The fourth round of the 2022 NTT IndyCar Series season takes place at Barber Motorsports Park, the first natural-terrain road course of the season. Kicking off the month of May, Barber looks to have something that has never been done before in the track's history. That would be having four consecutive different winners. This is only the second time the track has had a streak of three different winners. Six of the seven past Barber winners are entered this weekend, but there will be 20 drivers looking for their first triumph in Alabama. With 26 entries, this matches the largest Barber grid. Barber had 26 entries for its 2011, 2012 and 2013 races.
Coverage
Time: Coverage begins at 1:00 p.m. ET on Sunday May 1 with green flag scheduled for 1:05 p.m. ET.
Channel: NBC
Announcers: Leigh Diffey, Townsend Bell and James Hinchcliffe will be in the booth. Marty Snider, Kevin Lee and Dillon Welch will work pit lane.
Channel: NBC
Announcers: Leigh Diffey, Townsend Bell and James Hinchcliffe will be in the booth. Marty Snider, Kevin Lee and Dillon Welch will work pit lane.
IndyCar Weekend Schedule
Friday:
First Practice: 4:00 p.m. ET (60 minutes)
Saturday:
Second Practice: 10:00 a.m. ET (60 minutes)
Qualifying: 1:00 p.m. ET
Qualifying: 1:00 p.m. ET
Final Practice: 5:20 p.m. ET (30 minutes)
Sunday:
Race: 1:05 p.m. ET (90 laps)
Sunday:
Race: 1:05 p.m. ET (90 laps)
* - All sessions will be available live on Peacock
Newgarden's Million
Barber Motorsports Park is already one of Josef Newgarden's favorite racetracks, but this year it could make Newgarden significantly wealthier.
With two victories in the bag, one on an oval at Texas Motor Speedway and the other on the streets of Long Beach, Newgarden is the first driver eligible for the PeopleReady Force for Good Challenge $1 million prize.
PeopleReady, an industrial staffing company, and IndyCar have partnered for the 2022 season and is offering a $1 million prize to the first driver to win on a road course, a street course and an oval. The driver will get $500,000 while the other $500,000 will go to the charity of the driver and team's choice.
Newgarden is not only the first driver with a crack at the $1 million prize, but he will also get two shots at it as the next two races are on road courses and the earliest he could have a competitor for the prize will be at Belle Isle in June.
One driver winning on each track discipline is quite common in IndyCar. It happened in six consecutive seasons from 2015 through 2020. Scott Dixon accomplished it in 2015 with victories at Long Beach, Texas and Sonoma, and the Sonoma victory also clinched Dixon the IndyCar championship. In 2016, Will Power did it. Power didn't win until the second Belle Isle race, but he then he won the race after that at Road America before winning at Pocono in August.
Newgarden has already won on each three discipline in a single season, in fact, he has done it twice. His first time was 2017, his first year with Team Penske. His first Penske victory was at Barber. His first street course victory did not come until Toronto, and his oval victory at Gateway put him in control of the championship. Newgarden's second time winning on each track discipline was in 2020. Newgarden won at Iowa and Gateway, but he closed the season with victories on the IMS road course in the first Harvest Grand Prix race and then in the St. Petersburg season finale.
Alexander Rossi accomplished the triumvirate in 2018 with victories at Long Beach, Mid-Ohio and Pocono. Simon Pagenaud first two victories in 2019 were at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, first on the road course and then in the Indianapolis 500. Pagenaud would later win at Toronto.
If Newgarden was able to complete the PeopleReady Force for Good Challenge at Barber it would be the first time he has won three consecutive races in his IndyCar career. It would also be the fourth time in IndyCar history a driver would have won three consecutive races on a road course, a street course and an oval.
The first driver to do it was Al Unser, Jr. in 1994 when he won at Mid-Ohio, Loudon and Vancouver. Five years later, Juan Pablo Montoya nearly identically matched Unser, Jr.'s achievement. Montoya won at Mid-Ohio, the one-mile Chicago Motor Speedway and Vancouver. The last driver to achieve such a three-peat was Cristiano da Matta in 2002. Da Matta won at Portland, Chicago Motor Speedway and Toronto.
Who Needs a Result?
We are reaching the quarter pole of the IndyCar season, and this will be the make it or break it race for many.
History tells us the fourth race is a seminal for any championship hopes. Every champion since 1947 has had his first top ten finish come in one of the first four races of the season. The only champion to take more than three races to get his first top ten finish was Danny Sullivan in 1988, who was second in the fourth race of that season at Milwaukee. It was also the first of four consecutive podium finishes for Sullivan, and he had five podium finishes in the next six races and six consecutive top five results. Sullivan closed the 1988 season with seven podium finishes and 11 top five finishes in the final 12 races.
Entering Barber Motorsports Park, nine drivers do not have a top ten finish: Felix Rosenqvist, Christian Lundgaard, Conor Daly, David Malukas, Jack Harvey, Callum Ilott, Dalton Kellett, Tatiana Calderón and Devlin DeFrancesco.
While top ten finishes are important, so are top five finishes, and the only champion not to have a top five finish within the first four races of a season was Gil de Ferran in 2000. De Ferran's first top five result was his victory in the fifth race of the season at Nazareth.
Drivers without a top five finish this year include Rinus VeeKay, Graham Rahal, Simon Pagenaud, Hélio Castroneves, Jimmie Johnson, Takuma Sato, Alexander Rossi and Kyle Kirkwood.
There is a little more wiggle room for podium finishes, but not much. Eighty-five of 90 champions since 1947 had at least one podium finish within the first four races of the season. The exception are Chuck Stevenson in 1952, Jimmy Bryan in 1956, Al Unser in 1985, de Ferran in 2000 and Scott Dixon in 2018. Stevenson, Unser, de Ferran and Dixon all scored their first podium finish in the fifth race of the season. Bryan wasn't on the podium until the sixth race.
Dixon, Patricio O'Ward and Colton Herta are the only drivers with top five finishes in 2022 but who have yet to stand on a podium.
And then there are race victories, where there is much greater breathing room, but it is still important to win early. Sixty-three of 90 champions had a victory by the fourth race of the season. That is 70% of champions. Of the other 30%, six of those 27 drivers were on the podium in the first race of the season. Another four were in the top five in the first race of the season. However, ten of those 27 champions that took at least five races to score their first victory of the season finished outside the top ten in the season opener.
Since reunification, ten of 14 champions won within one of the first three races of the season. The other four champions all took six races or longer to get their first victory. In 2010, Dario Franchitti didn't win until the sixth race at Indianapolis. Two years later, Ryan Hunter-Reay scored his first victory of the season in the eighth race of the season at Milwaukee. Dixon didn't win until the 11th race of 2013 at Pocono and still won the championship. Five years later, Dixon won his fifth championship despite not getting his first victory until the seventh race, the first Belle Isle race of the 2018 season.
A Year Removed From Victory
Dixon has overcome adversity before, but this weekend's Barber race marks an unsavory milestone for the all-time great. Sunday's race will fall one year to the day of his most recent IndyCar victory.
On May 1, 2021, Dixon led 206 of 212 laps from third on the grid at Texas Motor Speedway to pick up his 51st career victory, putting him one behind tying Mario Andretti for second all-time. At the time, Dixon's ascension into second felt inevitable, and at some point in 2021 we would see him ahead of Andretti in the record book.
One year later, and Dixon has not budged. He has gone 16 races without a victory, his longest drought since the 16-race stretch from the final two races of 2013 through the first 14 races of 2014. Dixon ended that streak with a victory at Mid-Ohio. If Dixon does not win this weekend at Barber it will be the first time Dixon has gone more than a full calendar year without IndyCar victories since his over two-year drought between his 2003 victory at Richmond and his 2005 victory at Watkins Glen.
Since Dixon's most recent victory, there have been ten different winners, with Newgarden leading the way with four victories. Álex Palou, Patricio O'Ward, Marcus Ericsson and Colton Herta have each won twice. Rinus VeeKay, Hélio Castroneves, Will Power and Scott McLaughlin have each won once. In the last 16 races, Dixon has three podium finishes, seven top five finishes and 12 top ten finishes, and while he has led 221 laps since that victory, 163 of those laps led were in the second Texas race in the 2021 doubleheader. In the last 15 races, he has led only 58 laps and in only two races has he led greater than 10 laps.
If there was ever a fitting place for this drought to end it is one of Dixon's best tracks, although he has yet to win here. Dixon is arguably one of the best drivers ever at Barber Motorsports Park. In 11 starts, Dixon has nine podium finishes. His worst two finishes are tenth and sixth. He has made it to the Firestone Fast Six every year at Barber Motorsports Park. He has completed all 961 laps run at Barber, but he has only led 46 laps in 11 starts and 38 of those came in 2012.
A victory this weekend would make 2022 the 20th season Dixon has won an IndyCar race. It would also extend Dixon's record of consecutive seasons with a victory to 18 and a Barber victory would tie Dixon with Mario Andretti for most different tracks with a victory at 26.
A Victory, One Year Removed
While Dixon is a year removed from a victory, Dixon's Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Álex Palou is returning to the track of his first career victory, which occurred a little over a year ago.
On his Ganassi debut, Palou led 56 of 90 laps from third on the grid at Barber and held off Will Power to open the 2021 season with a surprising victory. It was the first spark in a bright season as Palou went on to win the 2021 championship in his sophomore season.
Palou returns to Barber continuing to ride the high. He is currently third in the championship with two podium finishes this season. Palou also has six consecutive top ten finishes, four of which were podium results and five have been top five finishes.
His third-place finish at Long Beach gave Palou ten podium finishes in 19 starts with Chip Ganassi Racing. In Scott Dixon's first 19 Ganassi starts, Dixon had only two podium finishes, a second at Denver and a victory at Homestead. Dario Franchitti had nine podium finishes in his first 19 Ganassi starts, five of which were victories, slightly better than Palou's output. Even Juan Pablo Montoya had only nine podium finishes in his first 19 Ganassi starts, but Montoya won seven of those 19 starts. Jimmy Vasser had only a measly five podium finishes in his first 19 Ganassi starts and only one of those was a victory.
Comparing Palou to the current IndyCar crop of drivers, his ten podium finishes in the last 19 races are the most in IndyCar. The next closest is Josef Newgarden with eight podium results since the start of the 2021 season. Only Patricio O'Ward, Scott Dixon, Colton Herta and Will Power have at least five podium finishes in that timeframe.
With 11 podium finishes in 33 career starts, Palou's batting average of 0.333 is the third best in IndyCar behind only Dixon's 0.358 and Power's 0.338. The likes of Hélio Castroneves and Newgarden are only batting 0.261 and 0.257 respectively, while the likes of past champions Juan Pablo Montoya, Sébastien Bourdais, Tony Kanaan, Simon Pagenaud and Ryan Hunter-Reay have respective podium batting average of 0.273, 0.254, 0.201, 0.200 and 0.163.
Some of Palou's contemporaries aren't even close to him with Patricio O'Ward and Herta both around the Mendoza line. O'Ward is above it, batting 0.219 while Herta is only hitting 0.176. Rinus VeeKay is at 0.093. Romain Grosjean is batting 0.25 though he has made just less than half the number of starts at Palou.
Road to Indy
After over two months off, all three Road to Indy series return to competition this weekend at Barber Motorsports Park.
Indy Lights had a stunning season opener at St. Petersburg. Matthew Brabham took the victory in his first Indy Lights race since 2015 after Andretti Autosport teammates Hunter McElrea had an accident while leading and Christian Rasmussen dropped out of the race from the lead when he ran out of fuel with two laps to go.
Brabham heads to Barber with the championship lead on 51 points and 11 points clear of Benjamin Pedersen in second. Pedersen was runner-up at Barber last year in the first race of the season. Linus Lundqvist was third at St. Petersburg and he is 16 points behind Brabham. Lundqvist was first and second at Barber last year.
Sting Ray Robb scored his best career Indy Lights finish with a fourth at St. Petersburg ahead of Danial Frost and Manuel Sulaimán. Ernie Francis, Jr. was seventh on his Indy Lights debut ahead of Antonio Serravalle and Christian Bogle. Rasmussen ended up 12th in St. Petersburg, but his laps led earned him enough bonus points to put him tenth in the championship, 30 points behind Brabham.
Jacob Abel sits on 20 points, one ahead of Kyffin Simpson. Hunter McElrea has 18 points and James Roe, Jr. rounds out the championship on 17 points.
The 35-lap Indy Lights race will be held at 10:55 a.m. ET on Sunday May 1.
Nolan Siegel holds the Indy Pro 2000 championship lead after finishes of fifth and first at St. Petersburg. Siegel has 50 points, two points ahead of Louis Foster, who was third and second at the season opener. Josh Green won the first St. Petersburg race but was 11th in race two after a broken toe-link in the second race from contact. Green sits on 42 points, one ahead of Braden Eves, who was fourth and third.
Kiko Porto rounds out the top five in the championship on 34 points, one ahead of Enaam Ahmed, who was second in the first St. Petersburg race, but his contact with Green left him 13th in race two. Jack William Miller has 28 points, three ahead of Wyatt Brichacek and Reece Gold, who are tied on 25 points. Yuven Sundaramoorthy rounds out the top ten on 24 points.
Gold led the Indy Pro 2000 Barber test last month with a lap of 77.539 seconds, nearly a quarter second ahead of Brichacek. Siegl, Foster and Ahmed all had their fastest laps in the 77.8-second range. Eves, Green, Colin Kaminsky and Jordan Missig were around 77.9 seconds.
Eves won the first Barber race last year in Indy Pro 2000 with Hunter McElrea taking the second race.
Indy Pro 2000 will race at 2:30 p.m. ET on Saturday April 30 and at 3:30 p.m. ET on Sunday May 1.
Jace Denmark's consistency has him leading the U.S. F2000 championship with 57 points from St. Petersburg. The first and second place finishes has the Denmark 17 points ahead of New Zealand's Billy Frazer, who was second in race one and sixth in race two. Michael d'Orlando's pair of fourth-place finishes has him on 38 points.
Myles Rowe's victory in race two after his final lap accident battling for the victory with Thomas Nepveu in race one has the Georgia-born driver on 35 points, tied with Jagger Jones, who was eighth and third in the opening weekend. Bijoy Garg and Simon Sikes are tied on 28 points. Spike Kohlbecker sits on 24 points.
Nepveu could only recover to fifth in the second St. Petersburg, and he has 23 points, tied with Jackson Lee, who opened the season with a 12th and a seventh.
Nepveu, Garg and Rowe had eight-thousandths of a second cover their fastest aps at the U.S. F2000 Barber test last month. Nepveu was quickest at 82.114 seconds while Garg had a 82.121-second lap and Rowe ran an 82.122. Denmark was 0.088 seconds off Nepveu's time. Frazer and Sikes were each in the 82.3-second range. Jones led the likes of Christian Weir and Dylan Christie in the 82.5-second range.
Race one of the U.S. F2000 weekend will be at 4:20 p.m. ET on Saturday April 30. Race two is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. ET on Sunday May 1.
Fast Facts
This will be the sixth IndyCar race on May 1 and first since Scott Dixon won last at Texas. Prior to Dixon, the 2011 São Paulo race started on May 1, but finished on May 2 due to weather. Will Power won that race. Scott Dixon also won on May 1, 2010 at Kansas.
This will be the first Barber race not to take place in the month of April.
Every Barber podium finisher has started in the top ten, and 25 of 33 podium finishes have started in the top five. Every Barber podium has had at least two drivers start in the top five, including the last three races which have seen all three podium finishers start in the top five.
Only five out of 55 top five finishers at Barber have started outside the top ten. All five of those drivers started outside the top fifteen.
Chevrolet leads all manufactures with six Barber victories.
Honda has won the last two Barber races, but it has never won three consecutive times at the track.
Team Penske has six Barber victories. It has failed to win the last two Barber races. Only once has Team Penske failed to win three consecutive Barber races.
The average starting position of a Barber winner is 3.181 with a median of third.
Every Barber race has been won from an odd-numbered starting position.
Five of 11 Barber races have been won from pole position.
The worst starting position for a Barber winner is ninth. Will Power won from that position in 2012.
The average number of lead changes in a Barber race is 6.909 with a median of seven.
Eight of 11 Barber races have had six lead changes or more.
Eight of 11 Barber winners have led at least half the laps in the race.
The average number of cautions in a Barber race is 2.363 with a median of two. The average number of caution laps is 9.181 with a median of eight.
There has never been a caution-free Barber race, but nine of 11 races have had two cautions or fewer. The 2016 race had only one caution for one lap when the initial start was waved off.
The most cautions in a Barber race was six in 2011, which was also the only Barber race not to feature a lead change.
Predictions
It finally happens. Scott Dixon wins at Barber Motorsports Park and he wins from an even-numbered starting position. At least one podium finisher starts outside the top five. Graham Rahal will end up finishing at least seven spots better than his starting position. This will be a caution-free race, but there will be at least one spin of a driver in a notable position. Colton Herta will not hit any barriers, but Andretti Autosport will botch a pit stop for one of its drivers. Jimmie Johnson will not hit any barriers, and all his bones will remain intact. Álex Palou does not leap up two positions during a pit cycle. At least two rookies advance from the first round of qualifying. Sleeper: Simon Pagenaud.
