Mid-Year Report Card: Indycar

Just like F1, it's not technically the middle of the Indycar calendar yet, but it is far enough along that we can draw some conclusions, so let's take a look at each team and see how things are going in 2022...

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For each team, let's take a look at their season so far, with their current standings in the drivers' championship, their biggest (positive) surprise, their biggest disappointment, and one thing that absolutely must be improved across the second half of the season. Let's just say that some teams have some work to do in the second half of the year...

Chip Ganassi Racing

Current Standings:

• 1st (8-Ericsson)

• 5th (10-Palou)

• 6th (9-Dixon)

• 24th (48-Johnson)

Biggest Surprise:

Can it really go to anyone else other than Ericsson? The F1 outcast never had much fanfare about him, but winning the Indianapolis 500 will rectify that for you. Like his teammates Scott Dixon and Alex Palou, Ericsson has mastered the art of turning water into wine and magically finding himself in the top 10 at the end of races. After the Indy 500 last year, he went on a tear to launch himself into outside championship contention with a string of consistent runs. This year, he already has the championship lead, so a repeat would go a long way in sealing an unexpected title.

Biggest Disappointment:

Two Letters: J.J. What the hell happened to Jimmie? OK, in your first year you would expect some struggles for a longtime oval convert, but the alarming thing is that in the second year the rookie errors have not gone away. It seems like every weekend he finds himself in the wall or in the gravel at some point, which begs the question: why is he doing this? At this point it seems more like a Carvana marketing stunt than an effort to actually be competitive. I know that sounds incredibly disrespectful to the hard working men and women on the No. 48 crew, but that's because I think they deserve better from the driver's seat.

Honorable mention goes to the near-miss at the Indy 500, where it seems like the team did everything they could have done to ensure they did NOT win that race. The No. 10 got screwed over on strategy, and then the No. 9 got screwed over by Scott Dixon's pit entry. It looked like Ericsson would be there to pick up the pieces before who else but Jimmie Johnson fenced it with a few laps to go, setting up the most nerve-wracking 5 miles of Marcus Ericsson's life. Thankfully some surprisingly aggressive driving on the restart from the No. 8 ensured that CGR took home the Borg-Warger trophy, but if they somehow cocked that up then surely the 2022 Indy 500 would have gone down as an all-time blunder.

Must-See Improvements:

Really the team doesn't have any glaring weaknesses, apart from the driver of the No. 48 Carvana Honda. I think that if Jimmie fails to show any meaningful progress in the second half of the year, we may have seen the last of the No. 48.

Mid-Season Grade: A

Other than J.J., the team has had a pretty good year so far and now has three dependable drivers inside the top 6 in the championship. What more could you ask for? Four dependable drivers?

Team Penske

Current Standings:

• 2nd (12-Power)

• 3rd (2-Newgarden)

• 9th (3-McLaughlin)

Biggest Surprise:

It's a toss up between the improvement of McLaughlin and the zen-master approach of Will Power. I'll go with Power, who seems like he's existing on the astral plane these days, despite his reputation for being a hothead. Previously, we would see things snowballing out of control for him and the 12 team when it didn't go right, but this year he's taking a more measured approach. If you take a look at the standings, it seems to be paying off.

Biggest Disappointment:

To be in your second full season of open-wheel racing and be 9th in the standings doesn't seem like a disappointment, but for Scott McLaughlin it must be the feeling that he's letting this season slip away. After winning the first race and coming within one corner of winning the second, he's been going backwards in the standings. A clumsy error at Long Beach and crashing in Indianapolis despite having a decent car doesn't help, but his dominant pace he had in those early races seems to have disappeared a little bit.

Must-See Improvements:

Despite a step forward compared to 2021, the team still seems to struggle to have three equally-fast cars at a single race. It seems like one or more of the cars is always off the pace either in qualifying or the race, which points to some setup problems. Take Road America; Newgarden dominated while McLaughlin struggled to get within a second of him in qualifying, and Power was even slower! At Barber, McLaughlin qualified well, but Newgarden and Power were outside the top 12. Power went forwards in the race, and Newgarden did not. There will be some head-scratching at Team Penske, because if they can't find a way for at least one of their drivers to string together consistent weekends from here on out, it will be very difficult to win the title. Will Power has been the most consistent driver, and despite having one win to Newgarden's three, the fact that he's ahead in the standings says all you need to know about the rollercoaster season the team is having.

Mid-Season Grade: A-

For a team with 5 wins and the only one to have all drivers in the top 10 in the standings, A- might seem low, but if they were a little bit more consistent then this championship would be an all-Penske affair.

Arrow McLaren SP

Current Standings:

• 4th (5-O'Ward)

• 8th (7-Rosenqvist)

Biggest Surprise:

Is it a surprise to say that Felix Rosenqvist is in eighth in the standings? Compared to 2021, yes. The team looks much more like a two-car operation again, and it's better for the whole team to see Felix at the sharp end along with Pato. The car seems to be more drivable than before, which is helping Rosenqvist get closer to his teammate than we've seen in a long time. A drive from last to 10th was criminally underrated in Detroit, and if the team can string a whole weekend together they could really open some eyes.

Biggest Disappointment:

Right now the team looks like they are where they should be—right on the heels of Ganassi and Penske at most races—but they might rue their incredibly slow start to the season come the end of it. For the first few races, Rosenqvist was not on top of the car yet, and O'Ward was weighing up his future with the team amid a series of poor results. The ship has been righted, but did they do it fast enough? Only time will tell.

Must-See Improvements:

The team still needs to work on turning their qualifying pace into race performance. Sure, it's been better than previous years, but still behind Penske and Ganassi on this front, even if they can match them over one lap at most circuits.

Mid-Season Grade: B+

Andretti Autosport

Current Standings:

• 7th (27-Rossi)

• 11th (26-Herta)

• 12th (28-Grosjean)

• 23rd (29-DeFrancesco)

Biggest Surprise:

The renaissance of Alexander Rossi. Before the season started, Rossi was almost an afterthought behind the hot hands of Grosjean and in particular Herta, after back-to-back disappointing years. And 2022 wasn't looking that different until a smooth run to fifth at the Indy 500 jump-started his season. At Detroit, he was driving like a man possessed, and if the race was two laps longer he would have won. Then he followed that up with pole and a third at Road America. Suddenly, he's in seventh in the standings and within striking distance of the leaders.

Biggest Disappointment:

The team's performance as a whole hasn't been exceptional, despite the arrival of Romain Grosjean and engineer Olivier Boisson and rookie Devlin DeFrancesco looking to provide some new energy in place of Ryan Hunter-Reay and James Hinchcliffe. Sure, Herta has made mistakes, but the team has also had numerous problems from an execution standpoint. Be it pit stop errors or just downright lacking speed, they have been able to run in the top 10 and even top 5 at times, but have not looked quite so supreme as they have in previous seasons.

Must-See Improvements:

They need to clean up their errors; be it driver errors or on the team side. You are never going to win a championship if you aren't operationally sharp, and the team is nowhere near the operating levels of rivals Ganassi and Penske at the moment. In Indycar, you can win the championship with a lot of 3rd-7th place finishes (as Scott Dixon and Alex Palou have shown), but if every three races you are finishing 17th due to some kind of error, you won't win anything.

Mid-Season Grade: C-

It's never a great look when your top driver in the standings is leaving at the end of the season, and with a driver lineup like this, they would have expected a lot better than one win and a best of 7th in the standings by this point.

Meyer Shank Racing

Current Standings:

• 10th (60-Pagenaud)

• 17th (06-Castroneves)

Biggest Surprise:

The team's race pace, and in particular the pace and strategy of Simon Pagenaud and the No. 60. We became fairly used to seeing Jack Harvey pull out great qualifying runs in that car before, only to slowly slip back in the races. But in 2022, the team has reversed this trend, where we usually see Pagenaud making up places on race day from lowly qualifying spots. He's 10th in the standings right now, and I bet if he qualified in 10th at every race he would have a shot at the top 5.

Biggest Disappointment:

Helio Castroneves' season. It seems like every weekend, there is some kind of bizarre incident, mechanical failure, or driver error that compromises either qualifying or the race. Some have been wholly out of his control, but we have also seen plenty of silly mistakes, such as spinning at Barber in qualifying or during the race at Road America. Clearly he and the team were hoping for a more competitive Indy 500, but you can't hinge your whole season on 200 laps around the Brickyard, otherwise he should have just done a one-off.

Must-See Improvements:

The team and/or drivers need to make consistent progress in qualifying. Too many times we have seen Simon Pagenaud come from outside the top 20 to finish in the top 10. The team has shown that they have decent race pace, perhaps even great race pace, but you can't do much when you start 22nd. There have been flashes of promise, such as Detroit, but this needs to happen more often.

Mid-Season Grade: B-

In their first year as a two-car team, the MSR group has shown decent potential, albeit not anything extraordinary.

Ed Carpenter Racing

Current Standings:

• 13th (20-Daly)

• 14th (21-VeeKay)

Biggest Surprise:

VeeKay's race at Barber, probably. Started on pole and finished third, in a season that has been wildly inconsistent, that's probably about as good as it gets. Conor Daly has strung together some respectable performances, but overall it's not been a banner year for ECR. Are they in trouble? No, they're doing OK, but OK doesn't win you championships.

Biggest Disappointment:

The Indy 500, and by a country mile. Local heroes Conor Daly and Ed Carpenter lacked the machinery to take the fight to Ganassi and McLaren when it mattered. Daly's car mysteriously lost pace and balance before even qualifying despite being good in practice, and Carpenter, who qualified in the top 6, just slowly went backwards in the race. The best car of the lot was Clearly VeeKay, who looked to be one of the only cars who could run with the No. 9 and 10; before he stuffed it in the wall before even half-distance.

Must-See Improvements:

The car needs some consistency. From track to track, even session to session on the same weekend, the team seems to have absolutely no consistency. They can qualify at the front and then drop through the field like a stone, or they can be first in practice and fail to get out of the first round of qualifying. You'd have to say that the team hasn't capitalized on Chevy's relative improvement over Honda, unlike Penske and arguably McLaren.

Mid-Season Grade: C

C is average; and for a team whose drivers are 13th and 14th in points on a typical grid of 26, I don't know how you get closer to average than that.

Rahal Letterman Lanigan

Current Standings:

• 15th (15-Rahal)

• 16th (30-Lundgaard)

• 20th (45-Harvey)

Biggest Surprise:

In a year of disappointment, I would have to go with Christian Lundgaard's performance. Sure, he's not exactly set the world alight, but he's been relatively free of rookie errors, despite only visiting most tracks for the first time. He's been having a better season than Jack Harvey, and is only one spot off of Graham Rahal in the standings. Sure, Rahal has been ahead on pace, but seems to find misfortune quite often, be it as an innocent bystander (Texas) or of his own making (Detroit).

Biggest Disappointment:

The team's performance as a whole has been terrible (relative to expectations), but I'd have to go with Jack Harvey. Switching from (at the time) minnow Meyer Shank Racing to powerhouse RLL was supposed to be Harvey's big break. But halfway through the year, we see that Jack is behind rookie teammate Lundgaard in the standings, and has had to miss a race after crashing at Texas. To make matters worse, the 9th place finish for replacement driver Santino Ferrucci was better than anything Harvey has managed before or since.

Must-See Improvements:

Much like last year; the team desperately needs to up its game in qualifying. I don't think they are a mile off on race pace, but it's much harder to make up ground with average race pace when you are starting 20th, than it is to defend with average race pace when you start 7th. The team knows this, and hopefully having three teammates all pulling in the same direction will accelerate this change.

Mid-Season Grade: F

I hesitated to give them an F, but if any team is going to get one, it's going to be RLL. Expanding to three cars has not yielded the promised gains, and now there's only 50% more disappointment on Sunday evening debriefs.

Dale Coyne Racing

Current Standings:

• 18th (51-Sato)

• 19th (18-Malukas)

Biggest Surprise:

I'm going to say Malukas, partially because I can't think of anything outstanding that's happened, but also because I think he's done a good job. He ran Kyle Kirkwood close in Indy Lights, and Kirkwood is one of the best to ever do it in U.S. single-seater racing. He's not set the world alight, but has been more or less on the pace of Sato at most races, despite it being his first season. OK, Sato might be a bit past his prime, but Malukas isn't embarrassing himself, either.

Biggest Disappointment:

You'd have to say the Indy 500. Of the rookies, Malukas look the most composed (I'm including Johnson and Grosjean, as well) and looked to have a great car. Sato always does well, and his famous qualifying lap that included a wall swipe ensured that he maintains his reputation as being one of the most entertaining drivers out there. But on Sunday, things did not go their way and giant-killing performances were nowhere in sight.

Must-See Improvements:

The team just needs to find some consistency. It seems like the team's pace swings wildly from week to week, and when it is good (Indy, Detroit, for example), usually strategy and/or mistakes mean that the result isn't really there.

Mid-Season Grade: C

Before Grosjean's heroics in 2021, this is about where the team were; capable of the odd surprise but generally on the fringes of the top 10 in races.

A.J. Foyt Enterprises

Current Standings:

• 21st (14-Kirkwood)

• 27th (4-Kellett)

• 28th (11-Calderon)

• 29th (11-Hildebrand)

Biggest Surprise:

The flashes of promise shown by Kyle Kirkwood at times show that the Foyt cars can be competitive, in the right hands. We've seen, especially on the street courses, that Kirkwood and the Foyt team can get out of the first round of qualifying on a semi-consistent basis, which is good. But for a three car team's best highlights to be a couple of qualifying runs on a single type of track, that's not exactly encouraging. Even then, in races Kirkwood has not exactly been bulletproof, with silly errors like Texas and especially Detroit robbing the team of a potentially good result.

Biggest Disappointment:

I'm torn between the performance of Calderon and Kellett and the performances of the team overall. I think I'll go with the drivers, though, because the team have not been that competitive for a while, so it's sadly not a huge surprise to see them struggle. But Calderon and Kellett are not doing a ton to push the team forward, at least on track. Kellett has good technical feedback, given he has an engineering background, but he lacks outright pace.

If you've followed Calderon during her European exploits over the years (she raced in F3 and F2), you're probably not surprised to see her struggling. She's no Jamie Chadwick, unfortunately. It says a lot that she has the same number of points as J.R. Hildebrand, despite Hildebrand only running at Texas and the Indy 500. In the same car at Calderon, by the way.

These two are lucky that Jimmie Johnson is around to provide some competition at the back of the field. Sorry Jimmie.

Must-See Improvements:

Outright speed. It's way easier said than done, but at least in Kirkwood's hands you have a decent picture of the car's performance ceiling. And at the moment, it's not that high.

Mid-Season Grade: D+

Expectations weren't that high, but even then I think you'd probably say the team have fallen short.

Juncos Hollinger Racing

Current Standings:

• 22nd (77-Ilott)

Biggest Surprise:

The team has been more competitive than expected, and on multiple occasions, too. Admittedly, expectations for Ricardo Juncos' team were pretty low ahead of this year; a rookie driver from outside the U.S. with little to no track knowledge, a first full schedule in years, and building a team from essentially scratch. But despite that, car and driver have found themselves in the top 10 on a few occasions, and have been a pleasant surprise.

Biggest Disappointment:

Despite this promise, the results have not always matched the performance shown in practice and qualifying. Ilott threw away a top 10 run in Barber, and the strategy did not fall their way in the Indy GP. Ilott breaking his wrist in a crash at the Indy 500 doesn't help, either. Despite the relative success of the team, you can't help but think that what's been a good year could have been even better given the team's pace at certain races.

Must-See Improvements:

Really the team just needs to improve their consistency. The team has shown, especially on road courses, that the car is very competitive. But this hasn't always translated to street circuits or ovals. Striking a better balance will move the goalposts for the team and ensure that the giant-killing performances can become more common.

Mid-Season Grade: B

It's been better than expected, but it could have been even better still.

Indycar in General

Biggest Surprise:

The competitive parity that we've seen across all the races. Sure, there's been a fair bit of Team Penske in victory lane, but that's still not enough to put any of their drivers at the top of the standings. We've had Penske, Ganassi, Andretti, and McLaren all winning poles and races, and multiple drivers from each team as well. Sure, teams like Ed Carpenter Racing and Rahal Letterman Lanigan aren't exactly having seasons to remember, but they can't all be winners, unfortunately.

Biggest Disappointment:

For me, it's the inconsistent calendar, which is admittedly not much of a problem, but then again I don't think Indycar really has that many problems. The gap between the first and second races is about a month, and then we have had back-to-back-to-back races in the middle of the year. For a series with 17 races (two races on the same weekend at Iowa, but the Indy 500 is a two-week affair, so it balances out), it seems odd that the calendar ends so early, de at roughly the same time as F1 or even NASCAR.

I would assume this is because Indycar wants to finish its season before it gets buried by the NFL in TV ratings, but either way I would have liked to see a more balanced approach. Have a race every other weekend, or something. Make it more predictable for fans and newcomers to follow, rather than having people turn on the TV and say "oh s***, there's an Indycar race today."

Must-See Improvements:

It says a lot that I don't really know what to write here, because in my opinion, Indycar is the best racing spectacle you can watch (at least in the U.S.). Sure, F1 has more interesting technology and debatably better drivers (although half the Indycar field would probably do fine in F1), but in terms of the on-track product it is second to none.

Indycar's next big target is to improve it's race promoting and marketing, something which the series (and parent company Penske Entertainment) has already publicly stated. Races like Texas have very little attendance (relative to capacity), despite having thrilling racing. Hopefully this'll change in the future.

Mid-Season Grade: A

It's hard to see what could be better, although I think the series would be enjoying even greater exposure if the superstars like Dixon, O'Ward, Grosjean, and Herta were having better seasons. But and underdog storyline can be just as good!