Five months have passed, with the length of five long winters! After an offseason of minor driver reshufflings, a minor team changing hands and er, fried chicken and tacos, Indycar returns for an enhanced and slightly expanded version of more of the same for 2022. Why should I care? You might well ask. Things haven’t changed too much – it’s the same chassis and the same aero configuration with the same odd windscreen cum shield cum halo bolted to the cockpit. It’s the same competition between the two mostly indistinguishable engine builders Honda and Chevrolet. There’s still mysterious suspension development that we peasants know little of. So where’s the novelty? Andretti’s Colton Herta finished the season strongly. McLaren’s Pato O’Ward finished the season weakly. Now traditional big dogs J. Newgarden and S. Dixon were a fraction off the pace. Alex Palou won the championship, but now he has to defend it. We have six (6) rookies and some interesting sideways and diagonal driver moves. Helio Castroneves, still four years away from his half-century, is back for a full programme. There’s plenty going on.
OK! You’ve heard enough! Where are we this weekend? We are in a very normal place. The calendar still has too many rounds at the Indianapolis road course, but it’s looking very normal. Yes, barring some unforeseen catastrophe, the first round of the 2022 season will be at the season-opening venue of 2011-2019, within the pleasingly Floridian environs of St Petersburg. At an extremely compact 1.8 miles, the circuit nonetheless resembles a monstrosity of Greek folklore, or perhaps a really cruel preparation of meats for a medieval banquet, with the head of a street circuit, the body of a marina (with yachts!) and the tail of an airport (with planes!) Track map here:
And here’s the schedule (there are a lot of support races!) All times local US Eastern time.
Friday, 25 February
11.40am: Indy Pro 2000 race 1
12.40pm: USF2000 race 1
1.40: Indy Lights qualifying
2.25: SRO GT American race 1
3.40: Indycar practice 1
4.40: Mazda MX-5 Cup race 1
Saturday, 26 February
8am: Indy Pro 2000 race 2
9: Indycar practice 2
10: Mazda MX-5 Cup race 2
11: SRO GT America race 2
12.30pm: Indycar qualifying
Sunday, 27 February
8.45am: Indycar warm-up
9.30: Indy Lights race
10.45: USF2000 race 2
12.30: Firestone Grand Prix of St Petersburg GO
Deceptively simple, right? Yeah, quite simple. Everything’s simple until qualifying starts and then everything happens at once, Will Power/Alex Rossi spins, and the top 6 is full of rookies you have never heard of. Speaking of which, who’s driving? See below.
Chip Ganassi Racing (Honda)
Chip’s boys are unchanged for 2022, coming off their most successful season since those golden years when Dario Franchitti won the championship every year and Scott Dixon ended up just behind. Scott Dixon is now a decade wiser but once again partly shaded by a Ganassi teammate, this time by the name of Alex Palou. The 2021 champion scooped three wins to Dixon’s one and an Indy 500 second place to Dixon’s seventeenth. So, not perfect. Dixon collected enough points for fourth but will be hoping for higher highs. Their understudies are Marcus Ericsson (won more races than Dixon, but generally skulked in the lower half of the top 10) and Jimmie Johnson (generally finished ahead of Dalton Kellett and behind Max Chilton). Do we expect more? I don’t know.
Team Penske (Chevrolet)
Indycar’s golden lads and girls probably underachieved last year. I say probably because the team’s drivers won four races, each one finished on the podium, and barring a ridiculous and briefly terrifying first-lap-of-the-season spin at Barber, one of their number would have run Palou very close for the championship indeed. Tim Cindric has pruned the driver line-up, with series runner-up Josef Newgarden still leading the team, supported, at least in principle, by Australian chaos agent Will Power and Kiwian man of mystery and ex-tintop guy Scott McLaughlin. Power had his standard year of sometimes dominating and sometimes vanishing, whereas McLaughlin was generally absent, a second place battling the grip-limited Texas track being the main bright spot. Newgarden will continue to be Newgarden, but the other two could go in either direction, rise or fall.
Arrow McLaren SP (Chevrolet)
Are McLaren fun or are they sinister? Are they… both? Kings of conflicted emotions, masters of mixed feelings, the team that used to be Schmidt-Peterson Motorsports and is now Woking-owned and still in possession of Indycar’s most exciting and possibly most F1-bound driver (it’s a relative measure), Pato O’Ward. They also have Mr Perennial Last Chance Guy Felix Rosenqvist, who did beat O’Ward to a famous debut win at Road America in 2020 but has since decreased in prominence to being the guy who replaced Oliver Askew and no one noticed. But 2022 is a new year. Pato is aiming for a championship, Felix is aiming for a setup. Both deserve more. Juan Montoya will bring his rascally charm and unique range of experience to the team for the Indy 500. We won’t see him on track till May!
Andretti Autosport (Honda)
When Michael Andretti, restless spirit that he is, is not plotting bloody revenge on Formula One by buying into its franchise structure, feigning madness and staging a play in which Sauber’s owners are implied to have pulled out of selling their team to him at the last minute, he is having a clear-out of his Indycar team. Hinchcliffe? Gone! Hunter-Reay? Shipped out! Young Colton Herta remains after another strong but unsatisfying year, as does young-ish Alexander Rossi, who is somewhat lucky to remain given his year of despair and underachivement. Excitingly, Romain Grosjean hops from Coyne to replace RHR on the DHL brief, and Devlin DeFrancesco (who?) takes Hinch’s job at the Steinbrenner annexe/shed office. When I say arguably I really do mean arguably, but this is arguably Indycar’s strongest driver line-up.
Rahal-Letterman-Lanigan Racing (Honda)
More change at Rahal! Engineering staff, drivers, everything except the owners and one of the owner’s sons. Yes, Graham Rahal is still knocking around, dignifying the upper midfield with tales of how he nearly brought home the championship in 2015 and generally being good for a couple of runs to the podium every year. He’ll be joined by Michael Shank refugee Jack Harvey, who is also good for a couple of runs to the podium every year, and a third entry for rookie Christian Lundgaard, who brings with him moderate success from Formula Two and memories of qualifying on the second row for his Indycar debut last year. Will that be enough to bring Rahal to the level of the top four? Will anything?
Ed Carpenter Racing (Chevrolet)
Your favourite Indycar owner-occupier, Ed Carpenter, will be limiting his seat time in his own seat to another attempt at scooping the Borg-Warner Trophy in May, but what you will be glad to hear is that he’s got two (2) extra drivers to run the rest of the season. They are the mercurial, Arie Luyendyk-backed Dutch prodigy Rinus Veekay (short for Van Kalmthout, which I am not confident enough to pronounce) and back racing a full Indycar season with the same team for only the third time ever, Conor Daly (he was at Foyt in 2016-17, remember? I didn’t). Rinus scored a breakthrough win on the Indy road course in May last year but then failed to break through, only finishing within the top 15 one more time all year. Reset?
Michael Shank Racing (Honda)
Wildcard driver line-up ahoy! The 24 Hours of Daytona winners are back with half of their 24 Hours of Daytona team, namely Indy 500 champion Helio Castroneves, now back for a full season, and Simon Pagenaud fresh out of a pretty disappointing final two years with Penske. That’s five (5) Indy 500 victories between them! MSR has had one trick in the last two years, which was givng Jack Harvey a car that qualified very well only for him to disappear during the races. Jack Harvey has now disappeared to Bobby Rahal’s team so who knows, maybe Stealthy Simon Pagenaud and Helio “Younger Than Tony Kanaan” Castroneves will provide the race smarts the team needs.
Dale Coyne Racing (Honda)
Dale Coyne likes to pair youth with experience, at least when he’s not pairing pay drivers with other pay drivers. 2021 must’ve been a good year at Sonny’s Pit BBQ because Dale has hired exemplary veteran who hardly ever crashes anymore Takuma Sato to partner Penske-approved Lithuanian-American (says Wikipedia) Indy Lights runner-up (says Wikipedia) David Malukas. I don’t know if I know of any other Lithuanian-American racing drivers, but John C. Reilly played one in a movie and he is apparently “aware” of his Lithuanian ancestry (says Wikipedia). Shake and bake!
AJ Foyt Enterprises (Chevrolet)
Are we ever at the bottom of the heap now! That’s unfair, AJ Foyt’s team has put together a THREE (3) car team featuring PAY DRIVERS, a driver called TBA and last year’s Indy Lights champion. 2021’s primary Turn One botherer Dalton Kellett is back for another year of Kanadian K-Line adventure, and sharing the car with TBA (and showing up at the first race) is Colombian Tatiana Calderon, who has emerged in Indycar after two not terribly impressive years in Super Formula. More than a decade ago she raced against Conor Daly and Sage Karam in Star Mazda. It’s a hard life. More promisingly, the original four-time Indy 500 winner has also put together a programme for 2021’s dominant Indy Lights champion Kyle Kirkwood, who until now has literally won more races than he hasn’t. Expect that to change!
Juncos Hollinger Racing (Chevrolet)
And finally! Indycar’s new-ish team has taken on the Carlin entry for another go at racing in main Indycar. They also competed in the last three rounds of 2021, although you could be forgiven for missing them as they got a best finish of 22nd, at Laguna Seca. They’re sticking with sometime F2 runner-up and Ferrari test driver Callum Ilott, who as a Cambridgeshire native brings the East Anglia representation on the Indycar grid up to two, or 7.7%, or 100% of the Brits taking part. I have no idea what to expect from this team, but I do know that I like those percentages.
Well, that’s a lot of pseudo-preview. You didn’t need to read all that. But you do need to be watching on Sunday. See you… there? Here? Yes. Let’s do it!
