Some people predicted the goofy season of the IndyCar driver market in 2022 wasn’t going to be exciting, but it wasn’t.
An influx of young juniors from Europe, two respective Indy 500 winners and IndyCar champions, seats at Andretti, Penske and Rahal were all on the market and of course Romain Grosjean’s future was a long story.
Looking back – and trying to realistically assess the options out there – The Race has returned and reformulated the silly 2022 season.
Let us know your lineups and what our author did right or wrong in the comments.
Penske’s fourth car
Our driver: Rinus VeeKay
In this alternate reality, Penske is the first domino to fall as it’s a team any driver doesn’t want to race for and their record speaks for itself.
Scott McLaughlin was a revelation in 2021 given his lack of open wheel experience, but pre-season predictions that he would win a race were wrong. McLaughlin will make it, but in season two – 2022 – Penske lost a champion and Indy 500 winner in Simon Pagenaud and didn’t replace him as he’s reduced to three cars.
McLaughlin could be a long-term gain, but Pagenaud is a short-term loss.
It could realign a team that never really wants to expand to four cars, but it could also be a big mistake in terms of their IndyCar results.
The Penske-Pagenaud relationship had run its course, so advocating for a signing again is not realistic.
Given the opportunities in the market, bringing Takuma Sato to the team part-time is tempting as Penske’s Indianapolis 500 shape has been pathetic since the aeroscreen launched in 2020, a year Sato won the race.
A part-time car isn’t ideal for Penske, however, and Sato is married to Honda. So the next best option for Chevrolet-powered Penske is to hire the best young driver on the market, and that could well have been the 2021 race winner, Rinus VeeKay.
OK, he was very inconsistent, but he unlocked a difficult-to-drive Ed Carpenter car like no other and would certainly be a regular threat in Penske’s battle against Ganassi.
The last time Penske gambled and signed a young Ed Carpenter driver, Josef Newgarden worked out pretty well. VeeKay isn’t the same package as it was at this point in his career, but he’s young and full of potential.
Arrow McLaren SP’s third car
Our driver: Simon Pagenaud
This is a tricky proposition since as the basis of this feature we are giving the Arrow McLaren SP its third car for 2022, which it failed to do in the real world.
However, it could have done if it found the correct driver.
And who could drive better than Pagenaud? He knows some of the team from his earlier days on the squad, and with a new car coming out in 2023, who better to help develop than Pagenaud? He is tech savvy and has so much experience.
He may not be the long-term option AMSP has been looking for, but he does have it in Pato O’Ward. Felix Rosenqvist still has time to create a permanent home here too.
Grab Pagenaud while it’s in the market and you’ll add someone who has won a championship and a 500. That’s what this team is currently lacking with two drivers with IndyCar experience. Signing someone like Stoffel Vandoorne would only help.
The third and fourth Andretti Autosport cars
Our drivers: Romain Grosjean, Kyle Kirkwood
Grosjean’s signature doesn’t need to be changed, it’s great. If he upgrades his performance with the modest means at Dale Coyne, he is a candidate for the championship. If for any reason he struggles to adjust, he still brings a wealth of experience that would at least help this Andretti team become a respected contender again. Not just at Colton Herta.
The deal to sign Devlin DeFrancesco has been in the works for some time and having covered DeFrancesco for a long time, I know there is potential there.
However, in this alternate universe, Andretti made the right decision that Kirkwood is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a future American hero. The Floridian is well presented and has the best open wheel junior CV America has ever seen.
If it’s not an IndyCar-eligible prospect, I don’t know what is and no team should have passed it on.
Rahal Letterman Lanigan second and third cars
Our drivers: Christian Lundgaard, Santino Ferrucci
Christian Lundgaard’s performance at Indianapolis that year made him an obvious choice for Rahal and his potential means that decision doesn’t need to be changed. That’s a good one.
In this scenario, however, Rahal took a slightly different path and signed Santino Ferrucci for his new third car.
His record in the team car this year speaks for itself with the fifth-best average result in the series for drivers who have completed more than one race.
Granted, one of the team’s mistakes was their qualifying performance and that’s probably Ferrucci’s weakest trait, but Rahal isn’t suddenly going to qualify miles better after signing Jack Harvey in real life.
This isn’t supposed to take away from Harvey, but qualifying is clearly an area that the entire team needs to focus on.
With Sato gone, the team has no Indy 500 winners, one rider who hasn’t made it and another with a ninth best finish.
Ferrucci is an upgrade. Give it a year to deliver on the promise shown in 2021 and if that doesn’t work, pick one of the big names instead in a crowded 2023 driver market season. It’s the perfect stopover.
Meyer Shank Racing two cars
Our drivers: Helio Castroneves, Jack Harvey
No change from 2021 in our alternate universe, although in real life Harvey obviously paved the way for Pagenaud to join.
The team loved Harvey, they have an adjoining sports car program with lofty ambitions to return to Le Mans and they had just started working with the best Indy 500 driver of this generation at Helio Castroneves.
Rahal may be trendy, building a new factory, and leading BMW’s sports car effort in the U.S., but she didn’t win a race in 2021, and neither did Harvey. There are certainly positive aspects to staying with MSR.
Ed Carpenter Racing two cars
Our drivers: Ryan Hunter-Reay, Oscar Piastri / Jack Aitken / Ed Carpenter
Okay admittedly reader, if you want to get mad in the comments, this might be the place to start. It’s a little crazy, but with his talisman VeeKay going to Penske earlier in this article, we had to get creative.
Hunter-Reay may have had a sad year at Andretti, but it’s not all his fault. Obviously the team has a very inconsistent car on street / street circuits. Someone more experienced than VeeKay and Conor Daly may be able to help the team with that, and Hunter-Reay is a champion and Indy 500 winner too.
There’s a lot of frustration that Oscar Piastri won’t compete in Formula 1 in 2022 despite his amazing talent. So who better to bring to IndyCar?
With what VeeKay could occasionally do with the car, one could persuade Piastri to part of the program, although he will of course be busy with his F1 reserve services.
Piastri was able to contest five races in F1 without missing a single, and with Alpine happily letting Lundgaard – albeit not as a reserve driver – there could be potential for more.
In this scenario, it would be great if Sebastien Bourdais stepped in and drove the other races – I still can’t believe a top team didn’t go for him – but he drives full-time sports cars with Ganassi. So let’s get to the real option of Jack Aitken, who is currently talking to the team about a part-time or full-time contract.
If Piastri is not available, submit the job to Aitken. Known for his development skills, he would certainly help the team’s performance on the road, although he doesn’t necessarily meet the team’s criteria for being an Indy 500 profit threat.
It’s rolling out a third car for Indy anyway – so Aitken can jump up and study – and is always a contender there so it could get a big hitter to come in and get a job. Bourdais is also the right person for this.
Dale Coynes two cars
Our drivers: David Malukas, Takuma Sato
None of the decisions need to be changed here. Coyne just isn’t going to fight for an IndyCar title with a field stacked up like this, so why not try the next best and go for the 500?
Sato was the best driver out there for this, which strengthened the team’s bond with Honda and gave them a fighting chance to hold their own with a car that had the potential to do very well on the 500.
With Malukas, it welcomes strong support and brings a really exciting American talent with a lot of potential into play. It is another opportunity for Coyne to continue his stellar track record in nurturing young talent.
AJ Foyt Enterprises two cars
Our drivers: Devlin DeFrancesco, Linus Lundqvist
We already have Kirkwood at Andretti and believe that Dalton Kellett is not the standard to get this Foyt team on the grid, as nice as Dalton is.
Since DeFrancesco has some potential and good support, we put him in this more reserved debut at Foyt than the one he’ll get in real life at Andretti.
In the real world, if he struggles to adapt immediately he is criticized, and Andretti is also criticized for not signing Kirkwood. Here DeFrancesco gets an IndyCar start under the radar and can earn this step in the future.
Lundqvist could be a season early to advance after finishing third in the Indy Lights championship. However, the underlying potential is there.
If Foyt is genuinely interested in having young drivers rather than relying primarily on veterans as it has been up to now, then this line-up would be a high risk – which is necessary due to the team’s poor results – but potentially a high reward.
Juncos Hollinger Racing a car
Our driver: Callum Ilott
The teams on the IndyCar grid obviously didn’t know Ilott was available for 2022 and hadn’t considered him, which led him to fall victim to a team celebrating his IndyCar return and first full season.
However, this is a good game for both sides. Ilott has the chance to use the skills he acquired developing Ferrari F1 cars to move Juncos forward and give himself two options. Be part of how Juncos becomes a competitor or impress one of the great teams for a ride.
Juncos knows what is in Ilott and even if it only has it for a year or two there are only positive things. The only question is whether he can get the right people around him to make this a quick success.
