2018 Review
Wins: 1 (Iowa)
Poles: 1 (St. Petersburg)
Championship Finishes: 10th (James Hinchcliffe), 11th (Robert Wickens)
2019 Drivers:
James Hinchcliffe - #5 Arrow Honda
While Robert Wickens stole the headlines at St. Petersburg, Hinchcliffe did well for himself, qualifying seventh and finishing fourth in a race where he was solidly in the top ten. SPM had a great shot at victory at Phoenix with Wickens impressing many in his first oval start and both he and Hinchcliffe were fighting for spots on the podium. Unfortunately, neither driver came in for tires under the final caution and while Wickens held on for second, Hinchcliffe slid back to sixth.
Hinchcliffe would finish ninth at Long Beach and followed that up with a third at Barber, a race he spent much at the front. A seventh in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis made it five top ten finishes from the first five races and left him fifth in the championship but the driver of the #5 Honda would have the season turn on its ear.
Time was not on his side for one day in May and Hinchcliffe failed to qualify for the Indianapolis 500. He would finish outside the top ten in both Belle Isle races and in three weeks he dropped from fifth to 11th in the championship.
The tide turned in Texas with a fourth place finish from 15th and he went from 16th to tenth at Road America. He started 11th at Iowa but charged to the front and put himself in contention. When cautions fell his way and Josef Newgarden got caught in lapped traffic, Hinchcliffe pounced, took the lead and ran away. Time was on the Canadian's side this day with a late caution preventing the race from restarting and gave Hinchcliffe his sixth career victory. He followed it up with a fourth place finish at Toronto.
The bad news is another year ended with a string of poor results. Hinchcliffe did not score a top ten finish over the final five races of the season but held on for tenth in the championship on tiebreaker over Wickens.
Numbers to Remember:
7: Consecutive seasons with a podium finish.
62.29: Percentage of lead lap finishes in 122 starts, that is eighth best among the 12 regular drivers with over 100 IndyCar starts ahead of only Marco Andretti (60.829%), Ryan Hunter-Reay (57.446%), Charlie Kimball (50.746%) and Takuma Sato (44.736%).
20: Hinchcliffe has led at least 20 laps in all eight of his IndyCar seasons.
2: Only twice has Hinchcliffe led more than 100 laps in a season and in both of those seasons he lead over 100 laps in one race.
Predictions/Goals:
This is getting tiring but it is the same story every year for Hinchcliffe. He has to finish better than eighth in the championship. He has never finished better than eighth in the championship. Hinchcliffe needs to do that to justify anyone saying he is one of the best in IndyCar. You cannot be considered one of the best when you have never cracked the top seven in the championship. Heck, you have to crack at least the top five to be considered one of the best. He may have a handful of race victories but he has to put together a complete season.
Schmidt Peterson Motorsports needs the improvement in championship finish just as much as Hinchcliffe does. This team is talking about becoming one of the Big Four in IndyCar with Team Penske, Chip Ganassi Racing and Andretti Autosport after Arrow increased its funding into the team. The problem is SPM's result have been sliding backward compared to the Simon Pagenaud-era. Pagenaud was in the top five of the championship in all three of his seasons at SPM. Since Pagenaud left, the team has only cracked the top ten once and that was last year when Hinchcliffe finished 10th.
The 2018 season started off well for Hinchcliffe but he has to have a more balanced season. Last year, he ended the season with five consecutive finishes outside the top ten. The year before that he finished outside the top ten in four of the final five races with his best result being eighth. He has never finished every race in a season and I think he has to aim for that and as hard as it may be and he has to finish on the lead lap more. Last year, he had 13 lead lap finishes out of 16 starts. At 81.25%, it is his best lead lap finishing percentage in his IndyCar career (minus 2013 when he only started five races) and it is the only time he finished on the lead lap in over 75% of his starts.
I think if Hinchcliffe is going to aim for a career-best championship finish, I think he has to aim for career-best numbers in every category. I don't think he will be able to get four victories but the most top five finishes he has had in a season is six and the most top ten finishes is 11. It will be tough to get but Robert Wickens had seven top five finishes and ten top ten finishes and missed the final three races. It is doable for Hinchcliffe. This grid keeps getting better and Hinchcliffe has to find another level.
Marcus Ericsson - #7 Arrow Honda
After five seasons in Formula One, split between Caterham and Sauber, Ericsson moves to IndyCar. The results leave little to brag about. Ericsson made 97 starts in Formula One and amassed a grand total of 18 points in his career. He had three scoreless seasons and scored nine points in 2015 and 2018. His best finish was eight in the 2015 Australian Grand Prix, his 17th career start and his first for Sauber.
Diving back into his junior formula career, Ericsson was the Formula BMW UK champion in 2007 and in 2008 he finished fifth in the British Formula Three Championship behind Jaime Alguersauri, Oliver Turvey, Brendon Hartley and Sergio Pérez but he finished ahead of the likes of Nick Tandy and Max Chilton. He went to Japan in 2009 and won the All-Japan Formula 3 Championship but also made six starts in British Formula Three, where he won twice beating drivers such as eventual champion Daniel Ricciardo, Renger van der Zande, eventual IndyCar race winner Carlos Huertas and Chilton. At Macau that year, he finished second to future Indy Lights champions Jean-Karl Vernay in the qualifying race and fourth in the Macau Grand Prix behind Edoardo Mortara, Vernay and Sam Bird but five seconds ahead of Valtteri Bottas.
The 2010 season would mark the start of four years in GP2. He won in his first season at Valencia but finished 17th in the championship on 11 points. He would improve to tenth in the championship and score 25 points the following year but not win a race. He would win the feature race at Spa-Francorchamps in 2012 and had feature race podium finishes at Monaco, Valencia and Monza in a season that saw him finish eighth in the championship. He won two pole positions early in the 2013 season but he did not finish in the points in the first nine races. He won the feature race at the Nürburgring and score four more podium finishes, salvaging sixth in the championship.
Numbers to Remember:
1,954: Number of days between Ericsson's last top five finish, a third in the GP2 feature race at Abu Dhabi on November 2, 2013 and the St. Petersburg season opener. Alexander Rossi won that race with Jolyon Palmer in second.
2,073: Number of days between Ericsson's most recent victory at the GP2 feature race at the Nürburgring on July 6, 2013 and the St. Petersburg season opener.
2,080: Number of days between Ericsson's most recent pole position for the GP2 feature race at Silverstone on June 29, 2013 and the St. Petersburg season opener.
Predictions/Goals:
This is a tough one to call. Based on his Formula One experience, Ericsson does not have a lot to sell on paper but going back to his junior formula results and taking into consideration that his results did improve greatly in 2018 after Sauber received increased funding from Alfa Romeo, he could be a sleeper in 2019.
It helps and hurts that he is stepping into the vacancy left after Robert Wickens was sidelined. It helps because he knows this is a car that can compete at the front and contend for race victories. It hurts because Wickens set the bar that damn high. The one concern is Piers Phillips has left this team so there will be a bit of a shake up on the pit stand but at the same time Ericsson didn't work with Phillips so there was no relationship there and he is going to be starting fresh anyway.
I think Ericsson will do well. Not Wickens level but better than how Zach Veach did last year. I think he could put up numbers similar to Rubens Barrichello's only IndyCar season in 2012. Barrichello came into IndyCar and had good results but never any bad days. The results got better as the year went along. The year started with a pair of top ten finishes at Barber and Long Beach and he was respectable in the Indianapolis 500 after starting tenth and finishing 11th. He qualified third at Milwaukee and finished tenth in that race; he finished seventh at Iowa, fourth at Sonoma and fifth at Baltimore. He had seven top ten finishes from 14 starts and finished 11th in the championship.
If Ericsson matches Barrichello's number from 2012 I think that is a big success for him and he will likely have a sophomore season, unlike Barrichello, which parenthetically Barrichello should have had. Seven top ten finishes is not unrealistic for Ericsson. It is asking a lot but we should remember we have not seen a Formula One driver come into IndyCar and just go straight to the front in recent seasons. Barrichello was excellent in his one season but he never had a stranglehold on a race and he never had everyone thinking he was going to be the dominant driver at the front of the pack entering a race. Max Chilton came into IndyCar and had a lot of growing pains and that was after a year in Indy Lights to get acclimated to most of the tracks.
My one concern for Ericsson is while he had success in GP2, he had plenty of lackluster results. In 84 GP2 starts, he finished outside the points in 54 of them and if you add his eight GP2 Asis Series starts, he failed to finish in the points in 60 of 92 starts. That isn't taking into consideration that he finished in the points in only 11 of 97 Formula One races. In nine seasons, he finished outside the points of a combined 146 of 189 races. That is not a good hit rate and part of that is because Ericsson was in bad cars in Formula One but focusing on just Ericsson's GP2 results, they can best be described as streaky. SPM already has one streaky driver in Hinchcliffe. It cannot afford Ericsson to have four or five strong results and then have seven or eight consecutive finishes outside the top fifteen.
Ericsson should aim to be on the cusp of the top ten of the championship. I think Ericsson will have his struggles but I think there will be one or two road courses where he qualifies in the top ten, possibly even the top six and stays towards the front, possibly getting a top five or podium finish.
Schmidt Peterson Motorsports is shooting high and while it is now or never for Hinchcliffe, the team does have a bit of a project with Ericsson. It is kind of two conflicting mindsets. Hinchcliffe has to get results but Ericsson has to learn and get mileage. While it hopes to create the Big Four, SPM has a lot of competition for that honor but in all honesty it is going to take more than one good year to reach that aspiration. Cementing Big Four status must come after multiple championship seasons and victories. At its best, SPM will just have laid the foundation for a Big Four push this year.
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.
