Two seasons ended and two seasons began this weekend. The Kyalami 9 Hours revival received a baptism in the final two hours. Richie Stanaway may be calling it a career at 28 years old. At least he got to go out at the beach. Porsche and Mercedes-Benz took no time getting to the front of the Formula E grid. Drive time cost a team we will be talking about momentarily victory in the Asian Le Mans Series season opener. Elsewhere, Sébastien Bourdais is exiting IndyCar and heading to JDC-Miller Motorsports in IMSA. Jimmie Johnson is retiring after the 2020 NASCAR season. Super GT hosted DTM at Fuji. Here is a run down of what got me thinking.
Should Trevor Carlin Be Concerned?
We are in the middle of the IndyCar offseason. In fact, we are still closer to the 2019 season finale from Laguna Seca than the 2020 season opener from St. Petersburg. Anyway, 64 days since the last checkered flag and 111 days before the next green flag, a lot has already happened and more is still to come.
What has already happened is the mighty have gotten stronger. Colton Herta has officially been included in the Andretti Autosport fold and Chip Ganassi Racing has added Marcus Ericsson. Add in the three-car Team Penske effort and IndyCar's Big Three will field 11 cars in the 2020 season and let's remain open-minded to Ganassi fielding another.
This increase in cars for the big teams has caught the eyes of the minnows. Trevor Carlin has expressed concern. One of IndyCar's newer team owners is worried IndyCar will become too top heavy and the size of these three teams will keep the other teams from getting the results to attract sponsors.
Carlin believes if IndyCar lets these teams continue to grow the appeal of the series will diminish. Outside teams will no longer see it as an area for possible expansion and Carlin himself even said if the big teams continue to expand it will likely lead to him leaving the series.
It was not long ago IndyCar was desperate for new teams. The Big Three teams were propping up the grid while the other five teams filled it out. Carlin was one of those needed new teams to provide opportunities while not spreading another organization too thin. Along with Carlin we saw Harding Racing enter, which has been engulfed into Andretti Autosport with Herta's program, and Meyer Shank Racing has expanded to a full-time entry, with Andretti support but not in the Andretti stable.
Other teams are trying to make that next step. DragonSpeed got a taste of IndyCar last year and signs were pointing to greater IndyCar participation in 2020 but we have yet to hear any commitments from the team. Juncos Racing slowly expanded to IndyCar. In 2018, it was a regular competitor, running 12 of 17 races. The 2019 season saw the team participate only twice. Nothing has been said about Juncos Racing's 2020 plans.
It would be smart for IndyCar to have more teams. It is not in a position to be turning anyone away. The series should want as many teams as possible. There are always going to be hurdles and some teams are going to do a better job attracting sponsors than others. It is not going to be easy.
Logically, IndyCar runs the risk of having too many eggs in one basket with the size of the Big Three programs. We have seen tragic events happen before and teams forced to shut down afterward. Losing a five-car team would be a terrible blow for the series but if there were 14 others teams on the grid and each team averaged 1.75 cars that would still mean about 24 cars on the grid. If you have one five-car team and it were to vanish, leaving nine teams averaging 1.75 cars then you only have about 16 cars left and that is not a good thing.
Penske, Ganassi and Andretti have been the top of IndyCar, there is no doubt about that but should Trevor Carlin be concerned heading into the 2020 season?
Eleven cars from these three teams is nothing new. Andretti Autosport has been fielding four cars for a long time but we have seen Chip Ganassi Racing and Team Penske match that number in the last decade. At one point, all three teams ran four cars full-time. What did IndyCar look like then?
Staying within the DW12-era, there have been 135 races over eight seasons. The Big Three teams won 101 races, 74.81% of the races over the last eight seasons. The teams combined for 287 of a possible 405 podium finishes. The three teams had 455 of 675 top five finishes and 813 of 1,350 top ten finishes.
The teams had 70.86% of the podium finishes, 67.4% of the top five finishes and 60.222% of the top ten finishes.
Turning to the championship, these three teams are responsible for every champion in this series since 2003. Since 2012, 34 of the 40 drivers to finish in the top five of the championship came from these three teams and the Big Three teams have swept the top five in the championship the last three seasons. Since 2012, 62 of 80 top ten finishers in the championship came from these three teams.
These three teams have been in control for quite some time and it seems the grip is getting tighter.
Here are the number of victories for the Big Three per season since 2012:
2012 - 13/15 (86.667%)
2013 - 14/19 (73.68%)
2014 - 11/18 (61.111%)
2015 - 9/16 (56.25%)
2016 - 13/16 (81.25%)
2017 - 13/17 (76.47%)
2018 - 14/17 (82.35%)
2019 - 14/17 (82.35%)
Forty-eight of the last 135 races have seen only entries from the Big Three on the podium. The Big Three have swept the top five in 20 of 135 races.
Three teams have won over 75% of the races in the last four seasons and in five of the last eight. Over a third of the races see the podium only including cars from three teams and about one in seven races sees the top five cars coming from only three teams.
Only seven races in the last eight seasons featured a podium where none of the Big Three teams put a car on the podium. Those races are Long Beach 2013, the second Belle Isle race in 2013, Baltimore 2013, the second Houston race in 2014, the second Belle Isle race in 2015, Iowa 2018 and Gateway 2019. That is only 5.18% of 135 races. There was only one race where non-Big Three teams swept the top five and that was Baltimore 2013.
What is there to be encouraged about?
Carlin said if Andretti were to expand to seven cars and Ganassi and Penske each had four cars then any team would be lucky to get a top fifteen finish. However, in 135 races, none of them saw the Big Three sweep the top ten. Only five different teams won a race last season but in 2017 and 2018, six different teams won a race including every Honda team. In 2016, when there were only nine full-time teams, six teams won a race. In 2015, when there were only nine full-time teams, seven teams won a race.
Even when these teams were putting 12 combined entries on the grid other teams were able to breakthrough. Would three more cars make it more likely of a top ten shutout? Absolutely, but the talent is spread enough that Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing can put a car on the podium or Schmidt Peterson Motorsports and Dale Coyne Racing can put a car in the top five or Ed Carpenter Racing, A.J. Foyt Racing, Carlin and Meyer Shank Racing can finish in the top ten.
There are two ways of looking at it: We have already reached Trevor Carlin's worse nightmare and the minnows are not achieving enough to be attractive to sponsors or there is still enough opportunity for these little teams to stand out and be recognized.
The best teams are going to come out on top nine times out of ten, even in races they do not deserve. IndyCar could add success ballast and other forms of Balance of Performance to ensure seven or eight teams win a race each season and possibly have four or five teams in the championship hunt but the series would be severely chastised for introducing such a concept.
IndyCar is still a place where the little team can come out on top on a given day. If these teams check all the boxes and make no mistakes any of them can win but those days only come once or twice a season.
The only non-Big Three team to win on a regular basis is Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing and even that is one or two races a year. It had Graham Rahal in the championship fight in 2015 but that's it.
If any team wants to become a regular winner it is not going to be because Penske, Ganassi and Andretti are told to cut back on the number of entries. Back in 2009, Penske and Ganassi combined to win 16 of 17 races in a season where the average grid had 22.88 cars and Penske and Ganassi at most combined to enter five cars. IndyCar could limit these teams, IndyCar could even force these teams to cut back but they are still going to come out on top.
Should IndyCar look out for the greater good of the grid at large? I think an argument could be made the series should consider it.
I believe there are natural limitations. There is a reason why teams do not field eight or nine cars already. There is such a thing as too much and not enough resources. If a team wanted to field six or seven cars, great but that team will likely be weaker than say a two-car team with half the resources.
If a team limit is introduced, IndyCar has to learn from when NASCAR regulated team size. When NASCAR imposed the limit, NASCAR mandated a team could have no more than four cars. At the time, Roush Fenway Racing had five cars. It was allowed to run five cars for a few seasons but then forced to downsize. I don't think IndyCar should set the limit to force a team to downsize. If anything, IndyCar should set the limit to match the largest team on the grid.
I think five cars are enough for one team. It would allow Andretti Autosport to keep its team, not force a driver, crew members and possibly sponsors out the door and it would set the bar for any teams wishing to expand in the future.
Team limits is not something on IndyCar's plate, at least not publicly. Let's see how the next two or three seasons play out.
Trevor Carlin has a right to be concerned about his future in IndyCar. He needs to look out for himself and IndyCar should value him and his wishes as much as Roger Penske (Who now owns the series. Remember that folks! When we are talking about IndyCar we are talking about Roger Penske!), Chip Ganassi and Michael Andretti. IndyCar needs Carlin just as much as those three stalwarts.
While Carlin has a right to be concerned and while the numbers show the dominance of the Big Three, the numbers also show the rest of the field still has the opportunity to be competitive. Ninety percent of the teams on the grid can show up to a race and pull out an astonishing result. Those days do not happen at every other race but it happens enough to keep everybody encouraged at the drop of a green flag. Not many other series can say that now. IndyCar has it all to lose.
Champions From the Weekend
Dennis Olsen clinched the Intercontinental GT Challenge championship with a victory in the Kyalami 9 Hours in the #31 Frikadelli Racing Porsche with Mathieu Jaminet and Nick Tandy.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about the Kyalami 9 Hours but did you know...
Sam Bird and Alexander Sims split the Formula E races from Saudi Arabia.
The #26 G-Drive Racing with Algarve Aurus 01-Gibson of James French, Romain Rusinov and Léonard Hoogenboom won the Asian Le Mans Series 4 Hours of Shanghai. The #45 Carlin Dallara-Gibson crossed the line first but was handed a three-lap penalty for drive-time infringement. The #13 Inter Europol Competition Ligier-Nissan of Nigel Moore and Martin Hippe won in the LMP3 class. The #77 D'station AMR Aston Martin of Tomonobu Fujii, Ross Gunn and Satoshi Hoshino won in the GT class.
Shane Van Gisbergen and Jamie Whincup split the Supercars races from Newcastle.
Nick Cassidy and Narain Karthikeyan split the Super GT/DTM Dream Races from Fuji. The top DTM finisher in each race was Benoît Tréluyer in sixth in race one and in race two Marco Wittmann and Loïc Duval took the final two spots on the podium. The #60 LM Corsa Lexus of Ritomo Miyata and Hiroki Yoshimoto swept the GT300 races.
Coming Up This Weekend
The Formula One season finale from Abu Dhabi.
Turkey Night Grand Prix.
Covering All Motorsports. From Indianapolis to Le Mans, Daytona to Monaco.
