2020 IndyCar Predictions

We close another year with IndyCar predictions and we end 2019 with 75 days until the 2020 season opener at St. Petersburg. IndyCar heads into 2020 with a change in ownership ready to be finalized. Sometime in the first week of the year, ownership of IndyCar and Indianapolis Motor Speedway with official be transferred to Roger Penske. IndyCar's greatest owner will control the entire kingdom. The Hulman-George family era will come to a close after nearly three quarters of a century in power. It is scary to think about such a seismic and previously unthinkable change.

But it is happening and there is nothing we can do about it. We will live with it. We will focus on the races and worry about the future will bring later. The 2020 season will see the introduction of the aeroscreen, a return to Richmond, a tweak to the push-to-pass system and a handful of new faces on the grid. What will happen on track? Here are 12 predictions for you to track...

1. Team Penske does not win either Indianapolis race
In year one of ownership, Roger Penske will not be crowning himself winner of either IndyCar race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Team Penske has won the Grand Prix of Indianapolis five consecutive times. Team Penske has won the Indianapolis 500 the last two years. The numbers are not on Team Penske's side in either case.

There have been cases of teams winning six consecutive races at one track. Chip Ganassi Racing did it at Mid-Ohio from 2009 to 2014. Andretti Autosport did it at Iowa from 2010 to 2015. From some rough research, those are the only two times a team has won six consecutive races at one track.

As for the Indianapolis 500, only twice has a team won the race in three consecutive years. Lou Moore did it 1947 to 1949 and Team Penske did it 2001 to 2003. That is it. Once again, numbers are not on Team Penske's side.

But if there were any team to buck the trend, wouldn't it be Team Penske? Wouldn't it make sense for Penske to keep adding to the record book?

It is very well possible. This is Team Penske after all. The team could sweep the season and nobody would be surprised. I see the strength in IndyCar and somebody else is going to breakthrough in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis. Chip Ganassi Racing is going to win that event eventually. It nearly did in 2019. Andretti Autosport will eventually win that race. The Grand Prix of Indianapolis could be a race where Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing gets a victory or perhaps it is a race where Ed Carpenter Racing takes a surprise victory.

As for the Indianapolis 500, Josef Newgarden could win the race in 2020 and that would make sense. It would be three consecutive Team Penske victories with three different drivers and Newgarden would check off the final box for his IndyCar career. However, there are many strong drivers at the Indianapolis 500.

Alexander Rossi has done the race four times and very well could have won all four. Ed Carpenter is knocking on the door. Scott Dixon is bound to have another Indianapolis 500 where he is in the conversation late. Ryan Hunter-Reay has had strong runs at Indianapolis. It would not be a surprise if Colton Herta has a knack for Indianapolis Motor Speedway in year two. Perhaps one of Graham Rahal or Marco Andretti could have that dream day and add to their family legacies.

Team Penske got a lot of attention for things achieved at 16th and Georgetown in 2019. For 2020, maybe it will be a year where others will get to experience the glory that only Indianapolis Motor Speedway can provide.

2. Alexander Rossi wins at least two races by less than six seconds
Rossi won two races in 2019. He won at Long Beach with a margin of victory of 20.236 seconds and he won at Road America with a margin of victory of 28.439 seconds.

They were two of the most impressive races we have seen in some time in IndyCar. The only problem for Rossi is those were his only two victories in 2019 and he finished third in the championship.

There were a few other races where Rossi came close but was not able to pull out a victory, notably at the Indianapolis 500, the first Belle Isle race and Texas, those latter two races Rossi was second to Josef Newgarden.

Rossi is going to win races in 2020. If 2018 was the year where Rossi had great days but found ways to cough up points and 2019 was the year where Rossi found consistency but did not have the muscle to take the championship then 2020 is the year where he perfects the balance and has great days combined with consistency and the muscle to win the title.

I think two victories is the minimum for Rossi and he is going to have one or two races where he might not have the best car but he finds a way to win, whether that is through pit strategy or improving the set up as a race goes on. Rossi's 2020 season is going to look different from his 2019 season and it should be for the better. Rossi is going to be at the top of the championship for another year. This could be the year he breaks through.

3. Felix Rosenqvist gets his first career victory in the first half of the season
The 2019 IndyCar Rookie of the Year Felix Rosenqvist did not get a victory in his maiden season but he had a few races where he came very close.

Rosenqvist led on debut at St. Petersburg before getting shuffled down the running order at St. Petersburg. He was blindingly quick at Long Beach before an accident in the second round of qualifying kept him from advancing to the Fast Six and he had to start 12th. He won pole position for the Grand Prix of Indianapolis but did not have the right set up come time for the race. His most notable race was Mid-Ohio because Rosenqvist probably had the best car that day, ran the best strategy but fell 0.093 seconds short of his first career victory thanks to his teammate. And then there was Laguna Seca, where causing a local yellow kept Rosenqvist from advancing from the first round of qualifying, forced him to start 14th when he had one of the two best cars in the field and then he drove his way to fifth in that race.

Rosenqvist is knocking on the door and I do not think it will take long. I think he could win St. Petersburg. He knows St. Petersburg very well. I think he could win Long Beach. I think we could win either of the Belle Isle races. Rosenqvist has made a name for himself on street courses. It would only be fitting if his first IndyCar victory came at one.

Since IndyCar has an odd-numbered total races the midway point of the season is the ninth race at Texas, meaning there are eight before and eight after. There are not two equal halves. That means for this prediction to be fulfilled, Rosenqvist has to win one of the first eight races. I think that is going to happen and if he strings together a few wins early we could be looking at a new face in the championship race.

4. The difference between Colton Herta's average starting position and average finishing position is less than 3.0
While Herta's rookie season will be remembered for his two victories and impressive drives, Herta immediately set himself up as one of the best qualifiers in IndyCar.

These are not quite Will Power numbers but for a rookie these were damn impressive. If you throw out Pocono, where qualifying was rained out and entrant points' set the grid, Herta's average starting position was 6.9375, fifth best in IndyCar in 2019 behind only Scott Dixon, Alexander Rossi, Josef Newgarden and Power. In fact, only one position separated Power and Herta throughout the entire season.

The next best qualifier in 2019 after Herta was Simon Pagenaud at 9.0625.

The qualifying results were there but the race results weren't always there. That is not all on Herta. He made a few mistakes but most of the time it was mechanical problems that cost him promising results. That led to an average finish of 13.235 and among drivers that started at least 70% of the races that was 13th-best.

I don't think Herta is going to have the same type of problems in 2020 and I think he can easily close that gap.

At Long Beach, Herta was running tenth and brushed the wall ending his race. At Texas, he was set for a top five finish before he and Dixon got together. The half shaft broke at Iowa when Herta was going to finish seventh or eighth. He spun on his own when likely going to finish seventh or eighth at Pocono. If you gave Herta finishes of tenth, fifth, eighth and eighth his average finish was drop from 13.235 to 10.647.

Also remember the gearbox broke on Herta after three laps in the Indianapolis 500 after three laps. I don't know what Herta's day would have been if the gearbox did not immediately fail him but if you gave Herta 18th, the first car one lap down, and combine that with those other four results his average finish would have been 9.7647.

Herta doesn't have to win four more races to get his average finish down to something more reflective of his ability. He just needs to have the equipment last him for the entire race and bring the car home when he is running is a good position. I think Herta will do that in 2020 and with it should come an improved championship finish.

5. Oliver Askew and Rinus VeeKay are within 2.0 points per race of each other
When I wrote this prediction down we weren't sure how many races each Askew and VeeKay would run in 2020. There were thoughts Askew would be part-time with Chip Ganassi Racing but how many races beyond his three scholarship-funded races was not clear. VeeKay was always in line for a seat at Ed Carpenter Racing but it was thought he would run the road courses in the #20 Chevrolet.

Instead, Askew will be full-time with Arrow McLaren SP and VeeKay will be full-time in ECR's #21 Chevrolet.

The original thought for this prediction was how could we compare these two drivers, who have been championship rivals in all three levels of the Road to Indy, if one runs a significantly smaller portion of the races? The thought was points per race would allow us to look at VeeKay if he made 12 starts and Askew if he made five or six starts and give us an idea how each did.

The good news is both should be full-time but I will stick to points per race because that will give us more of an idea of how close they are to one another. Championship position can be misleading. They could be right next to each other in the championship but if one driver scores 50 points more than the other they weren't as close as they appeared. However, there could be five championship positions between them but if it is one of those clusters where 25 points cover six drivers than the numbers would point to these drivers being close despite a few drivers in-between them.

How much is 2.0 points per races?

Felix Rosenqvist took Rookie of the Year with 425 points, five more than Colton Herta. Based on points per race the difference was 0.2941 points per race. Comparing Santino Ferrucci and Marcus Ericsson, Ferrucci had 351 points, Ericsson had 290 points but started one fewer race, meaning the difference was 2.522 points per race in favor of Ferrucci.

I think these two will be close, not just they have been close in U.S. F2000, Pro Mazda and Indy Lights but because they are in similar circumstances. VeeKay joins ECR, which has been struggling to find an identity since the departure of Josef Newgarden. Askew joins a team that is taking on a new identity with Schmidt Peterson Motorsports becoming Arrow McLaren SP and switching to Chevrolet engines.

These are two teams that are in the same ballpark. Last year, SPM had James Hinchcliffe finish 12th in the championship and ECR had Spencer Pigot finishing 14th in the championship. While there was only one position between these two drivers, Hinchcliffe averaged 21.764 points per race to Pigot's 19.705, a difference of 2.059 points per race with the advantage to the SPM driver.

Will that change now that AMSP will take on Chevrolet engines while ECR has years of experience with the manufacture? Will VeeKay adapt to IndyCar quicker than Askew? I think these two rookies, the top two from the 2019 Indy Lights championship, are going to be easy to compare head-to-head throughout 2020.

6. Jack Harvey does not meet the goals Mike Shank has set
Mike Shank stated on The Marshall Pruett Podcast his goals for 2020 are finish in the top eight of the championship, advance to the second round of qualifying at every road/street course race and have two to three podium finishes.

Shank says those are realistic goals but that is asking a lot.

Harvey was 13th in the championship after the Indianapolis 500 in 2019 and he had run every race through the Indianapolis 500. Harvey did have a third place finish in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis and he spent a fair portion of that race as a contender for the victory and pretty much that entire race in the top five. Harvey made it out of the first round of qualifying five times out of nine times he participated in knockout qualifying.

Let's start with the championship: We can pretty much pencil in three Team Penske cars, Dixon and Rossi into the top eight of the championship. That leaves three spots with two more Ganassi cars, four more Andretti cars, two Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing cars and Arrow McLaren SP will likely hope to have at least one car fighting for the top eight.

Add the Shank car and that is ten cars competing for the final three spots in the top eight. Good luck.

As for advancing from the first round of qualifying at every road and street course races: Only one driver did that in 2019 and that was Scott Dixon. Will Power had one race where he did not advance (Toronto). Alexander Rossi had one race where he did not advance (Grand Prix of Indianapolis). Josef Newgarden was the champion and failed to make it out of round one on three occasions. Simon Pagenaud ran the full season and he made it out of the first round of qualifying the same number of times Harvey did.

Shank has to set the bar somewhere but for a single-car team that will be in its first full season I think his goals cannot be met but the season still be considered a success. I think if Harvey ends up tenth in the championship, only makes it out of the first round of qualifying seven times and has one podium finish the team should not be ashamed of those results and nor should Harvey lose his job.

When Shank stated these goals I got a little scared for Harvey. I would hate to see him get canned after 2020 just because he wasn't in the top eight. Harvey has not an outstanding job working his way to IndyCar and he has found the right program for him. The team has shown early success and it is good to set goals and set the bar high. Everyone needs something to shoot for but failure to meet these goals should not lead to a complete overhaul of the program.

It is going to be tough and I think Harvey will be somewhere between 11th and 15th in the championship, which might not sound good, but I think he will have bright spots throughout the season. There will be races where Harvey is a driver that gets a lot of attention afterward for what he did.

Keep in mind Harvey will be going to three ovals he has never been to before and another that he has not been to since 2015. The team will still be learning. There are going to be rough patches and I hope the team stays together for 2021 and beyond.

7. Graham Rahal does not have a fifth consecutive decline in championship finish
The second half of the 2010s was good but concerning for Rahal. He was a championship contender in 2015 only to finish fourth in the championship, a disservice to the season he actually had.

Since that fourth in the championship, Rahal has finished fifth, sixth, eighth and tenth in the championship. He has slowly slid back each season. Winning a photo finish in Texas and sweeping a doubleheader at Belle Isle did not stop the bleeding. If the slid continues into 2020, Rahal will finish outside the top ten of the championship for the first time since 2014.

That will not be the case in 2020 for Rahal. It is hard to pick out what ten drivers will make up the top ten of the championship, mostly because you list 15 names that you definitely think will be there and at least five will end up on the outside.

All Rahal has to do to fulfill this prediction is finish tenth again. He doesn't need to finish ninth or eighth or fifth or first. He just needs to finish tenth, which is basically the middle in IndyCar. That sounds easy but once again, out of Rahal, Newgarden, Pagenaud, Power, Rossi, Herta, Dixon, Hunter-Reay, Rosenqvist, Sato, Ericsson, VeeKay, O'Ward, Askew, Ferrucci, Palou and Harvey, which seven do you think will not be in the top ten?

The one thing in Rahal's favor is the grid, on paper at least, seems to be slightly less competitive than when Sébastien Bourdais and James Hinchcliffe were there. That might just be familiarity and the names Bourdais and Hinchcliffe seem like more of a threat than Palou and Askew but Rahal will have experience over those drivers. Add to it that A.J. Foyt Racing and Carlin have yet to announce drivers and the number of possible top ten finishers is smaller than if they had already announced their lineups.

I am not saying Rahal is going to have a standout year. Sato won two races in 2019 but Rahal had more top ten finishes. The difference is when Sato had a good day it was a very good day and Rahal had too many days where he was somewhere between seventh and ninth and never had a race where he was fighting for a victory. Rahal can win a race in 2020 but it is going to take a lot for him to repeat his 2015 efforts.

8. Santino Ferrucci finishes outside the top eight in oval points
In 2019, Ferrucci was one of the most unexpected success in the IndyCar oval races. He ended up with three top five finishes, four top ten finishes, completed 1,123 of 1,124 laps and scored the fourth most oval points behind Simon Pagenaud, Josef Newgarden and Alexander Rossi.

The next best rookie on ovals in 2019 was Marcus Ericsson, who scored 93 points in five oval races while Ferrucci score 170 points.

Ferrucci was fantastic but his results came with a bit of fortune. Every successful driver is going to have fortune goes his or her way and Ferrucci got a seventh place finish after five cars ahead of him were taken out in an accident. He got up to fourth at Texas after similar circumstances and strategy. He was fourth at Pocono after five cars that were starting ahead of him were taken out on lap one.

We do not know where Ferrucci would have finished in any of these races if none of these accidents had occurred but it likely would have been a few places down the order. A few places down the order in three races adds up. That could be 20 points per race. Take away 60 points from Ferrucci's total and he would have been 12th in oval points.

The other thing to consider is Ferrucci has lost engineer Mike Cannon, who has taken the same position on Scott Dixon's pit stand, and Dale Coyne Racing has lost Craig Hampson, who is moving over to Arrow McLaren SP.

Remember how far down the order Dale Coyne Racing was on ovals prior to the arrival of Hampson and Sébastien Bourdais in 2017?

From 2014-2016, Dale Coyne Racing had zero top ten finishes and an average finish of 18.945.

I don't think Ferrucci and Dale Coyne Racing will immediately return to its 2014-16 form. It might have lost Hampson and Cannon but the team is not going to lose all of its speed. Ferrucci might still be able to fight for a few top ten finishes but I do not think he is going to have as many top five finishes. I also don't think Ferrucci is going to have the same type of fortune and gain five spots because of a big accident. There is probably going to be an oval race where Ferrucci brushes the wall or is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The 2020 season will be one where we learn a lot about Ferrucci. He had all the pieces around him in 2019 to help him succeed. Those are all gone. There might be capable people at DCR and the bottom will not fall out but I expect more difficult days for Ferrucci and it is going to test his patience.

9. Richmond has somewhere between 400-600 passes
This is a wide range but I am not entirely sure what race we will see at Richmond.

Iowa went from 955 passes in 2018 to 579 passes in 2019. Gateway went from 396 passes in 2018 to 275 passes in 2019. The 2018 Phoenix race had 280 passes.

Richmond falls in line with these three tracks. It is smaller than Iowa but has similarities with Phoenix. It does not have progressive banking. It could end up being like Phoenix but while we had three Phoenix races that were not great we have last year's Gateway race that had fewer passes than the 2018 Phoenix race and people cheered as a good race.

I think Richmond and IndyCar should be shooting for this range in terms of number of passes. Whether or not the race is good is not dependent on the number of passes but it certainly helps. Whether or not Richmond produces a good race comes down to if passes are possible, if passes can be made for the lead, if one car with better tire degradation can work its way ahead one that is struggling with tires and if traffic can be negotiated in a steady fashion.

10. There are at least nine different race winners
There were only seven different winners in IndyCar in 2019. That does not sound bad but that is the fewest number of winners in IndyCar since the 2010 season.

Seven different winners is not bad. It is a debate of quality versus quantity. You had Colton Herta win two races with Harding Steinbrenner Racing. Alexander Rossi won two races. Scott Dixon won twice. Takuma Sato won twice, one of which was a short oval race.

Team Penske did win nine of 17 races but that is kind of the norm. A bunch of different teams win but Team Penske still finds a way to win half the races. These aren't the days when Team Penske and Ganassi combined to win 16 of 17 races.

While Team Penske continues to have a firm grasp on IndyCar the field is deep and there are plenty of potential winners out there. The 2020 grid does appear to have taken a bit of a hit with Sébastien Bourdais exiting the series and James Hinchcliffe on the sidelines and with a full-time ride appearing to be less and less likely with each passing day.

There are still a lot of great drivers out there and drivers capable of winning. All three Team Penske drivers are going to win again in 2020. Add to that Dixon is going to win at least once; I already said Rosenqvist is going to win one of the first eight races, Rossi and Herta are both going to win races and we have seven winners already.

Though Ryan Hunter-Reay has not had the same frequency of victories as he once did you cannot rule him out from putting a race together and ending up on the top step of the podium. Sato could replicate his road and street course pace again in 2020. Sato has won a race in three consecutive seasons after all. It would not come as a surprise if Sato made it a perfect 7-for-7 of 2019 winners getting a victory in 2020.

This could be the year Graham Rahal ends his drought or maybe Ed Carpenter finds that oval magic. Maybe we get another surprise winner and either Oliver Askew, Patricio O'Ward or Rinus VeeKay score a first career victory.

IndyCar is still a place where on any given race day any team can have the pieces fall in place and take a victory. I think we will see IndyCar trend upward a little bit, balancing out the slight dip we saw in 2019.

11. Marcus Ericsson finishes ahead of the second AMSP driver in the championship
Ericsson's sophomore season will occur in a new location with the Swede moving from Schmidt Peterson Motorsports to Chip Ganassi Racing.

Ericsson's rookie season was not spectacular but he did have plenty of promising days. He did get a runner-up finish in the second Belle Isle race. He had a respectable seventh his first time at Texas. His rookie season is full of missed opportunities. He had a top ten run going at Austin but a pit lane penalty for unsafe released dropped him to a 15th place result. He was the best Schmidt car in the Indianapolis 500 before he spun entering the pit lane. He had a top ten run going at Iowa before a penalty for improper pit entry.

The mistakes should be out of the way for Ericsson. He learned the tracks. He learned the limits. His 2020 season should be an improvement over 17th in the championship with 290 points.

However, how will his hopeful improvement compare to the two Arrow McLaren SP drivers?

Oliver Askew will be a full-fledged rookie. Patricio O'Ward ran seven races in 2019 but he still has a lot to learn. Schmidt Petersen Motorsports was not having great success in recent seasons with championship results. The team has only one top ten championship finish since 2015 and that was James Hinchcliffe in tenth in 2018.

In 2015, James Jakes was 16th in the championship. In 2016, Hinchcliffe was 13th and Mikhail Aleshin was 16th. Hinchcliffe was 13th the year after that and Aleshin was 17th in the championship when he lost his full-time roll after Iowa. In 2018, Hinchcliffe was tenth and Robert Wickens was 11th after spending much of the season sixth in the championship before missing the final three races. Last season, Hinchcliffe was 12th and Ericsson was 17th.

O'Ward is highly touted but out-performing Schmidt's past will be difficult to do. Askew will be completely new to this. Askew won the Indy Lights championship and took the fast track up the Road to Indy spending only one season in each step on his way to IndyCar.

The one thing in Ericsson's favor is even the third-best Ganassi car on the grid is a good car. From 2011 to 2017, the average championship finish for the third-best Ganassi was 10.2 with that driver finishing in the top ten of the championship in four of seven seasons.

I think we are looking at a season where Ericsson could be somewhere between tenth and 14th in the championship. He may finish behind one AMSP car but both seems like much. Ericsson will be in the right equipment. The question will be whether or not AMSP makes significant progress with two young drivers.

12. There will not be one race that starts on one day and ends on another
We are not going to have a repeat of Iowa. We are not going to be starting at 11:30 pm on a Saturday night and end around 2:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

We are not going to have a repeat of Barber from a few years ago where we got about 20 laps in, it poured, the track was lost and the final 63 laps were run on a Monday afternoon.

We are not going to repeat Texas 2016 where we did 70-plus laps on a Sunday in June and finished it on the final Saturday in August.

We are not going to have the nightmare Indianapolis 500 that gets four laps in on Sunday, gets another 50 in on Monday and is finished on Tuesday.

However, this prediction is not ruling out rain-delayed races. All this predictions says if the race starts on one day it will end within that day. That means if the Indianapolis 500 is delayed to Monday and no laps were run on Sunday and the race is officially over when Monday concludes then it still falls within this prediction.

If Mid-Ohio gets delayed two weeks for some reason but the entire race takes place within one day than this prediction is still good.

I left a lot of wiggle room for this prediction.

That is it! All the predictions are complete. If you missed predictions for NASCAR, Formula One, sports cars or Et Cetera, please check those out.

I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year and we will quickly get into in 2020. Some fun is planned but we also have some business to attend to. Races are coming up quickly and previews are in order. Keep an eye out for those over the next few days and weeks. We are going to be in the thick of motorsports season before we know it.