It’s safe to say that this year’s IndyCar season has been pretty much dominated by Team Penske, a massive name in worldwide motorsport, not just in this era but in many eras previous, throughout both America and through the world. However, in recent years, a championship has eluded this once great team in the IndyCar series. In fact, bar a single Nationwide series title in 2010 and a single Sprint Cup title in 2012, you have to go back to 2006 to find the last time Penske won a championship at all. It is highly likely however, that this will all change come Saturday night, with it being incredibly likely that either Will Power or Helio Castroneves will claim their first IndyCar title.
This year’s IndyCar series has seen no less than seven different teams win a race this year as well as ten different drivers over 17 races so far. Penske has won five of those races so far, three for Power, one for Castroneves and one for Penske newcomer Juan Pablo Montoya, returning to IndyCar for the first time in over a decade. That’s the same number of wins as Andretti Autosport and Chip Ganassi Racing combined, who are both running four cars full time this year. With this, I think it is safe to say that Penske has got it right this year with their driver combination, setup and strategy, especially as realistically the only driver who can stop Penske is Simon Pagenaud, who needs to win on Saturday, but his best result on an oval this year is fourth so far.
One thing that any team requires to have any chance of an era of domination is longevity. Power, Castroneves and Montoya are 33, 39 and 38 respectively, so they have at least a couple more years in them. One thing they may struggle with is the increased amount of travel, as IndyCar will head to both Brazil and Dubai next year. Their form this year however, especially Montoya being on the pace almost immediately shows that they don’t plan to slow down anytime soon. The Penske camp also seems quite harmonious, despite having three top drivers at the same team. Despite the lack of championships between the three drivers (just CART title for Montoya) they have shown this year that they are all more than capable drivers on all types of circuits this year. Team owner Roger Penske has also been more than happy with the trio, as all three will drive again next season for the team, they’re the only top team to confirm all of their drivers for next season.
So what of the other two big names, Andretti and Ganassi? Well a massive catalogue of reliability problems for 2012 champ Ryan Hunter-Reay certainly hasn’t helped. We have also seen at times questionable driving by more than one of their drivers, as they have gotten involved in their fair share of incident, some moves almost seemed quite desperate at times. Ganassi had a huge loss at the end of last year, losing four-time champion Dario Franchitti to a career-ending back injury after his horrid smash at Houston towards the end of the season. To compensate for this, they brought in Franchitti’s good friend and 2004 champion Tony Kanaan to partner reigning champion Scott Dixon. They also promoted Ryan Briscoe to a full-time seat and retained Charlie Kimball who showed great speed at times in 2013 while Franchitti stayed on as an advisor to the team. That surely had all of the ingredients to a championship-winning formula surely? It simply wasn’t to be. Ganassi struggled big time in the opening dozen races, with zero wins in the first 15 races and only a couple of strong showings on ovals which came to nothing. Dixon’s supreme skill on road courses came through though and saved Ganassi from embarrassment as he has taken two wins late into the season.
I think the main reason however as to why Penske have been so strong this year however is that their drivers are in incredible form. The great thing about having form like this is that they can continue to build on it for 2015, as whichever driver claims the title will be looking to do exactly the same again next year, whilst his team mates will be looking to take it from them. In the meantime, this can only boost the team as the drivers will eventually get the best out of each other, as we have seen with Power winning on ovals this year and Castroneves having incredible speed on street courses, which is usually what Power excels on. We have also seen Montoya show deadly speed on the big ovals, Indianapolis and Pocono. The only thing that I can see preventing Penske being just as strong next year is a conflict within the team, as we have seen with the Mercedes Formula One team this year. Roger Penske would almost certainly do his best to prevent such a thing from happening though, which would be expected from a man of his experience.
One thing does seem certain: next year’s IndyCar championship could well be an even fiercer battle than this year’s one!
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