We have reached the midway point of the 2019 IndyCar team previews. Five are behind us and after this one five will remain. Midway point, let's look at the team with a Midwest-native owner, the first son of IndyCar racing if you will, Ed Carpenter and the team that holds his namesake. Carpenter's team continued to search for identity and Spencer Pigot moved up to be a full-time driver in 2018 while Carpenter paired with Jordan King, fresh off a few years in GP2/Formula Two. There were plenty of promising days and all the drivers had their time at the front of the field but victory again was again out of the grasp of this operation.
2018 Ed Carpenter Racing Review
Wins: 0
Best Finish: 2nd (Iowa)
Poles: 1 (Indianapolis)
Championship Finishes: 14th (Spencer Pigot), 20th (Ed Carpenter), 22nd (Jordan King)
2019 Drivers:
Ed Carpenter - #20 Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet
The 2018 season started on a down note for Carpenter with his qualifying 18th for the first oval race of the season at Phoenix but he stuck to it in the race, had the pace to move forward and found himself on the lead lap. In the end, he ended up in seventh position; his first top ten finish since seventh the year prior at Phoenix.
After a few weeks off, Carpenter was back in the car for the Indianapolis 500 and as we have become accustomed to seeing, Carpenter was at the sharp end of the grid in qualifying. Carpenter ended up second quickest on the first qualifying day behind only Hélio Castroneves with two other Team Penske cars of Simon Pagenaud and Will Power behind him. The entire Ed Carpenter Racing team made the Fast Nine with Spencer Pigot sixth quickest on day one and Danica Patrick rounding out the top nine.
On Sunday, Carpenter was the penultimate qualifier and put down a four-lap average of 229.618 MPH, nearly a mile per hour quicker than Pagenaud and disrupting an all-Penske front row. Castroneves could not beat the time and for the third time Carpenter ended up as Indianapolis 500 pole-sitter.
Carpenter had one of his best performances in the Indianapolis 500. He led the most laps in the race and he spent 154 of 200 laps in the top five, 186 of 200 in the top ten and his average running position was 3.58. Unfortunately for Carpenter, it was Will Power's day and the Penske driver took the victory while Carpenter came home in second.
Texas was not going well for Carpenter and it was made even worse when he made contact with Robert Wickens, who was in contention for a race victory. At Iowa, Carpenter brushed the wall late, forcing a caution and preventing the race from restarting but he still finished tenth. Carpenter finished off the lead lap in his final two starts of the season with him three laps off Alexander Rossi at Pocono but still finishing tenth and a lap down at Gateway and coming home in 12th.
Numbers to Remember:
11: Consecutive seasons with a lap led. Only Tony Kanaan (20), Scott Dixon (16), Will Power (13) and Graham Rahal (12) have longer active streaks.
4: Carpenter has led more than 50 laps in only four of those 11 seasons.
10.2: Carpenter's average finish in 2018, the second-best of his career behind 9.7 in 2014.
Predictions/Goals:
Carpenter runs five races a year. He just needs to win one of them for the season to be considered a success and we all know the race that matters the most is the Indianapolis 500. After seeing what he did last year, it is not crazy to think he could win that race.
For all the pace Carpenter has had when it comes to Indianapolis 500 qualifying, last year was the first time he put together a strong 500 miles with his own team. Will Power beat him and there is no shame in losing out to a Penske entry.
Besides Indianapolis, Carpenter improved across all the oval races and was able to bring the car home in more races. It was good enough for him to be sixth in oval points on 187, twenty behind Simon Pagenaud and 32 more than Ryan Hunter-Reay and Graham Rahal.
I think the goal should be to crack the top five in oval points and while this team has lost engineering whiz Allen McDonald, who has made a name for qualifying success in the Indianapolis 500, I think Carpenter and the entire team will be competitive on the ovals.
As for the Indianapolis 500, why couldn't he win it? He was runner-up last year and led the most laps. He has led the most laps in two of the seven Indianapolis 500s held during the DW12-era. He has led 139 laps in the Indianapolis 500, four more than Will Power and only two fewer than Marco Andretti. Of those 139 laps, 133 of them have come since 2013. It isn't going to be easy but is absolutely possible.
Ed Jones - #20 Ed Carpenter Racing/Scuderia Corsa Chevrolet
After winning Rookie of the Year in 2017, Jones moved from Dale Coyne Racing to Chip Ganassi Racing for the 2018 season. He started 17th for his first race with the team but he found his way forward and got an eighth place finish. The bad news is he did not hang himself in much glory in the second race where he found himself in second position at Phoenix only to spin in turn three and toss a podium finish out the window. Cautions were in his favor at Long Beach and he got a third place finish after a tough battle with Zach Veach.
Mechanical issues hampered his Barber race and he struggled in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis. Things did not go well when it came time for the Indianapolis 500. He started 29th, the middle of row ten, and only completed 57 laps before an accident in turn two ended his race.
June was kinder to Jones with top ten finishes in all four races, starting with sixth in the first Belle Isle race and third in the Sunday race from the Motor City, a race he spent most of it at the front and ahead of his teammate Scott Dixon. A pair of ninths at Texas and Road America closed out the month.
The results did not carry over into July and August and four consecutive results outside followed. Gateway was an average race with an eighth place finish. He didn't complete a lap at Portland and tenth at Sonoma was not going to be enough to earn him an extension into 2019.
Numbers to Remember:
1: Jones' average finish improved by one position from 14.2 to 13.2 in 2018.
1.3: Jones' average starting position improved by 1.3 positions from 14.4 to 13.1 in 2018.
8: Top ten finishes in 2018 after five in his rookie season.
Predictions/Goals:
Get back to where he was in 2017 but keep what went right in 2018.
Jones was impressive in his rookie season and it lead to a promotion in his sophomore season. There were plenty of good things that happened at Ganassi but his bad days were bad in 2018 and it didn't help that many of those down performances came toward the end of the season. With his schedule reduced to the 12 road/street course races and the Indianapolis 500, he is going to have less opportunities to accumulate stats. I think he has to aim to get top ten finishes in at least half of his starts and he has to advance to the second round of qualifying in at least five of ten races that will have the three-round qualifying format.
That is asking a lot for Jones but he kind of has to be at that level to earn another full-time seat. A third team in three years isn't going to help and I think expectations have to be kept somewhat low. We do not see drivers with this kind of instability improve year after year. A contemporary example would be Takuma Sato. From 2011-2013 he drove for KV Racing, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing and A.J. Foyt Racing and his championship finishes in those three respective seasons were 13th, 14th and 17th. His average finish went from 14.1 to 15.1 to 16.0.
In Jones' favor is the fact he will be in car often despite not being a full-time competitor. He will run the first eight races of the season and then he will have two weeks off between Texas and Road America, a week off between Toronto and Mid-Ohio and then a month between Mid-Ohio and Portland. His oval numbers were not great and if you take just road and street courses into consideration he scored 20.08 points per race. If he keeps up that form through 12 road/street course races that alone will earn him 240 points, more than Max Chilton's total from 2017 and only 13 points behind Matheus Liest and that doesn't take into account Jones getting at least ten points for starting the Indianapolis 500.
I think Jones will do better than Spencer Pigot on a fairly regular basis but if this team is behind from where it was in 2018 than Jones' numbers will not be as impressive.
Spencer Pigot - #21 Autogeek Chevrolet
The full-time career of Spencer Pigot got off to a rough start. Graham Rahal punted him at St. Petersburg in turn one. He still got up to eighth in the running order but a multitude of pit stops forced him to finish one lap down in 15th. His next three finishes would be 14th, 15th and 15th.
Pigot started sixth for the Indianapolis 500 but did not have the pace of his team owner and a pit lane speeding penalty killed his hopes of a top ten finish, dropping him one lap down to 20th in the final results. He got off the snide at Belle Isle with a tenth place finish in race one but he was spun on lap one of race two and his day was over after 21 laps. Let's just say he wasn't a fan of Santino Ferrucci before not being a fan of Ferrucci was cool.
Texas was a better outing with an 11th place finish and a solid day would follow at Road America, where he finished eighth. Iowa was Pigot's best race of the season. He started 18th but he drove to the front and was pushing Josef Newgarden and James Hinchcliffe. Newgarden and Robert Wickens making late pit stops may have elevated Pigot to second but it was a fitting result for his race.
Unfortunately, bad days followed and a promising day at Toronto ended after he banged into the barrier. He could only manage 13th at Mid-Ohio and at Pocono he was spun coming to the green flag and could only complete 16 laps.
A wave around gave Pigot new life at Gateway and an all-out final stint got him a sixth place finish. He may have started 17th at Portland but the lap one accident moved him right into the top ten and he continued his charge to the front. Aggressive moves got Pigot a fourth place finish behind Sébastien Bourdais and directly ahead of Scott Dixon and Simon Pagenaud. However, for a third consecutive year, Pigot's season ended early with a mechanical failure at Sonoma.
Numbers to Remember:
13.6: Average finish in 2018, his best average finish in a season.
41.176: Percentage of lead lap finishes in 2017, the lowest of his career after finishing on the lead lap in 50% of the races in his prior two seasons.
9: Starts outside the top fifteen in 2018.
6: Times starting on row nine in 2018.
Predictions/Goals:
There is a lot of room for improvement in Pigot's second full season. He needs to qualify better. He had only three top ten starts in 2018 and the only time he made it out of the first round of qualifying at a road/street circuit was at Road America. Qualifying wasn't his strong suit in either of his two part-time seasons but he is entering his fourth season and he has to make a big improvement in qualifying if he wants to improve race results.
Looking back and the numbers point to a 14th place championship finish being the best he could have done. His best day was at Iowa and, while he was still going to finish in the top five and he can't be blamed for Newgarden and Wickens making late pit stops hoping for a restart, it does slightly inflate that performance. Better results came late in the season and he needs to carry that form, especially how he ran at Portland to the first portion of the 2019 season.
If there is one bright side for Pigot it is that he was ninth in oval points in 2018 with 142, three more than Wickens, who missed Gateway but five more than James Hinchcliffe, 16 more than Marco Andretti, 19 more than Takuma Sato and 23 more than Sébastien Bourdais.
As successful as Pigot was in the Road to Indy season and as promising as his two part-time seasons were, I would not be surprised if Pigot regressed a bit when it came to results. The grid is getting tougher. I think Zach Veach will be better. I think Santino Ferrucci will have good days. Colton Herta is coming in with a lot of momentum from Indy Lights and a victory at the 24 Hours of Daytona in the GT Le Mans class with BMW. All those drivers are in cars that finish behind Pigot in the champion. If all three of those drivers finished ahead of Pigot in the championship and he repeats his 2018 results then he is going to fall to possibly 17th in the championship.
That seems drastically low but I would not rule it out. Ed Carpenter Racing is still trying to find an identity post-Josef Newgarden and it also lost engineer Jeremy Milless in to Andretti Autosport at the same time. I cannot tell if the team is heading in the right direction but it is still in transition for the third consecutive season.
Fuzzy's Ultra Premium Vodka is gone as a sponsor. Allen McDonald has left the team to go to Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. All these changes disrupt small teams and Pigot could end up finishing 14th in the championship again but I also think if the team is struggling to find speed and on top of that be concerned about sponsorship than that distraction could lead to Pigot regressing in results.
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.
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