Here is a rundown of what got me thinking...
Álex Palou claimed a third championship in four seasons. Colton Herta ended the season with a victory. It wasn't a bad Nashville race. Elsewhere, there was a coming together on the final lap in Baku. NASCAR had two sloppy races at Watkins Glen. A bunch of people learned about Connor Zilisch. Porsche is probably going to win another championship. Actually, Porsche did win a championship! Cadillac cannot have a good day. SuperMotocross continues running during the heart of a college football afternoon. However, it is the first day of the IndyCar offseason, and we have a tradition to keep.
2024 IndyCar Predictions: Revisited
The IndyCar season is over. We all need a break. This is effectively mailing it in. Taking something that was written earlier and writing about it again. Each prediction is essentially a prompt. Take it and respond. Simple enough.
How did 2024 look? We are about to find out.
1. Álex Palou will have at least four finishes outside the top ten
Correct!
A number of these predictions were not settled until after the final race of the season, and I was certain this one would be wrong.. Palou was practically flawless all season and could not finish worse than tenth without something bad happening. He might have been a lap down for most of the Nashville race, but entering the final stint of the race, there was Palou looking like he was going to sneak into a top ten position, but as the final round of pit stops happened and a number of drivers were forced to stop within the final 20 laps of the race, Palou ended up cycling to finish 11th, his fourth time finishing outside the top ten this season.
It started with a 16th in Detroit after he was caught behind a spinning Josef Newgarden and Palou was shuffled down the order. Then Palou spun on his own and out of the first Iowa race to finish 23rd. In the second Milwaukee race, Palou's career suffered a battery issue on the pace laps and was set back over 25 laps immediately, finishing 19th.
It is a shocker this one ended up correct. Palou ended the season with consecutive finishes outside the top ten for the first time since the August 2021 Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course race and Gateway. Who had that being the way the season ended?
Palou wasn't going to have 17 more top ten finishes. Four felt like a practical number. It was and it still wasn't enough to knock Palou off the top spot.
2. Chip Ganassi Racing's top five finish total decreases by at least 25%
Wrong!
Last year, Chip Ganassi Racing had 28 top five finishes. This year, Chip Ganassi Racing had 27 top five finishes, six more than we needed for this prediction.
Ganassi beat this prediction with Palou and Scott Dixon alone. Palou had 13 top five finishes and Dixon had eight. That is 21 right there. All it needed was Marcus Armstrong, Linus Lundqvist and Kyffin Simpson to combine for one top five finish to beat this, and they nearly matched its 2023 output.
Last year felt like a historic season for Ganassi, and this year was nearly on par but didn't feel close to 2023. Yet, Ganassi had many good days from nearly all of its drivers. It helps when Palou gets 13 top five finishes. Eight or nine top five finishes is still a great season. Expecting him to come down to earth is reasonable, but he remains on a higher level.
3. Every driver that did not win in 2023 but won in 2022 will win in 2024
Wrong!
We got three out of the four.
Will Power won in 2022, did not win in 2023, and then he won three times in 2024.
Patricio O'Ward won in 2022, did not win in 2023, and then he won three times in 2024.
Colton Herta won in 2022, did not win in 2023, and then he won twice in 2024.
Alexander Rossi won in 2022, did not win in 2023, and he did not win in 2024 either.
Rossi wasn't even all that close to victory this season. He had one podium finish, a third at Laguna Seca. He was at the front at the Indianapolis 500 but he wasn't in the fight for the victory. He was leading laps at Milwaukee, but he was shuffled back.
Two winless seasons and Rossi is out at Arrow McLaren. This was the fifth consecutive season Rossi finished either ninth or tenth in the championship. It is harsh to say but this is who he is as a driver. He is the ninth or tenth-best driver in IndyCar. Better than most but hard to say great.
4. Josef Newgarden will finish third-place in at least one street course race
Wrong!
There is a cruelty to this prediction because Newgarden finished third on two ovals and a road course, but he did not finish third at a street course. Entering this season, Newgarden had not finished third since the 2020 season opener at Texas, and he had only five career finishes of third. This year alone he increased his total third-place finishes by 60%.
Consider this.
Newgarden has 31 victories, 19 runner-up finishes, 14 fifth-place finishes, 13 fourth-place finishes and only eight third-place finishes!
Out of the top five positions, I am not sure you can expect an equal spread of finishes over the five spots, but one is almost half the rest and it is the one right in the middle. Newgarden's only third-place finish on a street course remains the 2017 Grand Prix of Long Beach.
5. McLaren will lead at least 100 laps over the final eight races
Correct!
Last year, McLaren led only 50 laps in the final 11 races. The good news is Patricio O'Ward settled this prediction with his Milwaukee victory alone. O'Ward led 133 laps in that race one. That was also good insurance.
If you remove O'Ward's 133 laps led in the first Milwaukee race, McLaren combined to lead 139 laps in the final eight races. That one race alone is almost half of the team's laps led over the second half of the season.
I don't know how much better this season was than last season for McLaren. It did win three races after winning none last year, but one of those was St. Petersburg, which was awarded after the disqualification of Josef Newgarden. O'Ward only led in four races all season, the Indianapolis 500, Mid-Ohio, the first Milwaukee race and Nashville. Outside of Milwaukee, he combined to lead only 56 laps.
McLaren's three entries were fifth, ninth and 18th in the entrants' championship this year. Last year, it was fourth, ninth and 12th. The driver carousel in the #6 Chevrolet did not help this season, but McLaren did not really make a step forward this season.
6. Romain Grosjean averages less than 17 points per start
Correct!
Grosjean averaged 15.294 points this season, 260 points over 17 races. It also put Grosjean 17th in the championship.
Someone must be 17th in this championship. You cannot have 18 drivers finish in the top ten. Grosjean also hasn't been a top ten driver in IndyCar. Before this year, he was 13th in each of his two full seasons. He was moving back from Andretti Global to Juncos Hollinger Racing, a team that prior to this season had two top five finishes in its history.
It was a sufficient season for JHR. Six top ten finishes for Grosjean combined with a podium and another top ten from Conor Daly is better than JHR's past seasons, but it was not showing threatening speed. It felt like JHR had a pattern of one race good, two races bad, one race good, two races bad in 2024d. It is nice that it can have a good day a time or two, but that isn't going to get you better results in the championship.
7. Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing will have at least three races where all three cars finishing in the top ten
Wrong!
This was wildly wrong, and I might have believed too much in Pietro Fittipaldi, but this wasn't even Pietro Fittipaldi's fault. First, Fittipaldi had zero top ten finishes. We were never close to this one being correct, but the team had only three races all season where two cars finished in the top ten.
Graham Rahal had five top ten finishes for a second consecutive year. Christian Lundgaard dipped from nine top ten finishes to five top ten finishes. RLLR took a step back this year. It had a few good moments this year but it did not match its 2023 season where Lundgaard had the speed to compete for top five finishes and win a race, and Rahal did compete for a victory and won a pole position. RLLR had something finite in 2023, and it was not going to be enough in 2024 as everyone else made adjustments and improved.
8. Tom Blomqvist's average finish will be greater than 20.0
Correct!
This is not one to celebrate and I did not expect it to go this way. Blomqvist's average finish over his five starts was 22nd. A 31st in the Indianapolis 500 inflated that number a little. That finish alone added 2.25 spots to his average. It is hard to hold this against Blomqvist because he ran five races. If he had run all 17 races, maybe his average would have been better than 20th.
I was surprised Blomqvist got pulled quickly, but in the Leader Circle world of IndyCar, a team cannot afford to lose that $1 million base payment. Meyer Shank Racing did not have it for the #66 entry after the 2023 season. It could not afford to lose it again, and through five races it did not believe it could get there with Blomqvist. It made a change and the team did end up finishing in a Leader Circle spot.
In a sense, the Leader Circle keeps everyone honest. It is something you must get. You cannot afford to stick it out with a driver and hope he or she improves. You must get results. It might be a good thing IndyCar has it. While it does come down to money and who can bring funding, the Leader Circle does force teams to put in better drivers if the results are not good enough.
9. A.J. Foyt Racing will have multiple top ten finishes
Correct!
Multiple top ten finishes sounds pretty light considering A.J. Foyt Racing went on to have 11 top ten finishes this season, all with Santino Ferrucci. It went from one to 11. That is a big leap, and one nobody saw coming. Two is a low bar to clear. With the Team Penske technical alliance, the over/under would likely have been set a 6.5. Even then, Foyt blew it out of the water. Good for them, and maybe this was too much of a softball on my part.
10. The second-place starting position will produce multiple winners
Correct!
Not only did second-place starting position produce four race winners, second-place starting position produced the most race winners over the 2024 season. This is one year after none of the winners in 2023 started second. In 2022, second on the grid produced seven winners, the most for a grid position that year as well.
Second was not going to be shut out again, but it is quite surprising it was the best. I guess you could argue pole position is the only other position that you would anticipate producing more winners than second, but it is a fluky thing as you can see from 2023.
11. At least one team ends an oval winless streak that is at least four years long
Correct!
This was another one that was not settled until the final race of the season, really until the final lap of the season, and it looked bleak entering the Nashville season finale. Team Penske had dominated ovals this season and McLaren had won the other. Honda had not won an oval race this season.
What happened in the season finale? Andretti Global got its first oval victory since Pocono 2018 with Colton Herta! Andretti probably should have won an oval earlier this year. Herta probably should have won one of the Iowa races or one of the Milwaukee races. Herta was due for this result.
12. Ed Carpenter Racing will fail to put a driver in the top fifteen of the championship
Wrong!
Rinus VeeKay finished 13th in the championship, making his championship form over a five-year IndyCar career be 14th, 12th, 12th, 14th, 13th. Like Alexander Rossi, if you finish between 12th and 14th in the championship for five consecutive seasons, you are likely the 12th, 13th or 14th-best driver in IndyCar, which is frankly the textbook definition of average. Right in the middle of good and bad.
However, credit to VeeKay because after the Mid-Ohio race, he was 18th in the championship on 125 points. In the final eight races, he picked up five championship positions and he scored 175 points in that time. VeeKay had the tenth-most points in the final eight races, more than three Ganassi drivers, three RLLR drivers, two McLaren drivers and two Meyer Shank Racing drivers. He had good form to end the year, but what does that mean for next year?
Have VeeKay and ECR found something or was this a flash in the pan that got them back to average after a slow start?
Seven-for-12. Not bad, but not great. A dip from last year, but even Álex Palou had a dip from last year. Some of the ambitious predictions did not pay off, but where is the fun if you aren't doing something a little wild? At least there is something to shoot for next year.
2023: 9/12
2022: 6/12
2021: 4/12
2020: 8/11 (one prediction was about Richmond, which never happened)
2019: 5.5/12
2018: 6/12
2017: 8/12
2016: 6/12
2015: 8/12
2014: 10/14
Champions From the Weekend
You know about Álex Palou, but did you know...
The #92 Manthey PureRxcing Porsche of Klaus Bachler, Alex Malykhin and Joel Sturm clinched the FIA Endurance Trophy for LMGT3 Drivers with a runner-up finish in the 6 Hours of Fuji.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Colton Herta, but did you know...
Oscar Piastri won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, his second victory of the season.
Chris Buescher won the NASCAR Cup race from Watkins Glen. Connor Zilisch won the Grand National Series race on debut.
The #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Penske of Kévin Estre, André Lotterer and Laurens Vanthoor won the 6 Hours of Fuji, its second victory of the season. The #54 Vista AF Corse Ferrari of Davide Rigon, Francesco Castellacci and Thomas Flohr won in the LMGT3 class.
Louis Foster won the Indy Lights race from Nashville, his eighth victory of the season.
Hunter Lawrence won the SuperMotocross race from Texas. Haiden Deegan won in the 250cc class, his second victory in as many events.
Coming Up This Weekend
The Singapore Grand Prix caps off a summer sprint for Formula One before its sneaky autumn break.
IMSA will have a six-hour endurance race around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
MotoGP is back in action for a second race weekend at Misano.
NASCAR closes out the first round of the playoffs with a Saturday night race at Bristol.
Supercars has an endurance round at the Sandown 500.
Super GT is at Sportsland SUGO.
Monza hosts the penultimate round of the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup season.
World Superbike makes its debut at the Cremona Circuit.
