The tenth and penultimate IndyCar team preview will look at the teams that will not be running full-time but will be around quite a bit in 2019. This is a mixture of teams. One team is returning to IndyCar and is expanding to run more races. Another is returning and its schedule is still unknown. Two are new to the series and one is an American team with a sports car background. The other isn't entirely new but unlike 2017, it will be attempting Indianapolis mostly on its own.
2018 DragonSpeed Review
New Team For 2019!
2019 Driver:
Ben Hanley - #81 DragonSpeed Chevrolet
This is not a name familiar to the IndyCar fanbase but Hanley has spent the last three years competing in sports cars after he spent a few seasons out of racing.
Hanley was a promising single-seater driver and was named to Renault's young driver program in 2008 after he won three races in two Formula Renault 3.5 Series seasons, which included Hanley scoring a runner-up finish in the championship in 2007. He made 12 starts between the GP2 Asia Series and GP2 Series but he scored a combined seven points, six of which came after a third place finish in the Sentul feature race behind Sébastien Buemi and Adrián Vallés and ahead of Romain Grosjean and Vitaly Petrov.
After two years between Euroseries 3000 and Superleague Formula with some success, Hanley was out of racing but he has served as a test driver for Pirelli for tires for GP2, GP3, Formula Two and Formula Three.
Hanley returned to racing in the European Le Mans Series in 2016 with DragonSpeed. He ran all six races and he along with Henrik Hedman and Nicolas Lapierre won at Spa-Francorchamps while finishing fourth in the championship. The following year he expanded his career to the FIA World Endurance Championship while remaining with DragonSpeed in ELMS. In 2018, he ran for DragonSpeed in both the WEC and ELMS while he ran the 24 Hours of Daytona this past January and finished third in the LMP2 class.
Hanley is scheduled to compete at St. Petersburg, Long Beach, Indianapolis, Road America and Mid-Ohio.
Numbers to Remember:
3,059: Days between Hanley's most recent single-seater start at Navarre in Superleague Formula on October 24, 2010 and the St. Petersburg season opener.
38: Starts between the FIA World Endurance Championship, European Le Mans Series and IMSA since 2016.
11: Victories in his single-seater career from 2005 to 2010 between Formula Renault 2.0 Italia, Formula Renault 3.5 Series, Euroseries 3000 and Superleague Formula.
7: Of his 11 victories came in Italy with three victories at Misano, two at Monza and two at Mugello. His other five victories came at Magny-Cours, Catalunya, Spa-Francorchamps and Ordos.
Predictions/Goals:
Not embarrass himself and keep the car out of the barriers.
I don't think many have any expectations for Hanley, in fact I think many have already written him off as some kind of hack. But I am not going to do that because Hanley has been respectable in sports cars and he wasn't some schlub who ended up in sports cars and is now going to take a crack at IndyCar. This isn't Milka Duno coming in with SAMAX.
Hanley was runner-up in the 2007 Formula Renault 3.5 Series championship behind Álvaro Parente and ahead of the likes of Filipe Albuquerque, Giedo van der Garde, Miguel Molina, Mikhail Aleshin and Bertrand Baguette. He also handily outscored Charlie Kimball and Pippa Mann that season, though Kimball's season ended two rounds early. He was a driver who got as far as he could in single-seater racing and raced until he no longer had a budget. He is one of dozens of driver to run that career path. Nearly a decade after he reached the end of that path he has found a second wind and it has brought him to IndyCar.
I don't think Hanley will be terrible. He is not going to be miles off the rest of the field. He might be toward the rear but I think he will be around other slower drivers. He just need to complete laps, especially for a new team. It does DragonSpeed no good in its long-term ambition of joining IndyCar if it starts piling up a crash damage bill. I think his aim should be to be around 15th in qualifying and all of his road and street course races and just make the Indianapolis 500. A lot of people will pencil him in as one of the bumped drivers but we have seen these underestimated entries come in, focus on making the race and do it while shoe-ins end up fighting until the gun and some end up on the outside.
2018 Juncos Racing Review
Wins: 0
Best Finish: 16th (Barber)
Poles: 0
Championship Finishes: 28th (René Binder), 30th (Kyle Kaiser), 36th (Alfonso Celis, Jr.)
2019 Driver:
Kyle Kaiser - #32 NPF Partners Chevrolet
Fresh off the 2017 Indy Lights championship, Kaiser moved up to IndyCar and he was able to put together a program of four races starting with the first oval of the season at Phoenix.
He was running well at Phoenix but his race ended early after he brushed the wall exiting turn four. The Californian was at Long Beach and he finished a lap down in 16th after he started 24th. The Grand Prix of Indianapolis started on a tough note with him starting 24th and he led two laps through pit cycle but that was his only time at the front. He could not manage anything better than 19th in the final results. He made his Indianapolis 500 debut two weeks later and he qualified a strong 17th for the young team that many were placing in the bumping discussion. In the race, Kaiser was running well and didn't seem out of his element but his race ended after 110 laps due to a mechanical issue.
Kaiser did not make another start for the rest of the season but Juncos Racing had René Binder in the car at Belle Isle, Toronto and Mid-Ohio after he ran at St. Petersburg and Barber. Alfonso Celis, Jr. made two starts at Road America and Portland. Neither driver finished better than 16th.
Numbers to Remember:
0: Lead lap finishes in fours starts in 2018.
2: Retirements in 2018, both at ovals, Phoenix and Indianapolis.
10.75: Points per race averaged by Juncos' three drivers through 12 races in 2018.
Predictions/Goals:
We aren't sure of Kaiser's schedule. He was confirmed for Austin of all races first of all and he did test for the team at Laguna Seca. Whether Kaiser is entered for Laguna Seca or Indianapolis or whether or not Juncos Racing runs other drivers throughout the season still remains to be seen.
I think the goal for Kaiser is just get a few more races put together. Of course, Indianapolis is the no-brainer and Laguna Seca makes sense because it is his home race, with Kaiser calling Santa Clara home but I think he needs more than four races. He had four races last year and he did ok. I think he should be aiming for six or seven races. I would love to see him get a crack at Road America, Iowa, Mid-Ohio and Pocono.
Regardless of how many races Kaiser puts together or where those races are he needs to do better. He needs to get better results and that is difficult with a single-car, part-time program. But he has no other choice. It is the only way a sponsor or team is going to bite the bullet on him.
2018 McLaren Review
New team for 2019!
2019 Driver:
Fernando Alonso - #66 McLaren Chevrolet
Alonso and McLaren focused on Formula One in 2018 after the pairing attempted the Indianapolis 500 in 2017.
Alonso started off the season with a fifth place finish at the Australian Grand Prix and he would finish in the points in the first five races but he would not match that top five finish and he scored points in only four of the final 16 races.
While the Formula One thing was not great, Alonso started off his FIA World Endurance Championship campaign with Toyota and it kicked off with a victory at Spa-Francorchamps. A victory at Le Mans followed with Sébastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima. He had a third victory at Silverstone stripped after both Toyotas were disqualified for excessive skid plank wear. The #8 Toyota has finished runner-up in the next two races and with three races remaining in the 2018-19 season at Sebring, Spa-Francorchamps and Le Mans, the #8 Toyota leads its teammate by five points.
To start off 2019, Alonso had a fantastic outing at the 24 Hours of Daytona in the #10 Cadillac for Wayne Taylor Racing and he along with Jordan Taylor, Renger van der Zande and Kamui Kobayashi took the overall victory in the rain-stricken event.
Numbers to Remember:
30,000,000: Alonso's reported salary in U.S. dollars for the 2018 Formula season with McLaren, fourth highest behind Sebastian Vettel, Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Räikkönen.
50: Points scored in 2018, good enough for 11th in the World Drivers' Championship and he failed to score a point in the final six races of the season.
96.648: Percentage of laps Alonso was in the top ten of the 179 laps he completed in the 2017 Indianapolis 500.
4.949: Alonso's average running position over the 179 laps he completed in the 2017 Indianapolis 500.
Predictions/Goals:
Win the Indianapolis 500.
Alonso isn't coming to the Indianapolis 500 for the root beer floats and breaded tenderloin. He isn't coming because he likes the Midwestern hospitality. He is here to win and join Graham Hill as the only drivers to complete the Motorsports Triple Crown.
How will he do? This year is going to be different compared to 2017 and it could be an eye opener for Alonso. He and McLaren might come to realize how easy and fortunate they were to have done the 2017 race with Andretti Autosport. They do not have that partnership in 2019 and will be working with Carlin instead. Carlin and McLaren are both professional organization but at Indianapolis Carlin is not in Andretti Autosport's zip code.
McLaren is not going to be tripped up when it comes to the smaller stuff. McLaren did its homework. It has prepared for this race but there is always something that you cannot plan for and can only learn through experience. Those could be the things that catch this team out.
I am not worried about Alonso. We have seen the Spaniard take on challenge after challenge the last two years and he has never been unprepared. He doesn't think he has got it and tries to figure it out on the fly. The dedication he put into his 2017 program was outstanding and that was with six weeks of preparation. He has been working on 2019 since he left the banquet on Memorial Day 2017. He stepped into sports cars and won Le Mans on debut and won the 24 Hours of Daytona in his second shot at it. He is not going to be a problem and after all, he is going to have the most to gain out of everybody in that race. This isn't some type of bucket list event for him. This is attempting to ascend to a higher level.
Bob Fernley has been placed as head of McLaren's IndyCar effort. Fernley had previously worked as team principal at Force India. It would be more surprising if McLaren struggles than if McLaren succeeds. I don't think McLaren is going to come in and be 26th but I don't see the team replicating what it did in 2017 and, as I said before, that has nothing to do with Alonso. It is a new car, it is a new engine manufacture and it will be a new group working on the car. There are too many differences to expect Alonso to waltz back in and be back in the top five. I think he is going to have to work harder this time around and even if that is the case I think he can be competitive and be in the top ten.
2018 Meyer Shank Racing Review
Wins: 0
Best Finish: 12th (Long Beach)
Poles: 0
Championship Finish: 24th (Jack Harvey)
2019 Driver:
Jack Harvey - #60 SiriusXM/Auto Nation Honda
After making his IndyCar debut and three total starts, Harvey doubled that total while Meyer Shank Racing went from one to six races in 2018.
The year did not start off well as Harvey had a hard accident exiting turn 12. He returned at Long Beach and he started 17th but was fighting for a top ten finish before settling for 12th. Harvey started on the 11th row for the Indianapolis 500 but he worked himself into a position where he was running second with five laps to go though it was all with a pit stop needed to make it to the finish. He did complete all 500 miles and finished 16th.
Unfortunately for the team its home race at Mid-Ohio did not go well where Harvey started and finished 20th. After a few cars had been taken out on lap one put him in the top ten and he appeared set for a career-best finish before he was caught out by a caution and shuffled back. He had to settle for a 16th place finish. The season ended with a lackluster 17th at Sonoma.
Numbers to Remember:
18.555: Average finish through nine career IndyCar starts. His best finish of 12th at Long Beach last year occurred on his birthday.
17.555: Dario Franchitti's average finish through the first nine starts of his IndyCar career with his best finish being ninth at Surfers Paradise.
19.333: Josef Newgarden's average finish through the first nine start of his IndyCar career with his best finish being 11th at St. Petersburg.
Predictions/Goals:
Just keep doing what he is doing.
Harvey is in a great position. The team has expanded its schedule to ten races in 2019, all signs point to full-time status in the near future and Harvey is its guy. He just has to keep up the results and he will get a full-time opportunity. I am sure he is going to want to improve in year two of this part-time program. I don't think anyone is satisfied with 12th being the team's best finish but it had to start somewhere.
Part-time teams are always fighting from behind. There are too many great full-time teams to think Harvey will come into a race and just end up qualifying ninth and finishing fourth. It is difficult and it takes time. I think Harvey can improve and I think he will improve this year. Though he will run majority of the season, he still is not a full-time guy and will not have as much seat time. The one thing on Harvey's side is he will run the first six races and that is a big opportunity to improve results and get some momentum going before he runs at Road America, Mid-Ohio, Portland and Laguna Seca to close out his season.
I think realistic goals for Harvey include advancing to the second round of qualifying at least one or twice and picking up two or three top ten finishes. That seems low but IndyCar is difficult. You cannot expect someone to get seven top ten finishes from ten starts. You cannot expect Harvey to qualify in the top eight on six occasions when he is going against three Penske cars, four Andretti cars, two Ganassi cars, two from Schmidt Peterson, Sébastien Bourdais at Dale Coyne Racing and two Rahal Letterman Lanigan cars. You would not be surprised if those 14 cars took the top 14 spots on the grid in every race.
Harvey can only hope to breakthrough on a few occasions against such tough opposition and he has the ability to do it just not every time he enters a race.
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.
