an unlikely alliance with AJ Foyt Enterprises. The details are vague, but their alliance will share technical information, as well as personnel. It sounds like the Foyt team has the potential to become Penske’s junior team – similar to Red Bull’s relationship with Alpha Tauri in Formula One, although Alpha Tauri is quick to point out that they are no longer a junior team.

Now we are learning that Arrow McLaren and JHR are joining forces to the point that at least one JHR car will be carrying Arrow McLaren colors and sponsorship. I can’t help but wonder who’s next. Is Chip Ganassi Racing now seeking an alliance with Dale Coyne Racing? At least two of Dale Coyne’s drivers have been plucked away in recent years – Ed Jones and Alex Palou. One worked out, while the other did not.

Am I the only one that has a problem with this trend? I realize this throws a lifeline to smaller teams, while also fortifying the larger ones; but I am not a fan of this practice. I suppose my age and hatred of change is showing, but I’m afraid we are going to end up with what amounts to four or five big teams going at it on race weekends. I guess this is the economic reality we are living in these days, but I don’t like this at all.

I am very big on autonomy. Over the years, I’ve earned and enjoyed a good bit of autonomy on my job. I pretty well set my own schedule and my bosses leave me alone to do my job. I repay them with performing well on the job, while keeping the micro-managers away.

In racing, I’ve always admired the autonomy of the stand-alone teams. Over time, we’ve already pretty much lost that for the Indianapolis 500. There are few if any pure one-offs left. Dreyer & Reinbold had been the lone holdout, but even they did an alliance with Cusick Motorsports for one of their two cars this past spring. There are no longer any King Motorsports, Arizona Motorsports, Pagan Racing or the old days when John Menard threw all of his financial muscle behind the Indianapolis 500. Fortunately, Abel Motorsports bucked the trend this past May.

Nowadays, a team has to enter an extra car for the 500, or help out a one-off effort – where the entrant has very little say-so in the direction of the program they spent so much time and effort putting together. Now it appears that this trend has spread to the entire season. So much for autonomy.

Having teams merge is nothing new. Just a few years ago, Sarah Fisher and Wink Hartman combined their resources with Ed Carpenter Racing (ECR). It only took a year for the oil market to turn on Hartman, and Ed gobbled up the teams that Sarah had spent years trying to put and keep together. Going back a few decades, Rick Galles and Maury Kranes and merged their respective teams to form a very powerful Galles-Kraco Racing; that won a championship (1990), almost won another (1991) and won the Indianapolis 500 (1992). That example of a merger had a much happier ending than the previous one.

But what is going on now are not really mergers, not yet anyway. I guess alliance is a much friendlier word than merger. On paper, the NTT IndyCar Series will still have ten fulltime teams on the grid is 2024. But in reality, six of those ten teams now have an alliance – currently leaving Chip Ganassi Racing, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, Dale Coyne Racing and Ed Carpenter Racing to fend for themselves. If two of those teams eventually form an alliance between now and St. Petersburg, one of those three Honda teams and Ed Carpenter Racing will be left to go it completely alone. They will be the ones left standing without a chair, when the music stops. Ganassi is strong enough to stand alone, Rahal and Coyne will be a marriage forced out of necessity. ECR? Hmm…

Once the alliances are formed, how long before those without a dancing partner will be forced to leave, by simply not being able to keep up? After that happens, when will the alliances become flat-out mergers?

With this latest announcement, I envision a day when the IndyCar grid at any race, including the Indianapolis 500, consists of four mega-teams – Ganassi, Andretti, Penske and McLaren. The Foyts, Meyer Shanks, Juncos Hollingers will all be names that fall by the wayside – just like Schmidt Peterson, after they allowed McLaren to buy a “portion” of the team. For a couple of years, they were the “SP” afterthought initials at the end of the name of the team. Now, even that is gone.

Am I overreacting? I see this as something very similar to what is going on in college football. Instead of multiple regional conferences that played their own brand of football, the conferences are being dismantled before our very eyes. Soon we will have two mega-conferences and a couple of others to fill in the gaps. No one seems to be in favor of it, but it is driven by money and the desire for survival. How is this different than IndyCar being reshaped by alliances?

This is being spun as progress and a win-win situation for all. But I don’t see it that way. I see this as the beginnings of a condensing of IndyCar teams. Car count may not suffer tremendously, but I seriously doubt that it will grow. Beware of the word alliance. In this case, I consider it a troubling word. It’s not as friendly sounding as you think. Change is Bad!

George Phillips

This entry was posted on October 4, 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.