The fourth IndyCar team preview will take a look at A.J. Foyt Racing. Not a lot happened in 2018. This team keeps trying to figure out what it is and continues to struggle to get out of IndyCar's basement. After changing both its drivers for two consecutive seasons the team has retained its 2018 lineup for another season but that leaves little to be excited about.
2018 A.J. Foyt Racing Review
Wins: 0
Best Finish: 6th (Toronto)
Poles: 0
Championship Finish: 16th (Tony Kanaan), 18th (Matheus Leist)
2019 Drivers:
Matheus Leist - #4 ABC Supply Co. Chevrolet
The Brazilian's rookie season started with a surprise qualifying run at St. Petersburg with Leist ending up third on the grid. It didn't take long for Leist to suffer an electrical issue and fall to the back of the field and 16 laps into his IndyCar career he was in the barrier exiting turn three. And that kind of set up Leist's season. He had a pit mishap at Phoenix where he infamously spun around on three tires.
Outside of that, Leist had a respectable showing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with him qualifying 11th, top of the rookie field and only one position off his teammate. In the race, he completed all 200 laps and finished 13th.
Most of his results were mediocre from there out. The days that stand out were the bad ones where a fire ended his Texas race after five laps, a devastating blow only made worse that it is the team's home race. The only other time he made it out of round one of qualifying at a road or street course was at Toronto where, just like St. Petersburg, he got through in changing conditions but only started 12th and in the race fell to 15th.
Leist's best shot at a top ten finish was at Pocono but a miscalculation on fuel strategy forced him to make a stop late and fall to 11th, his best result of the season.
Numbers to Remember:
7: Leist was the seventh rookie since reunification to run majority of the races and not have a top ten finish joining the likes of Jaime Camara, Mario Romancini, Ana Beatriz, James Jakes, Sebastián Saavedra and Josef Newgarden.
16.8: Leist's average finish in 2018.
17.5833: The average of the career average finish of those other six drivers.
18.8: The average of the career average finish of the five drivers not named Josef Newgarden.
Predictions/Goals:
Keep the bar low. Leist is more likely to be remembered with the likes of Camara, Romancini, Beatriz, Jakes and Saavedra than Newgarden.
He is only 20 years old but Foyt has a history of rushing a driver into a seat off minimal Indy Lights experience and once again it appears the team was not ahead of the curve and grabbing a star in the making early but taking a driver far from full maturation.
His third place starting position at St. Petersburg was a pure fluke in changing conditions. There was not a race during the entirety of 2018 where Leist caught your eye for something positive. He didn't get in many incidents and to be fair to him there were no brain fades that made him seem out of his element. He got into the barrier at St. Petersburg but that was after experiencing an electrical issue off the start. The fire at Texas was out of his control and he parked the car at Iowa. Other than those three races he got to the end of every race with minimal hardship... besides his boneheaded pit incident at Phoenix.
Leist has fulfilled bringing the car home but the pace is not there and the grid has only gotten stronger. I don't see him moving up but could he possibly fall back from 18th in the championship? It seems to be lining up that way. His best result was after a third of the field was taken out before lap eight at Pocono. There is no reason to think he is going to get one top ten finish this season. I think Leist is going to be another driver that enters A.J. Foyt Racing and is spat out after two seasons.
The goal should be not to get fired. What will that include? He started inside the top fifteen only four times in 2018. I think he has to get that number up to at least six or seven and four or five of those have to come in the first half of the season. He is going to need a top ten finish but if he can improve his average finish and get within touching distance of his teammate in average finish, let's say within a position, then I think he may save his job but I do not think he will improve his results enough to justify a third season.
Tony Kanaan - #14 ABC Supply Co. Chevrolet
The season started out promising for Kanaan. He started tenth in his first race with A.J. Foyt Racing and he went on to finish 11th. A pair of eighth place finishes followed at Phoenix and Long Beach but from there his season was stuck in neutral.
An electrical glitch at Barber knocked him off the lead lap and he was a mid-pack runner in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis. The Indianapolis 500 seemed to be Kanaan's one great hope for the 2018 season and it started out looking like Kanaan could be in the conversation for the victory. He went from tenth to the front and led 19 laps but a deflating tire forced an extra pit stop and dropped him to the back. He worked his way back into the top ten before a spin in turn two ended his race 13 laps early.
He would use a three-stop strategy in the second Belle Isle race to go from 22nd to seventh but there were few good days ahead. He brushed the wall at Texas after starting sixth, knocking both Foyt cars out within 31 laps of Super Tex's home race.
Kanaan would not start in the top ten again in 2018 and his only top ten finish would be sixth at Toronto, a race where he had cautions and attrition go in his favor. A throttle issue ended his day at Pocono after 16 laps and he ended the year with the worst average starting position and second-worst average finishing position of his IndyCar career.
Numbers to Remember:
4: Top ten finishes in 2018, the fewest in a single season in Kanaan's 21 seasons.
10: Starts away from passing A.J. Foyt for second most starts in IndyCar history.
20: Consecutive races without a top five finish entering 2019.
27: Longest drought in Kanaan's career between top five finishes (Michigan 1999 to Motegi 2001).
Predictions/Goals:
I think the goal is to end that top five drought as soon as possible but I do not think that will be the case and I think Kanaan will surpass his longest drought in that category. His one saving grace may be the Indianapolis 500 and last year it would not have been a surprise if he had finished in the top five. Kanaan had a really good car at Indianapolis before he had to make that extra pit stop. Foyt produced two really good cars for Indianapolis last year and they don't have to give Kanaan a car that puts him on the front row, the team just needs to give him a decent car and Kanaan will do the rest.
It is hard to come up with goals and predictions for a man nearing the end of his career. The results aren't close to where they were ten years ago. I want to be realistic and that is I think Kanaan can improve over his 2018 results but he isn't going to break back into the top ten of the championship, not after what we saw last year. In his final year with Ganassi in 2017, Kanaan cracked the top ten in the championship by seven points over Max Chilton and his only top five finishes were fifth at Indianapolis, second at Texas after he took out half the field and fifth at Pocono. Chilton's only top five finish that season was fourth at Indianapolis.
In 2018, Kanaan had the worst average starting position of his career at 14.9 and second-worst average finishing position of his career at 13.8. The field is getting younger and faster each year. It would not be crazy if all the full-time rookies finished ahead of Kanaan in the championship. I do not think that will be the case but Kanaan at best may improve to 14th in the championship but that might be asking much.
I hate to say it but after the year Kanaan had in 2018, unless he has a big swing upward, I think it is going to be difficult to justify bringing him back full-time in 2020 especially if the likes of Marcus Ericsson, Colton Herta and Santino Ferrucci all finish ahead of him in the championship.
If I hate saying Kanaan's days may be numbered, I despise saying that, but after changing both drivers three years ago and changing both drivers again two years ago, Foyt may have to change both drivers going into 2020 and I despise saying that because I doubt the team is going to get it right. It needs to keep up with the rest of IndyCar and yet even its most ambitious moves leaves the team three steps behind.
The 2019 NTT IndyCar Series season opens on Sunday March 10th with the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. NBCSN's coverage will begin at 1:00 p.m. ET.
Covering All Motorsports. From Indianapolis to Le Mans, Daytona to Monaco.
