The New Year may have just begun, but the IndyCar season will be here in no time and with just under two months until the engines fire on the streets of St. Petersburg, it is time to start rolling out previews for the 2023 season.
Nearly every seat is accounted for, some by returning drivers and others will have new occupants. A.J. Foyt Racing is in the latter camp, a camp the team is familiar with. It is a wholesale change for the Texas team. This will be the fourth consecutive season where Foyt has not retained its driver lineup from the previous season, and it is the sixth time in the last seven offseason it has changed its lineup. How will things be better this time around? We will surely find out over the 17 races.
At First Glance... A.J. Foyt Racing will only go as far as Santino Ferrucci will take it
It is another new pairing for Foyt, but the team has brought in one of the flashier young drivers in recent seasons. Santino Ferrucci hasn't won races. He hasn't competed for championships, but he has caught your attention.
Ferrucci has not raced full-time since the 2020 season, but he has six top ten finishes from his last eight starts and one of those finishes was an 11th. On ovals, and at Indianapolis in particular, he is a snake in the grass but one in our line of sight. We are ready for him to strike but even with preparation we aren't sure if we will react in time to avoid being bitten.
Four starts in the Indianapolis 500 and four top ten finishes, averaging a finish of 6.75, and that isn't even the most impressive thing Ferrucci has done in his IndyCar career. It isn't even competing for the victory at Gateway while a rookie. Over the last two seasons as a part-time driver, Ferrucci has stepped into races and been competitive when he otherwise was overlooked.
Sixth at Indianapolis is one thing, but to finish sixth and tenth in the 2021 Belle Isle doubleheader, the second result coming after an accident in qualifying left the team scurrying to rebuild the car in time for the start is downright astonishing. Most drivers of a common ilk wouldn't be competing for a top fifteen finish in such an instance, and Ferrucci scored two top tens.
Once more, Ferrucci was an 11th-hour substitute for Jack Harvey last year at Texas. With only a few shakedown laps underneath him and stepping into a car that qualified 24th, the best of a three-car Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing operation, Ferrucci drove to ninth and finished on the lead lap.
The Connecticut-native keeps finding results and from the most unlikely situations. Now comes the most unlikely situation for success of his career.
A.J. Foyt Racing has been far from producing a regular top ten finisher. Ferrucci has been able to work his magic driving for Dale Coyne Racing, RLLR and Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, but all those teams are a step up from Foyt, and honestly, they are all likely two steps up.
This could be a damned if you, damned if you don't situation for Ferrucci. Succeed and he likely will get a promotion. If he was to pull out a top fifteen championship finish with this team, he could put himself at the front of the line for the anticipated opening at Chip Ganassi Racing once Álex Palou leaves after this season. However, when drivers fail at Foyt, they usually disappear.
Has anyone seen Matheus Leist lately?
Ferrucci will carry all the attention. Teammate, and rookie, Benjamin Pedersen is along for the ride. Pedersen adds his name to a list of moderately successful Indy Lights drivers Foyt is cashing a check from to run in IndyCar. Pedersen had flashes in the junior series, more than his predecessor Dalton Kellett, but it is difficult to imagine he will be leading this organization to the promised land. It all comes down to Ferrucci.
2022 A.J. Foyt Racing Review
Wins: 0
Best Finish: 10th (Long Beach)
Poles: 0
Best Start: 9th (Mid-Ohio)
Championship Finishes: 24th (Kyle Kirkwood), 25th (Dalton Kellett), 29th (Tatiana Calderón), 30th (J.R. Hildebrand)
Santino Ferrucci - #14 Chevrolet
Numbers to Remember:
9.8571: Average finish in 14 oval starts
14.344: Average finish in 29 road/street course starts
4: Consecutive top ten finishes on ovals
25: Percent of the last 16 oval races have had an A.J. Foyt Racing driver finish in the top ten
27: Average championship finish of the four Foyt drivers from the 2022 season
What does a championship season look like for him?
Considering no Foyt driver could crack the top twenty in 2022, no Foyt driver has cracked the top fifteen since 2019, no Foyt driver has cracked the top twelve since 2010 and no Foyt driver has cracked the top ten since 2002, anything that is marginally competitive will be considered a great success.
An unthinkable championship starts with oval victories, and I mean all of them. Texas, Indianapolis, sweeping Iowa and Gateway. Five victories where the minimum points alone for such a result would pay Ferrucci 305 points, leaving him with a good foundation. Those 305 points alone in 2022 would get him 16th in the championship without even taking into consideration a road/street course race.
Since reunification, the champion has averaged 598.333 points. From the remaining 12 road/street course races, Ferrucci would need 293 points, about 24 per race, meaning he would need to average an eighth-place finish. It would have to be a historic season for himself and the Foyt team for that to happen.
What does a realistic season look like for him?
With Foyt, it feels like the results are more on the team's side than the driver's side. The team is going to be more of anchor than a rocket. It hasn't worked for Tony Kanaan. It hasn't worked for Sébastien Bourdais. I think we can still see those flashy oval days from Ferrucci, but not necessarily at each oval round. The road course results will likely be in line with what we have seen from Ferrucci before but probably a little bit worse.
The entire Foyt team had one top ten finish last year. Ferrucci should do better than that, but it will not shake up the IndyCar scene. The top fifteen will still be out of reach, but he should be comfortably in the top twenty.
Benjamin Pedersen - #TBD Chevrolet
Numbers to Remember:
329: Days between A.J. Foyt Racing's most recent top ten finish and the 2023 season opener at St. Petersburg
32.352: Percent of podium finishes over 34 Indy Lights starts
4: As in Pedersen is the fourth rookie driver to run for A.J. Foyt Racing in the last six seasons
19.333: Average finish of the previous three rookie drivers for Foyt
What does a championship season look like for him?
Something unexpected. Pedersen would need to blow the doors off the competition from the start and then maintain that form throughout the rest of the season. Something that would rival what we saw from Robert Wickens during his rookie season in 2018 but it would need to see Pedersen pull out a few victories.
However, if Pedersen is doing that, how good would Ferrucci's results have to be? It is difficult to envision a season where Pedersen is significantly better than Ferrucci.
In reality, if Pedersen is competing from the championship, something serious has happened to about 24 other drivers and IndyCar would be in greater trouble than we can imagine at this time.
What does a realistic season look like for him?
Unfortunately, somewhere outside the top twenty. IndyCar is too good to think Benjamin Pedersen, a driver with one victory in 34 Indy Lights races, will join this series with a full-time grid 27 entries deep, driving for A.J. Foyt Racing and crack the top twenty.
He should be better than Dalton Kellett and probably have a few races where the pace is respectable. But in a field that has only gotten deeper as McLaren expands to three cars and the only other rookie is a Formula Two race winner driving for Ganassi, Pedersen's road to success only got tougher. Any top ten finish would be staggering. There should be a few races he cracks the top fifteen, but most days will be in the back third of the field.
The 2023 NTT IndyCar Series begins on Sunday March 5 with the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. NBC and Peacock will have coverage of the race.
