2025 Motorcycle Predictions: Revisited

With the MotoGP season concluding in Valencia on Sunday, the motorcycle season is effectively over... for now. There will be two-wheel action returning in the very near-future. It doesn't take long for that competition to return. It practically comes when the calendar flips.

Until then, let's take this moment to acknowledge the predictions made over a variety of categories of the two-wheel discipline.

MotoGP

1. Marc Márquez will reach 100 career pole positions

Correct!

On his way to his ninth world championship and first since 2019, Márquez won eight pole positions, giving him 102 in his career when the season was all said and done. The Catalan rider started on pole position in the first four races, setting him up nicely to hit the century mark at some point during this season. He would not win pole position for the next three rounds, but he then won pole position at Aragón and Mugello. Márquez reached the century mark within the first nine races. 

He won two more pole positions at Germany and Hungary, and he ended the season with most pole positions despite missing the final four races due to a collarbone fracture suffered during the Indonesian Grand Price after contact from Marco Bezzecchi. 

2. The "sprint champion" will score fewer than 150 points

Incorrect!

Marc Márquez won 14 sprint races on his own. That is 168 points. He didn't need to score a point in any other sprint race for this prediction to be incorrect. Márquez ended the season with 190 points, the most from sprint races. His brother Álex scored 158 points in sprint races.

Not only did the sprint champion score more than 150 points, but so did the sprint vice-champion. Just goes to show how wrong this prediction was.

3. On at least one occasion will there be three consecutive races with three different manufacturers victorious

Correct!

In 2024, Ducati won 19 races and Aprilia won once. 

In 2025, Ducati opened with five consecutive victories. Then in a stunning mixed conditions race, Johann Zarco won the French Grand Prix for LCR Honda. At the next race at Silverstone, Marco Bezzecchi took a stunning victory from tenth on the grid, ironically ahead of Zarco and Márquez, and Aprilia made it three different winning constructors in three races. 

Ducati then won the next 11 races. Aprilia won three of the final four, two at the hands of Bezzecchi. 

Somehow, this prediction turned out to be correct, and I doubt anyone expected Honda to be involved (Thanks for nothing, KTM).

4. The difference between the top two riders on Japanese bikes will be less than 50 points

Incorrect!

Despite Zarco's victory and some rather encouraging days for Honda, a Honda rider was not the best Japanese bike contestant in the 2025 season. That went to Yamaha's Fabio Quartararo, who scored 201 points and finished ninth in the championship. Quartararo had a slow, but improving start to his season, and in the fifth round from Jerez he started on pole position and finished second. It was the first of three consecutive pole positions the Frenchman would earn. 

However, he had three-race retirement run from Le Mans through Aragón, but then Quartararo had 13 consecutive finishes in the points before he crashed out of the Valencia finale. That consistency put a gap between Quartararo and the rest of the riders on Japanese bikes.

The next closest was fellow Frenchman Johann Zarco, who was 12th in the championship, but on 148 points, 53 points behind Quartararo!

Darn! So close! I don't know where this one got away from me. I am sure there are four races, grand prix and/or sprint, where Zarco could have been at least a spot better. 

5. David Alonso's longest winning streak is not greater than four races

Correct!

After smacking the competition silly in Moto3 in 2024 with 14 victories from 20 races, Alonso moved up to Moto2 and had humbling success against the bigger boys. He only won once, and that was at Hungary. In only five races did Alonso finish on the podium, and three of those were in the final four races.

The Colombian was ninth in the championship on 153 points.

6. Moto3 will be the closest championship margin among the top three classes

Incorrect!

Moto3 was the greatest margin between first and second in the championship for the second consecutive season! Much of that was down to Marc Márquez missing the final four rounds, allowing his brother Álex Márquez to finish 78 points back. However, Moto3 also had its champion-elect out for multiple races to end the season. 

In Moto3, José Antonio Rueda won the title on 365 points, but Rueda missed the final three races after he suffered a fractured hand and concussion from a collision with Swiss rider Noah Dettwiler on the sighting lap for the Malaysia race. Dettwiler suffered multiple cardiac arrests and open leg fracture as well as injuries to his lung and a removal of his spleen from that collision. 

With Rueda out, Ángel Piqueras ended the season 84 points off Rueda in second.

Moto2 ended up being the closest championship, and it was the only one that went undecided into the final round. Diogo Moreira scored 287 points, 30 more than Manuel González. 

World Superbike

7. Toprak Razgatlioglu will have more third-place finishes in the final four rounds than he will in the first eight rounds

Correct!

Somehow, Razgatlioglu was better in 2025 than he was in 2024, and somehow, this prediction ended up coming true in the final race of the season. 

In the first eight rounds, Razgatlioglu had zero third-place finishes. He needed one third-place finish for this to come true. Entering the final race, race 36 of the season, he still had not finished third this season. 

What happened in the final race of the season?

Razgatlioglu ended up third behind Nicolò Bulega and Álvaro Bautista. In the final four rounds, Razgatlioglu had one third-place finish. In the first eight rounds, he had none. 

Count it!

8. At least two rounds will feature three different winners

Incorrect!

There were only three winners the entire season. Toprak Razgatliogu won 21 times and Nicolò Bulega won 14 times. Andrea Locatelli won one race, and it was a weekend when there were three different winners in each race. 

At Assen, Bulega won the first race, Razgatlioglu won the SuperPole race and Locatelli won the second race. 

Eight rounds saw a rider sweep the weekend. Five came at the hands of Razgatlioglu and three times it was Bulega.

Besides the Assen round, in the other three rounds, Razgatlioglu and Bulega were first and second. There wasn't even a case of, in a weekend where the two split the races, there was one race where someone else finished second and we were maybe a position away from this being correct. 

9. None of the top five riders in the championship miss a race

Incorrect!

This was looking good heading into the penultimate round of the season from Estoril. Each of the top five riders had started every race. Then Danilo Petrucci injured his hand in training and missed the final two rounds. Petrucci ended up fifth in the championship. 

It was inconsequential that Petrucci was 66 points clear of Alex Lowes in sixth, but Lowes missed the final two races of the Donington Park weekend. 

Supercross/Motocross

10. At least one Supercross podium will feature three riders that do not finish in the top three of the championship

Correct!

Somehow, this one was correct, but it was due to unfortuante circumstances. The top three finishers in the 2025 championship (Cooper Webb, Chase Sexton and Justin Cooper) combined for 29 out of a possible 51 podium finishes. Six riders outside the top three in the championship finished on the podium at some point over the 17 race season, but there was one race where none of the podium finishers ended up being top three championship finishers. 

It was the third round of the seaosn from Anaheim. Jett Lawrence won the race. Ken Roczen was second. Jason Anderson was third.

Lawrence tore his ACL in the next round from Glendale, ending his season. He ended up classified 18th in championship.

Roczen ended up suffering an ankle injury that took him out of the final two races of the season. This dropped Roczen to fifth in the championship, ten points behind Cooper. Roczen won at Daytona, and he had seven podium finishes in 2025. 

Anderson's season ended after the Birmingham round due to ongoing health concerns. Anderson did return for the Motocross season, but he ended his season after six rounds due to his health. 

Not really how I wished this prediction ended up being correct. I was hoping for a competitive season where fourth, seventh and eighth in the championship all had their best nights occur simultaneously.  

11. Jorge Prado will be the top finishing European rider in the Supercross championship

Incorrect!

As mentioned above, Ken Roczen was fifth in the championship, and the German rider was the best European of the 2025 season.

Prado ran the first two races and in qualifying for the third round from Anaheim, Prado dislocated his shoulder and surgery took him out of the remainder of the season. The Spaniard had finished 14th and 12th in the first two races. 

12. Neither Jett Lawrence nor Haiden Deegan will win SuperMotocross World Championships

Incorrect!

While Deegan did not win the SuperMotocross World Championship in the 250cc division as Jo Shimoda took the title with two victories over the three rounds, Jett Lawrence did win the SuperMotocross championship for the third consecutive year in the 450cc class. Lawrence went first, second, first over the three rounds from Charlotte, St. Louis and Las Vegas respectively. 

That is six-for-12, 50%. 

There are a few tough breaks. A few went my way that seemed unlikely. 

Win some, lose some, onto the next one.

Career Retrospective: Marco Andretti

For the fifth year of the Career Retrospective series it became obvious that a theme was crossroads. A number of drivers were at crossroads, some unexpectedly, at the end of 2025. A few drivers are making clear choices and are heading in different directions. Some are remaining still and are not sure where they will be heading next. 

This year, we will look at three drivers as their careers are making a change.

For our third and final part, we meet a driver who is calling it a career, though it has been slowly ending over the last few years. After a half-decade away from full-time driving, enough races have been run to satisfy a career. There are boxes that will remain unchecked, dreams unrealized, and an entry in the history book is finished. The end is new. We are still coming to terms with this change, and it will take some time to reach acceptance.

It is Marco Andretti.

Where was Andretti coming from?

A quick rise up the junior series led to Andretti reaching IndyCar just after his 19th birthday.

After immediate success in car racing, winning eight races in the 2003 Barber Formula Dodge Eastern Championship, Andretti moved to the Skip Barber National Championship in 2004 where he won the championship though he only won one race. He did have nine podium finishes and 11 top five finishes in 14 races, and like Tony Kanaan that season, Andretti never finished worse than eighth. 

In 2005, Andretti was full-time in Star Mazda while also dabbling in some Indy Pro Series races. Star Mazda was a little more of a struggle. Though he finished fifth in the championship, Andretti never won a race, and his best finish was second at Sonoma. Raphael Matos took the championship ahead of Robbie Pecorari while James Hinchcliffe and Graham Rahal were directly ahead of Andretti in points. 

While Star Mazda was not a smashing success, Andretti was turning heads in his limited Indy Pro Series outings. He won on debut at St. Petersburg, and then he won in his third start on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, as Indy Pro ran the Liberty Challenge in conjunction with the United States Grand Prix weekend at the circuit. In Andretti's final three starts of the season, he was third at Kentucky, won at Sonoma and he was second at Watkins Glen. 

Despite starting only six of 14 races, Andretti finished tenth in the 2005 Indy Pro championship 

What did IndyCar look like when Andretti started in the series?

When Andretti entered the IndyCar Series, it was a decade after The Split, and neither series was doing all that well. 

The Indy Racing League was in a bit of a regression. After having its longest season of 17 races in 2005 and running on road and street courses for the first time, the schedule shrunk to 14 races for Andretti's rookie season in 2006, and this was despite the openness to add road and street courses. Fontana, Phoenix and Pikes Peak all fell off the schedule after 2005. 

The grid size also took a dip as 11 of 14 races had fewer than 20 cars start. In the first 11 IRL seasons, only two races had featured fewer than 20 starters. 

This was the fourth season of Andretti Green Racing competing in the series after Michael Andretti bought into the Team Green outfit and moved the outfit from CART to the IRL. In its first three seasons, AGR won two championships with Tony Kanaan in 2004 and Dan Wheldon in 2005. Kanaan won the championship while completing every lap in the season, an IndyCar first, and Kanaan never finished worse than eighth. Wheldon won five races, including the Indianapolis 500. 

How does IndyCar look now?

We have one IndyCar Series, and we have so since 2008. And it is doing... alright.

Roger Penske owns the series literally after he purchased it in November 2019. Fox Corporation purchased a third of Penske Entertainment this year and now has a stake in the series. Every race is on network television, and attendance is respectable at most events. The Indianapolis 500 has been "sold out" twice. Long Beach is as big as it has ever been. St. Petersburg, Barber Motorsports Park, Detroit, Gateway Road America, Mid-Ohio and Milwaukee have all established rather good draws. There are still other events that not as strong as you would wish. 

The schedule has flipped from only three road and street course tracks to 11 out of 16. The ovals come and go. Milwaukee was off the schedule for nearly a decade before a surprisingly strong return in 2024. Nashville Superspeedway returned as a replacement when the Nashville street race crumbled despite IndyCar not racing on the 1.333-mile concrete oval since 2008. Iowa is vanishing in 2026 despite once being one of IndyCar's bright spots during the 2010s, but Phoenix is returning for the first time since 2018. 

The grid is now up to 27 full-time entries, and the series has been drawing two-dozen starts for essentially the entire 2020s.

Andretti Green Racing became Andretti Autosport, which has now become Andretti Global as Dan Towriss, CEO of Group 1001, purchased a stake in the team at the end of 2023. Michael Andretti fully sold the team in 2024 to TWG Global, a conglomerate run by global investment company Guggenheim Partners, which also owns the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Lakers and Chelsea F.C. TWG has an entire motorsports division as the company owns stakes in Spire Motorsports in NASCAR, and the group has successful led the creation of the Cadillac Formula 1 Team, which will make its debut in 2026. 

In October 2024, Michael Andretti stepped down as CEO of Andretti Global and no longer participates in the day-to-day operation of the team.

What did Andretti do in-between?

Marco Andretti made his IndyCar debut at 19 years and 13 days old, the fourth-youngest driver to start an IndyCar race since 1946 at the time. 

Things started slow for Andretti as he finished 15th, 15th and 12th in his first three races. The next event was arguable the most notable event of his career. In his debut Indianapolis 500, Andretti qualified ninth, the second-best Andretti Green starter with Tony Kanaan starting fifth. After a good race where Andretti spent a fair amount of laps in the top ten, cautions and pit strategy had Marco Andretti second as the race restarted with four laps to go while his father Michael directly ahead of him in first in what was Michael Andretti's first Indianapolis 500 start since 2003.

Marco passed his father immediately on the restart and Sam Hornish, Jr. quickly followed into second. Hornish, Jr. was pushing Marco but slipped back as they were about to start the final lap and Marco's lead was about a second at the start of the final lap. However, Hornish was able to remain in the slipstream and pull up to Marco as the two drivers approached turns three and four. Exiting turn four, Hornish had a run of momentum. Andretti defended on the outside coming down the front straightaway, but Hornish made a move to the inside and passed Andretti within the final 500 feet. Hornish won the Indianapolis 500 by 0.0635 seconds over Marco Andretti, the second-closest finish in the event's history at the time. Michael Andretti was third. 

A deflating loss, Andretti could be proud he was second as a rookie, but devastated as victory was so close especially as his family had not won the race since his grandfather Mario in 1969. 

The rest of his rookie season was respectable. He went on a run of five consecutive top ten finishes over the summer. At Sonoma, Andretti went on an alternate fuel strategy and wound up in the lead while stretching fuel. Thanks to late cautions as well as having teammate support, Andretti held on to become the youngest IndyCar race winner at 19 years, five months and 14 days old. Andretti ended up seventh in the championship.

What followed was a struggle to get back on top of the mountain. While he had a sophomore slump and ended up 11th in the championship in 2007, he still had six top finishes including runner-up finishes at Iowa and Michigan. He nearly won again at Sonoma before contact with teammate Dario Franchitti as the two battled after a pit cycle. In 2008, he had four podium finishes, and he had a great chance at victory at Richmond before a caution caught Andretti out during a pit cycle. These results put Andretti back to seventh in the championship.

In the next three seasons, Andretti ended up eighth in the championship. He had no podium finishes in 2009. He led the most laps at Barber Motorsports Park in 2010, but forced to make an extra pit stop relegated him to fifth at the finish. Andretti did not win again until Iowa 2011, snapping a 77-race winless streak, the second-longest in IndyCar history at the time. 

With the introduction of the DW12 chassis, Andretti had his worst season to date. He failed to finish in the top ten in the first eight races, but that was not without a strong running at the Indianapolis 500. Starting fourth, Andretti led a race-high 59 laps, but Chevrolet did not get as good fuel mileage as the Honda teams. Andretti stumbled backward before having an accident with 13 laps remaining in the race. He did finish second at Iowa in a strong night for the Andretti Autosport team, and Andretti ended the season with pole-position at Fontana before finishing eighth. 

Off his worst season, Andretti had his best season in 2013. He opened the season with five consecutive top ten finishes, including a fourth in the Indianapolis 500, and he had seven top ten finishes in the first eight races. He won pole position at Milwaukee, but a mechanical issue took him out of that race. He won pole position for IndyCar's return to Pocono, and he led a race-high 88 laps, but Chevrolet's fuel mileage issues bit him again, and struggling to stretch his fuel dropped him down the order and ultimately to a tenth-place finish. Victory eluded Andretti, but he ended up fifth in the championship, his best championship finish. 

Victory continued to slip out of his grasp. He was second in the wet at Barber in 2014, and he was third at Indianapolis behind the thrilling battle between Ryan Hunter-Reay and Hélio Castroneves. 

At Detroit in 2015, Andretti took advantage of an early pit stop and teams being too conservative as rain approached. While teams proactively took the wet weather tires before the drops began to fall, Andretti ran hard on slicks and not only took the lead, but opened a gap ahead of a number of better cars. However, Andretti was forced to stop for fuel about three laps before he would need wet tires. Carlos Muñoz was able to go those extra few laps and leap-frog ahead of Andretti in the pit cycle. As the thunderstorm rolled in, Muñoz took the victory as the race was red-flagged and stopped. Andretti was caught in second. 

Andretti had another strong chance at victory at Fontana, but he ended up third behind Graham Rahal and Tony Kanaan as that hectic race ended under caution after Ryan Briscoe tumbled through the infield grass after contact with Ryan Hunter-Reay. 

After 2015, Andretti's results took a dip. Over the next two seasons, he had one top five finish over 33 races. He had only three top ten finishes in the entire 2016 season. Results improved in 2018 as he had eight top ten finishes, including a fourth in the first Belle Isle race from pole position, highlighting a season where he was ninth in the championship. 

In the following two seasons, Andretti fell out of the top fifteen of the championship. The 2019 season saw him finish sixth in two races and tenth in three other races as he was 16th in points. His 2020 season had a rough start with four finishes of 19th or worse in the first six races, which made his pole position in the Indianapolis 500 more surprising. 

Andretti Autosport was showing great speed throughout practice, and Andretti led the way as Andretti put four are in the top nine qualifiers. It felt like Andretti's moment was coming. Unfortunately, the car did not have the balance in the race, and he immediately fell backward from the start of the race. He spent most of the race outside the top ten and finished 13th. To add insult to injury, Andretti never led a lap despite starting first. 

Andretti ended the 2020 season with eighth consecutive finishes outside the top ten. He was 20th in the championship and decided at the end of the season to step away from IndyCar full-time, committing to the Indianapolis 500 from there forward.

Over the last five years, Andretti had finishes of 19th, 22nd, 17th, 25th and 29th at Indianapolis. He started no better than 19th in any of those races.

What impression did Andretti leave on IndyCar?

As an Andretti, Marco was always going to leave an impression on IndyCar. With how his first Indianapolis 500 ended, he will never be forgotten, even more so because he never won the race. 

We are going to remember how painfully close Andretti came to cementing his legacy while still a teenager. Winning that one Indianapolis 500 would not have changed Andretti's career that much. While a consistent driver who finished in the top ten of the championship nine times in 15 full seasons, if he had won the 2006 Indianapolis 500, Andretti would likely have an identical career. Maybe he has more confidence and he pulls out another two or three victories. Maybe those two or three victories lead to one or two more championship top five finishes, but for the success that led to the quick rise to IndyCar, Andretti was never on the level of Dario Franchitti, Scott Dixon and Will Power to be a champion. 

The last name attracted more criticism than any other driver would have received. Perceived success was always going to be more difficult for him because he couldn't be just good. He had to be Andretti good. He had to live up to a world-class grandfather and a champion father. Those weren't expectations his family had. Those were the expectations of the on-lookers, the attendees who had been watching IndyCar since they were a child and watched three decades of Andretti success thinking the third generation would match the achievements of the previous two. 

It is mostly unfair because nine seasons finishing in the championship top ten is viewed as failure in this case while a number of other drivers would wish for such a career, and a number of other drivers would be respected for such results even if the victories were not numerous. 

Think about the difference in how people perceive Marco Andretti, a man who only won twice in 253 starts and who only finished in the championship top five once, to Oriol Servià, a man who only won once in 204 starts and who finished in the championship top five twice, one of those coming during Champ Car in the middle of The Split. 

The results are not too different and yet the knee-jerk reaction to hearing each name is opposite.

Andretti was expected to be more, a 21st century savior for American open-wheel racing. He was basically a child but expected to carry a name and carry a series. Another successful Andretti was all IndyCar needed to attract viewers. Pair that with a successful Rahal and IndyCar would be back on the top of the mountain in no time. It was pretty naïve to think people would just keep showing up because an Andretti was winning. IndyCar's issues were always deeper than that. Thinking another generation of a known name was all that was needed was at best lazy, and likely led to a lot of hard work not being done to help the series grow.

Marco was always different, an introvert, and the public didn't want that. He was reserved and did not throw himself into the spotlight. If anything, he avoided it when he didn't warrant the attention. When he was running well or was quick, he was willing to participate, but at no point did Andretti make it about himself when things were not going well. He was never a distraction from something greater. He didn't seek to be noticed. A race would end and if the result was nothing special, he would quietly move on. He never pounded the drum to draw a crowd. He could finish eighth and not be the story, and I think he was ok with that. 

There will be a large percentage of people who will mock Andretti for the career he had and minimize it to nepotism with the results showing it did not warrant the time and resources provided. I think that is misguided. Let's not act like being Andretti didn't help give Marco the career he had, but for all those who believe he did not deserve this career, Marco Andretti did have the respect of his peers. He was a competitor that drivers trusted track. He was quick and fought for victories against some of the best. We never heard about him being a hazard on the track or being dangerously slow. He might not have been the man to beat year-in and year-out, but he certainly occupied a spot on the grid among plenty of other capable race car drivers who could be competitive on their day. 

I think the toughest thing for me to accept is Marco Andretti is 38 years old and it is over. When he debuted at 19 years old, the feeling was he was going to be around forever and he would set a lot of longevity records, especially when you consider how long his grandfather and father drove. Twenty years was the minimum. A 30-year career was plausible. Instead, we got the minimum, and even then we got less than that when you consider he only ran at Indianapolis for the last five years. 

I really wished Marco found love and enjoyment away from IndyCar if the results were not going to be there. This retrospective has focused on his IndyCar career, but it neglects Andretti brief time in sports car racing and the time in the Acura LMP2 with Andretti Green. Do people realize he ran an American Le Mans Series race and an IndyCar race on the same day? If Kyle Larson did the equivalent today we would never hear the end of it. Andretti ran at Le Mans, and was a co-driver with a Prost (Nico). 

Andretti kind of found a post-IndyCar career in SRX, where he was champion, and he dabbled in stock car racing, but spent most of his time in ARCA, which is not the most competitive division, and he was in a rather underwhelming Truck program running a handful of races. It was never a full attempt at it, but an odd sampling in mid-pack equipment.

Part of me wishes in four or five years, Marco will get the bug to compete again and he can find a happy living in LMP2 racing, whether that is in IMSA or the European Le Mans Series or both, and he can get a chance to go back to Le Mans, and he can have a chance to compete with some of his old buddies as co-drivers. He ran one IMSA race, the 2021 6 Hours of the Glen, in LMP3 with his cousin Jarett and Oliver Askew and they finished fourth in class. I was really hoping that was going to lead to more. 

Seeing as how Andretti is viewed, I think my wish is he could find a level where he could have fun and be competitive while achieving some success because he wasn't terrible though plenty will say so. He was better than the record book will say. Not a champion, not one of the best of the last 25 years, but better than the vitriol Marco Andretti gets and will likely never escape.

Musings From the Weekend: Not So Silly After All

Here is a rundown of what got me thinking...

MotoGP closed its season in Valencia, and Marco Bezzecchi closed his season with a victory on his 27th birthday. It was Bezzecchi's second consecutive victory and third of the season. JR Motorsports confirmed it was attempting the Daytona 500 again with Justin Allgaier. IMSA did some testing at Daytona where the results were virtually meaningless because of BOP. The test results are meaningless the week before the 24 Hours of Daytona. What would make two months earlier any more relevant? A number of IndyCar drivers were testing. Speaking of IndyCar drivers, we haven't really spoken much about the recent movement on the grid.

Not So Silly After All

There hasn't really been a need for weekly check-ins on IndyCar silly season, but over the past week-and-a-half, there has been plenty of news, and most of it has been substantial. 

Another full-time seat has been claimed, though it went the way we expected.

Caio Collet was confirmed in A.J. Foyt Racing's #4 Chevrolet for the 2026 season. Collet fills the spot vacated when David Malukas moved to Team Penske. Collet was second in the Indy Lights championship, 72 points off Dennis Hauger with three victories. With this news, it appears two full-time seats remain open on the 2026 IndyCar grid, the second Dale Coyne Racing entry and the #30 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda, though Devlin DeFrancesco was announced as signing a multi-year deal at the end of last year. 

Beyond the full-time seats, we are also getting Indianapolis 500 seats filled, and one of the biggest one-off entries was filled last week. Ryan Hunter-Reay was announced to be taking the fourth Arrow McLaren entry, and Hunter-Reay will drive the #31 Chevrolet for the team. This will mark Hunter-Reay's 17th Indianapolis 500 attempt and his sixth different team competing for at Indianapolis. He had spent the last three years driving for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing. 

With Hunter-Reay moving, it opens another space on the grid, as Dreyer & Reinbold Racing has lost one of its drivers. D&R announced Jack Harvey would be back in one of its entries at Indianapolis in September.

We sit less than two weeks from Thanksgiving with 25 full-time cars confirmed, two more open and three Indianapolis 500 entries set with Hélio Castroneves in a third Meyer Shank Racing car. 

It feels like a game of musical chairs is about to begin for the month of May seats. 

The two full-time seats appear to have outsiders, those who were not on the grid in 2025, as front-runners. Romain Grosjean is heavily rumored to be the primary candidate for Dale Coyne Racing's vacant seat. The RLLR seat is either remaining in Devlin DeFrancesco's possession or it will be Mick Schumacher. 

Those two decisions do not really change much for May other than if Schumacher does get the ride then DeFrancesco becomes a potential one-off contender. 

Where are those other three seats coming from? 

There is the second Dreyer & Reinbold car, Andretti Global's annual additional entry, Ed Carpenter Racing's third car for Ed Carpenter, and those three alone would get the May grid up to 33 cars without considering Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing bringing out a fourth car, which seems highly likely seeing as how Takuma Sato drove for RLLR at a test at the Speedway last month. Then we are back at 34 entries with each team fielding the same number of cars as they did the year before. 

It really means that as we sit here there are only two open one-off seats seeing as how Ed Carpenter will likely hire Ed Carpenter for the open Ed Carpenter Racing seat, and Sato seems firmly in RLLR's plans. 

It is the second D&R ride and the fourth Andretti car that remain. 

Andretti Global knows its one-off driver from 2025 will not be back. Marco Andretti announced earlier this month his retirement from motorsports. Andretti Global also has a former full-time driver who is competing with the team in a different discipline who has no races scheduled from the middle of April through the start of June. 

If we are being honest with ourselves, the only logical choice for Andretti's open car is Colton Herta, seeing as how his Formula Two schedule allows him to fully focus on an Indianapolis 500 one-off, and if Herta is already announced to be running for Cadillac in three IMSA endurance races, attempting the Indianapolis 500 is not a step too far in his 2026 calendar. 

That leaves one seat for the 2026 Indianapolis 500, and about 975 drivers vying for it. If we are honest, it is about three or four serious names, and everyone is trying to raise significantly more money than Conor Daly.

Daly has four consecutive top ten finishes in the Indianapolis 500, including one with Dreyer & Reinbold Racing. It is his for the taking. 

Could Linus Lundqvist do enough to get that D&R spot on the grid? Maybe. If Devlin DeFrancesco loses the RLLR seat, he could take his money and likely pay for a one-off. Even Jacob Abel is a possibility. 

Outside of that, everyone else is a reach.

Could J.R Hildebrand make a comeback? Yes, but no is the correct answer. Could Katherine Legge raise enough money? Possibly, but Legge's racing interests are elsewhere at the moment. Anyone else is a stretch. 

There is not a swath of drivers at the lower rungs looking to get a shot and see Indianapolis as an opportunity. I do not sense Lochie Hughes and Myles Rowe are itching to add an Indianapolis 500 one-off to their schedules along with a full Indy Lights season. Toby Sowery is hanging around but is technically a RLLR reserve driver. There are the likes of Tristan Vautier and Hunter McElrea who have been in IndyCar circles in recent years ready for an opportunity should it present itself. 

It is not a breath-taking group of suitors for a spot on the entry list for the biggest race IndyCar has to offer. We do not see surprises that often. We knew Kyle Larson wasn't coming back the moment he was out of the race this May, and there isn't another NASCAR driver in consideration for The Double. We aren't going to see Yuki Tsunoda come over because Honda doesn't have a place for him in Formula One, and Tsunoda must be kept busy.

If you are expecting a splash, need not put on that poncho, my friend. You are going to remain dry. The final pieces of the 2026 IndyCar puzzle are laid out and we have a clear view of what the picture will be. The usual suspects have been rounded up, and these teams are rather predictable with their decisions, but who can blame them? There is one clear option that stands above the rest. No one is walking through the door that will make the grid think any differently. 

Champions From the Weekend

Diogo Moreira clinched the Moto2 world championship with an 11th-place finish at Valencia..

Winners From the Weekend

You know about Marco Bezzecchi, but did you know...

Álex Márquez won MotoGP's sprint race from Valencia. Izan Guevara won the Moto2 race, his first victory in three years when he won the 2022 Moto3 finale from Valencia to cap off his championship season. Adrián Fernández won in Moto3, his first career victory in his 85th career start.

Chaz Mostert and Broc Feeney split the Supercars races from Sandown.

Coming Up This Weekend

Formula One has a a bit of an earlier night in Las Vegas.

Super Formula concludes it season at Suzuka.

Career Retrospective: Conor Daly

For the fifth year of the Career Retrospective series it became obvious that a theme was crossroads. A number of drivers were at crossroads, some unexpectedly, at the end of 2025. A few drivers are making clear choices and are heading in different directions. Some are remaining still and are not sure where they will be heading next. 

This year, we will look at three drivers as their careers are making a change.

For part two, we meet a driver still at the intersection, another intersection in his career. His ride has been filled already for the 2026 season, and there are not many left. In all likelihood, it will be making the most of what is left. It is not an unfamiliar position, but it is a tough one no matter how many times you have been through it. The wonder is how many more times can a career be at this point and where else is there left to go.

It is Conor Daly.

Where was Daly coming from?

Daly started in Skip Barber and won the national championship in his first year of car racing. This led to a move to Star Mazda in 2009 where he was third in the championship. In his second year, Daly won the title with Juncos Racing with seven victories in 13 races beating Anders Krohn, Connor De Phillippi and Tristan Vautier.

After this championship, Daly made a decision to head to Europe to race in the GP3 Series while also running non-conflicting rounds in Indy Lights with Sam Schmidt Motorsports. He opened the Indy Lights season with a second at St. Petersburg, an 11th at Barber Motorsports Park, and he won at Long Beach after Josef Newgarden got into the barrier while in the lead. 

The GP3 results were not spectacular in 2011 with Carlin, but he moved to ART Grand Prix the next year and he won the first sprint race of the season at Barcelona. Daly ended up sixth in the championship. He also completed straight line tests for Force India. During that winter, he won the MRF Challenge F2000 Championship in India.

The following year saw Daly as a championship contender heading into the final round at Abu Dhabi. With a victory, six podium finishes and 12 finishes in the points in 16 races, Daly wound up third in the championship behind Daniil Kvyat and ART teammate Facundo Regalia but Daly was ahead of Tio Ellinas, his other ART teammate Jack Harvey and Nick Yelloly. Alexander Sims and Carlos Sainz, Jr. also competed in GP3 that season.

Daly did run the 2013 GP2 season opener in Malaysia where he was seventh in the sprint race. While competing in GP3, Daly was able to make his Indianapolis 500 debut in an additional entry with A.J. Foyt Racing. He had an accident in Thursday practice before qualifying, but he was able to make the race, qualifying 31st. He ended up finishing two laps down in 22nd.

After finishing third in GP3, Daly moved up to GP2 in 2014. Driving for Lazarus GP, Daly had only one finish in the points, a seventh in the Hungarian sprint race.

What did IndyCar look like when Daly started in the series?

IndyCar was in the early days of the DW12 chassis and had just introduced the manufacturer specific aero kits a year prior to Daly's first full season in 2016. There was a bit of changing time in IndyCar in the early days of the DW12. While some teams returned to IndyCar, others had left the series. Car count was still around 22 full-time entries, but three teams were responsible for over 54% of the grid.

IndyCar was coming off a season where nine different drivers won a race representing seven different teams. It allowed for six drivers to be alive for the championship at the final round with a driver from Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing and CFH Racing, a merged program of Ed Carpenter Racing and Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing, were each alive for the title.

Of course, the title went to Scott Dixon and Chip Ganassi Racing. It was Dixon's fourth career championship and his second in three seasons. Three different teams had won the title over the first four seasons of the DW12 chassis.

There were rumors of a season opener at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City. A round on the streets of Boston was scheduled for Labor Day weekend. Phoenix was returning to the calendar for the first time in 11 years. Road America was set to return for the first time in nine years.

How does IndyCar look now?

IndyCar has grown to 27 full-time entries with 11 teams on the grid. Each team is limited to three chartered entries, but can still enter "open" entries that could fail to qualify for a race. All 25 chartered entries are locked into the race (sans the Indianapolis 500) with any open entries competing to fill two spots on the grid.

Six teams run the maximum three chartered entries. Every team on the grid fielded two full-time cars in 2025.

IndyCar is coming off a season where Álex Palou has just won his third consecutive championship and his fourth title in five seasons. It is the second time in three years Palou has clinched the championship with races in hand. This year, Palou did it with two races remaining, the first driver to clinch a title with multiple races remaining since Cristiano da Matta in 2002. Palou also became the first driver with at least eight victories in a season since reunification. 

With Palou's championship, it was Chip Ganassi Racing's fifth title in six seasons. Chip Ganassi Racing and Team Penske have combined to win the last 13 championships.

IndyCar has not raced in Mexico City, and though there were rumors of Mexico City possibly being included on the 2026 calendar, it did not materialize. The Boston race never took place and IndyCar went to Watkins Glen for two seasons as a filler event on Labor Day weekend. Phoenix is scheduled to return to the calendar in 2026 after seven seasons off the schedule. 

What did Daly do in-between?

Daly's reputation has become that of a super-sub. 

Even before his first full season in IndyCar, Daly took a role as a substitute. In 2015, with no full-time seat in any series, Daly filled in at Long Beach for Rocky Moran, Jr. at Dale Coyne Racing He would be entered for the Indianapolis 500 with Schmidt Peterson Motorsports, but he took a larger role with the team as he replaced James Hinchcliffe in three races, including finishing sixth in the second Belle Isle race.

For 2016, he put together a full-time program with Coyne. Strategic races allowed for some of Daly's best results. He was sixth in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis, second and sixth at the Belle Isle doubleheader, and he was sixth at Mid-Ohio. At the end of the season, he was fourth at Watkins Glen. Encouraging results led to a move to A.J. Foyt Racing in 2017.

While he moved to a program with more resources, results dipped or at best plateaued at Foyt. He had four top ten finishes the entire season, with his best result being fifth at Gateway. He was 18th in the championship for the second consecutive season, but Foyt decided to drop him as well as his teammate Carlos Muñoz for the 2018 season. 

Daly was back on the sideline and waiting for a call. He drove a one-off for Coyne at the Indianapolis 500 in 2018, but he got the call for three races with Harding Racing after the team dropped Gabby Chaves in the middle of the season. 

For 2019, Daly put together an Indianapolis 500 entry with Andretti Autosport with Air Force sponsorship. Daly ended up finishing tenth, his best finish in the race. Carlin experienced a midseason shakeup as Max Chilton decided to step away from oval races. Daly posted respectable results considering both Carlin cars failed to qualify for the Indianapolis 500. His worst finish was 13th but he was sixth at Gateway. Daly was called up to run at Portland for Schmidt Peterson Motorsports as Marcus Ericsson was on standby for Kimi Räikkönen at the Belgian Grand Prix with Alfa Romeo, and Daly added the Laguna Seca season finale with Andretti Autosport. 

With Chilton done running ovals, Daly was able to put together a full season program in 2020 driving on ovals for Carlin while running Ed Carpenter Racing's #20 Chevrolet on the road and street courses while Ed Carpenter contested the ovals. The one exception was the Indianapolis 500, where Daly ran a third ECR car as Chilton was comfortable enough to compete on that one oval.

The oval results were magnificent with four top ten finishes in five races driving for Carlin, including winning pole position for the first Iowa race. This dueling full-time arrangement continued for another season in 2021, but results were not quite as high. Daly failed to score a single top ten finish. 

Despite this, ECR brought Daly on for full-time in 2022. A slow start was erased with a month of May that saw him finishing sixth in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis and fifth in the Indianapolis 500, but the results fell off from there. While he was eighth in the Indianapolis 500 in 2023, ECR released Daly after the Detroit round the following week.

Daly ended up contesting four more races in 2023, three substituting for Simon Pagenaud at Meyer Shank Racing, and one at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing after the team released Jack Harvey. He remained without a full-time ride in 2024 but put together an Indianapolis 500 program with Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, where he would finish tenth. 

Though scheduled for only one race, Daly again stepped in for an injured driver. This time, Harvey was ruled out of the second Iowa race due to back issues and Daly filled Harvey's Dale Coyne Racing seat. As Juncos Hollinger Racing was struggling to keep its #77 Chevrolet in a Leader Circle spot, Daly was hired to drive the five races. He took a third in the first Milwaukee race and a tenth at Nashville secured JHR's spot in the Leader Circle for 2025. 

With the salvation job Daly did, JHR gave him a full-time seat. Road and street course results were lacking, but Daly had strong days on ovals, finishing eighth in the Indianapolis 500 and running competitively at Gateway before finishing sixth. He would pick up a seventh in the first Iowa race and he ended the season with a fifth at Nashville.

 

However, Daly was 18th in the championship, and in six full seasons competing in IndyCar, he has never finished better than 17th in points. 

What impression did Daly leave on IndyCar?

Daly's career is very much not over in IndyCar, but we are running out of runway.

Daly has made 132 starts and has zero career victories. Only three drivers have made more starts and never won in IndyCar history. Scott Brayton (150), Dick Simon (183) and Raul Boesel (199). 

His career is on borrowed time. Daly has driven for eight of the 11 teams currently on the grid. The exceptions are Team Penske, Chip Ganassi racing and Prema. Of those three, one is a realistic option in the future. Daly is about to turn 34 years old next month. The opportunities will soon be disappearing, at least on the full-time level. 

Based on his Indianapolis 500 track record, he should have a seat as a one-off for the next five or six years. It is the one thing Daly has going for him. When it comes to the Indianapolis 500 and ovals in general, Daly has shown a tremendous ability to be competitive in a variety of machinery. He has been on the verge of pulling off something special for the last few seasons. Of course, that is easier said than done. 

When your schedule is limited to one race a season, at best two or three depending on who needs a seat filled, it is difficult to establish yourself as someone noteworthy in the series. Yet, Daly has developed a persona most drivers in IndyCar cannot match. 

Daly has become a voice for the fanbase with his podcast Speed Street, which allows him to share his viewpoints happening around the series. His willingness to honestly express himself and connect with fans through his antics, whether that be in the Snake Pit on Indianapolis 500 race morning or social media posts, has made Daly one of the most personable drivers in IndyCar even if he is struggling more times than not to have a full-time ride. 

There is still time for Daly to leave his mark on IndyCar and notch a victory to his name. What we have seen is a driver who has been able to make the most of the opportunities given and sometimes pull out results the other average drivers cannot quite match. However, when given a full-time opportunity, he has never exceeded expectations of the equipment given and led to a greater shot down the road. His career is littered with lateral moves, and some have been slight moves backward. There has never been that giant leap forward.

If he had impressed anyone at this point, he would have already received his big opportunity and been with an organization for a three-to-five-year run. 

However, I believe Daly's legacy in IndyCar will go beyond what he has done as a driver. He will be remembered for some of his performances. It has been a respectable career, but Daly's future is beyond the steering wheel. I don't know if he will every end up in the broadcast booth but Daly is set to be a spokesman for the series that it rarely has seen for past drivers. There is a clown prince quality to Daly, the kind you read about from Robin Miller and company on Eddie Sachs and Jim Hurtubise. IndyCar hasn't had one of those in a longtime. Daly is the 21st century equivalent. 

Daly is going to be involved in IndyCar for a long time after his driving career is done. His father is Derek Daly and his stepfather is IndyCar president and Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Doug Boles. Conor Daly is going to be involved, and maybe it is in a capacity we have not seen a driver venture into before. It could be broadcasting as suggested above, but it could be in promotion or marketing or leadership. Though options might be limited when it comes to sitting behind the wheel of a car, when it comes to working in the series, Daly might have plenty of options to choose from in his future. 

At this moment, he still wants to be a driver, and all signs point to Daly continuing in that direction for the near-future. However, he currently stands at the crossroads of his career for what feels like the 100th time, unsure where the next opportunity will come from and how many more will come after it.

Career Retrospective: Colton Herta

It was difficult this year to come up with which drivers to feature in the Career Retrospective series. However, at the end of this fifth year, it became obvious that a theme was crossroads. A number of drivers were at crossroads, at the end of 2025, some unexpectedly. A few drivers are making clear choices and are heading in different directions. Some are remaining still and are not sure where they will be heading next. 

This year, we will look at three drivers as their careers are making a change.

This first part of three focuses on a driver making a clear change. It is more than just changing teams. It is changing series. It is changing disciplines. It is leaving a comfort zone with no guarantee success will come, but this was the last chance for such a big move as the grandeur of Formula One is ahead and it will not be available for much longer. 

We start looking back at a driver that is only 25 years old. 

We start with Colton Herta.

Where was Herta coming from?

Herta had spent two seasons in Indy Lights prior to entering IndyCar, but his junior career took a hybrid course, spending time on the Road to Indy while also spending time in Europe.

At 14 years old, Herta started in U.S. F2000, missing the opening round in St. Petersburg in 2014 as he was still too young to compete in the series. Competing against the likes of Florian Latorre, R.C. Enerson, Aaron Telitz, Victor Franzoni and even Austin Cindric, Herta had a few top five runs, as this was his second year in career racing after running Pacific F1600 the year prior. 

The following year he moved to Britain to compete in the MSA Formula Championship, a Formula 4 series where Herta drove for Carlin and was teamed with Romanian Petri Florescu and Lando Norris. Herta's results were a little behind at the start of the season, but halfway through his finishes improved and he became a multi-time race winner. Norris won the championship, but Herta ended up third.

Carlin took Herta to Euroformula Open in 2016. Herta again finished third in the championship with a handful of victories, finishing behind Leonardo Pulcini and Ferdinand Habsburg. Along with Euroformula Open, Herta ran two rounds in the BRDC British Formula Three championship. At Brands Hatch, Herta won the third race of the weekend, and in the next round at Oulton Park Herta had finishes of third, sixth and third.

On the verge of 17 years old, Herta moved back to the United States to compete in Indy Lights in an entry run in partnership with Andretti Autosport and Steinbrenner Racing. In his first round, Herta went second and first at St. Petersburg. Another victory followed at Barber Motorsports Park. A tough May knocked Herta back in the championship and though he had four podium finishes in the final eight races, he was third in the championship.

In the next season, Herta won four consecutive races over the month of May and into June. His season was thrown off when Herta injured his wrist at Toronto in July. Despite finishing second in six of the final nine races, Herta lost the championship to his Andretti Autosport teammate Patricio O'Ward by 44 points. 

What did IndyCar look like when Herta started in the series?

The Hulman-George family-owned IndyCar had just introduced the universal aero kit in the 2018 season after three seasons using manufacturer-developed aero kits. The series aimed to reduce top-side downforce with these aero kits and create more ground effect generated from beneath the cars. The first race for the universal aero kit from St. Petersburg had 366 total passes.

Along with the universal aero kit, IndyCar started testing an aeroscreen in hopes of improving cockpit protection for the driver.

Twenty-two cars filled the grid from 11 teams. The newest of which were Carlin, which had spent a few seasons in Indy Lights adapted to racing in the United States, and Harding Racing, which used a top ten finish in the 2017 Indianapolis 500 and a top five finish later that season at Texas to step up to full-time competition. Herta ended up making his IndyCar debut with Harding at the 2018 Sonoma finale, and Herta spent his first full season with the organization in 2019. 

Juncos Racing entered a car in most of the races in 2018 while Meyer Shank Racing was entered in six races with one car. 

Six road courses, six ovals and four street courses made up the 17-race calendar. Phoenix was the first oval in April while Texas was in June, Iowa was in July and Pocono was in August. Portland was on the schedule for the first time in 11 years. Sonoma hosted the finale on the third Sunday in September. 

This ended up being Verizon's final season as title sponsor after five seasons. 

On television, ABC was the network television partner while NBC Sports Network broadcasted all the races on cable. ABC showed the season opener from St. Petersburg as well as the Grand Prix of Indianapolis, Indianapolis 500 qualifying, the Indianapolis 500 and the Belle Isle doubleheader. 

How does IndyCar look now?

The most recent season of the Penske Entertainment-owned IndyCar Series was the eighth with the universal aerokit. The aeroscreen was introduced during the 2020 season and it has remained on the car ever since. The Dallara DW12 chassis has just completed its 14th season of service.

The grid has expanded to 27 full-time entries with 25 holding charters to compete in the IndyCar Series, guaranteeing those cars a spot on the grid for every race outside the Indianapolis 500, and those 25 cars are eligible to compete for the 22 Leader Circle spots. 

There are still 11 teams in the series. Harding Racing was quietly absorbed into Andretti Autosport, which has become Andretti Global. Carlin left the IndyCar Series after the 2021 season, and the team shut its doors at the end of 2023, becoming Rodin Motorsport around the globe.

Juncos Racing is now full-time as Juncos Hollinger Racing, and it purchased the assets from Carlin after it closed its doors. Meyer Shank Racing is full-time with two cars with a technical alliance with Chip Ganassi Racing. McLaren has joined the series and operates the team formerly known as Schmidt Peterson Motorsports. Prema joined the series in 2025 after four decades competing in the European single-seater racing. 

The number of road courses was up to seven in 2025 while the number of ovals was down to five. The street courses remained at four. The only street course change was the Belle Isle round moved to downtown Detroit and was no longer a doubleheader. Phoenix, Texas and Pocono were no longer on the IndyCar schedule, but Iowa was a doubleheader while Milwaukee and Nashville Superspeedway each enjoyed their second years back on the schedule. Nashville returned after a street race in downtown fell off the schedule due to construction of the new football stadium.

This was the first season with Fox being the broadcast partner of the IndyCar Series. All 17 races were shown live on Fox, and in July, Fox Corporation purchased one-third of Penske Entertainment.

What did Herta do in-between?

Though short of an Indy Lights championship, Herta had done enough to make his IndyCar debut at the 2018 finale at Sonoma with Harding Racing. Patricio O'Ward was brought in as a teammate for that round and the plan was for O'Ward and Herta to be teammates at Harding with Steinbrenner Racing support in 2019.

Financial issues caused the O'Ward entry to dissolve before the team could even get to testing, reducing the team to one car for Herta. 

After opening the season with an eighth at St. Petersburg, Herta won his third career start at Austin, benefitting from a timely caution after he made his final pit stop while running in third. Herta became the youngest winner in IndyCar history. Though this terrific day had occurred, Herta fell into a rut with four consecutive finishes outside the top twenty and seven consecutive finishes outside the top ten. 

Results improved in the second half of the season. Herta ended up winning three pole positions, and he closed the season with a dominant victory at Laguna Seca. Despite winning two races, Herta fell short of winning Rookie of the Year, finishing behind Felix Rosenqvist. 

Herta took a step forward in 2020 as he had seven top five finishes after having only three in his rookie season. With a highlight of a victory at Mid-Ohio, Herta was third in the championship in his sophomore season behind only Scott Dixon and Josef Newgarden. 

Success remained steady into 2021 as Herta was now fully a member of Andretti Autosport. He won at St. Petersburg and closed the season with a pair of victories at Laguna Seca and Long Beach. While he had some results get away from him, and he struggled on ovals, he still finished fifth in the championship.

However, over the next two seasons, form dropped off, and not just for Herta but for the entire Andretti organization. While Herta had a memorable victory in mixed conditions in the 2022 Grand Prix of Indianapolis, the team threw away a number of promising results, and the team struggled for pace. He was tenth in the championship in consecutive seasons.

Things turned around in 2024. Herta snapped a 40-race winless streak at Toronto, and he capped off a season that featured six podium finishes and 11 top five finishes with his first oval victory at Nashville as Herta ended up second in the championship behind Álex Palou.

Expectations were high in 2025, and Herta had good results, but he could not replicate his 2024 success. He failed to win a race with his best finish being third. While he won two pole positions, he ended up seventh in the championship, the second-best Andretti Global entry with Kyle Kirkwood taking fourth in the championship with three victories.

What impression did Herta leave on IndyCar?

If at the start of 2019, you were told Colton Herta would leave IndyCar at the end of 2025 to chase a Formula One seat, you probably would have thought Herta was leaving IndyCar with multiple championships, maybe two-dozen victories and at least one or two in the Indianapolis 500. You know... the career Álex Palou basically has achieved. 

Herta leaves IndyCar with zero championships, nine victories, and his best finish in the Indianapolis 500 was eighth. 

I don't think anyone expected Herta to leave and feel a little underwhelmed at what we saw considering what he is hoping to achieve.

Herta is a talented driver, but he isn't leaving as the best in IndyCar, and anyone leaving IndyCar for Formula One you would believe would be the best or at worst second-best in the series. Over seven full seasons, his average championship finish was 6.285. 

Was Herta one of the top five drivers during his time in IndyCar? That is debatable. 

Top ten? Definitely. 

Top eight? Probably, but no one brags about being the sixth-, seventh-, or eight-best in IndyCar. 

Herta's impression on IndyCar is about to come because his move to Formula Two in 2026, while being a Cadillac F1 development driver, is being viewed as an indictment of IndyCar. The pressure isn't on Herta for the sake of Colton Herta. Herta is competing and representing IndyCar, which hasn't had a driver move to Formula One since Sébastien Bourdais went to Toro Rosso in 2008. 

Patricio O'Ward has even said Herta is driving for all of IndyCar next year. However Herta does in Formula Two will set the perception for where IndyCar sits on the global motorsports picture.

It sounds odd to say but we are covering what could be the end of Colton Herta's IndyCar career. If this goes right, Colton Herta will spend the next ten to 15 years in Formula One. He will become a driver who is competitive with Cadillac F1, beating his teammate and either achieving great success with the team or doing well enough to be poached by another team for a bigger and better ride, which could lead to podium finishes, victories and possibly championships. 

If Herta is making this move thinking he is going to spend two or three years in Formula One before returning to IndyCar, this experiment will fail. If he goes in confident he at least has a backup plan, this is not going to work. A quick return to IndyCar is not good for IndyCar. 

But if Herta does succeed in Formula One, his IndyCar record ten years after his driving career is over might not be much different than it is at the end of 2025. We might have seen the last of Herta as a full-time IndyCar driver. Even if he races in Formula One until he is 42 or 43 years old, he could still return and compete in IndyCar, but there is no guarantee that will happen. I suspect Herta will run the Indianapolis 500 next May as that is in the middle of a six-week break in the Formula Two schedule, but outside of that, I don't know when Herta will race in IndyCar again. 

His IndyCar career could be limited to a handful of Indianapolis 500 attempts. He might never win an IndyCar championship if his Formula One career sticks. That is an odd thing to write considering what we expected him to achieve, and what he could still accomplish. 

It feels weird to write a retrospective about a driver who is 25 years old and is going to still be competing, but we might have seen the everything we will ever see of Herta as a true IndyCar driver. Even if he does return, there is a chance Herta will be returning to a much different IndyCar. As much as we joke about things not changing and the DW12 being omnipresent, IndyCar will be different a decade from now. Herta would not rejoining a familiar series but essentially moving to another new series in the latter stages of his career. If he spends a decade in Formula One, such a move might not be as desirable as it sounds.

There will be a part two to Herta's career, but how much it involves IndyCar is to be determined. 

Musings From the Weekend: Supporting the Ladder System

Here is a rundown of what got me thinking...

Lando Norris has a hand on the world championship after victories in the grand prix and sprint race in Interlagos while Oscar Piastri retired from the sprint due to a puddle, and he was fifth in the grand prix after a ten-second penalty. People are still getting over last week in Phoenix. Connor Zilisch lost an opportunity to test a Cadillac Hypercar due to finishing second in the championship in NASCAR's second division. Shane van Gisbergen is returning to the number he always should have had. A pair of championships were awarded in Bahrain. MotoGP went through the motions in Portugal. A.J. Foyt Racing hired Caio Collet to drive its #4 Chevrolet in the 2026 season. Collet moves up from Indy Lights, and as Collet leaves, Foyt enters the junior series, a new trend for next year.

Supporting the Ladder System

This offseason has been about expansion for IndyCar teams, not in IndyCar but in the Road to Indy and Indy Lights in particular. 

In this offseason alone, three IndyCar teams announced Indy Lights programs for the 2026 season. 

For Juncos Hollinger Racing, it is a return to the series after a year away. It is also a return for A.J. Foyt Racing, which will field two cars in partnership with HMD Motorsports. Foyt won the 2002 Indy Pro Series championship with A.J. Foyt IV, and Ed Carpenter won the inaugural Freedom 100 in 2003 driving for Foyt. Speaking of Ed Carpenter, Ed Carpenter Racing formed a partnership with Cape Motorsports to field two cars in Indy Lights while ECR has partnered with Jay Howard Driver Development in the lower two rungs of the Road to Indy.

These three teams join Andretti Global and Chip Ganassi Racing as IndyCar teams participating in the series. Ganassi returned to Indy Lights in 2025 with two cars, and it will expand to a four-car operation in 2026. It wasn't long ago Indy Lights was starting eight or nine cars per race. Now the grid appears set to hit 24 cars and nearly half the IndyCar teams have an interest in the grid, but these teams must be more than just seats to fill. 

It is one thing to be on the grid and it is another to be actually identifying and developing talent. 

All these teams can find someone with $1.5 million to pay for the seat and make a little money in the process, but when it comes to sticking with a driver and believing he or she can be developed over a three or four-year run, that takes patience and a willingness to go through rough patches. 

There are plenty of good drivers in the Road to Indy, but they do not always get enough of an opportunity or even that chance at the next level despite respectable results. If IndyCar teams getting involved means talents will shine and be given a proper chance due to investment down the ladder, then wonderful, but if talent is going to be overlooked and less successful drivers are filling grid spots, then it is really meaningless.

Take Mac Clark as an example. Clark has spent the last three years in the Road to Indy system. After a season in U.S. F2000, he has spent the last two seasons in USF Pro 2000, and he was third in the championship this past season. Clark has been scraping to continue racing. Clark was a spot ahead of Alessandro de Tullio, who was announced as one of Foyt's Indy Lights drivers for 2026.

Jacob Douglas was fifth in USF Pro 2000 last year, behind de Tullio. Douglas sat out most of the 2024 season after being sixth in U.S. F2000 with a pair of victories.

IndyCar teams participating in Indy Lights means these drivers should continue to get opportunities. They have run well in the Road to Indy and should continue their development. They should be getting that next crack. Looking beyond makes you question why the system exists to begin with.

It isn't just Clark and Douglas. 

Michael d'Orlando was the 2022 U.S. F2000 champion, and at 23 years old all d'Orlando could put together in 2025 was the final three races of the Indy Lights season, and he drove respectively well for a driver who had been sidelined for a year. Yuven Sundaramoorthy had one season in Indy Lights before he had to end his career after 2024. Reece Gold won a race in Indy Lights in 2023, and he was done after 2024. Christian Brooks' career will be mystery to me with good results but constantly stepping away from driving. 

We have seen the likes of Rasmus Lindh lose the 2019 Indy Pro 2000 championship to Kyle Kirkwood by two points, and yet Lindh struggled to get a serious shot at Indy Lights. Kiko Porto won the U.S. F2000 title in 2021 and was second in USF Pro 2000 in 2023, and Porto only made four starts in Indy Lights. Braden Eves and Simon Sikes also won championships at the first rung on the Road to Indy ladder, and yet both had careers stall out despite finishing in the top five of the championship at the next level. 

No series is going to be perfect and there will be drivers who cannot find a ride or decide to go elsewhere, but it is too regular to see drivers do well in the Road to Indy and it really lead to no further opportunities down that road. There will also be competition from outside the Road to Indy and the junior series around the world, but if there are going to be two-dozen cars on the Indy Lights grid, there are plenty of drivers developing domestically to take care of many of those new opportunities. 

A ladder system exists, but we do not see many IndyCar development drivers. IndyCar teams take a very passive role in developing drivers. They will wait until a driver has developed without contributing much to the effort and then take a shot when they are about to hit the top level. It is a much more cost-effective method, but without that investment, we don't see drivers get a long leash. IndyCar teams really do not get involved until Indy Lights, but it is sporadic. 

Andretti Global has been the only team that has made an effort at developing drivers in recent years. It has paid off with Kyle Kirkwood, and Dennis Hauger is getting his chance to move up with Andretti's support in 2026. Before that, Sam Schmidt Motorsports was highly successful in Indy Lights, but those drivers weren't moving up to drive for Schmidt in IndyCar. 

With this increased participation, the hope is we see teams committing to a young driver and being there for a four-to-five year period as they work their way up the ladder system and spending two or three years in Indy Lights if necessary. That is what the Road to Indy needs more than having two-dozen cars in Indy Lights. The number doesn't matter if the teams are not committed to the drivers and believe they can be their future.

Champions From the Weekend

The #51 AF Corse Ferrari of James Calado, Alessandro Pier Guidi and Antonio Giovinazzi clinched the World Endurance Drivers' Championship with a fourth-place finish in Bahrain.. 

The #92 Manthey Racing Porsche of Ryan Hardwick, Richard Lietz and Riccardo Pera clinched the Endurance Trophy for LMGT3 Drivers with a fourth-place finish in Bahrain.

Alessandro Zaccone clinched the MotoE championship with finishes of first and fourth from Portimão. Óscar Guitérrez won the final race of the season.

Winners From the Weekend

You know about Lando Norris, but did you know...

Marco Bezzecchi won MotoGP's Portuguese Grand Prix, his second victory of the season. Álex Márquez won the sprint race. Diogo Moreira won in Moto2, his fourth victory of the season. Máximo Quiles won in Moto3, his third victory of the season.

The #7 Toyota of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries won the 8 Hours of Bahrain. The #87 Akkodis ASP Team Lexus of José María López, Clemens Schmid and Razvan Umbrarescu won in LMGT3.

Sébastien Ogier won Rally Japan, his sixth victory of the season.

Coming Up This Weekend

The MotoGP season concludes in Valencia.

Supercars are at Sandown for the penultimate weekend of the season.

2025 NASCAR Predictions: Revisited

We are closing out this week with a final look back at the 2025 NASCAR season through the lense of predictions made just over ten months ago. In a year that saw two outstanding performances in the lower divisions with a Cup season that was rather balanced, we had a fine season and everyone is unsatisfied. that is kind of what NASCAR is after a quarter of the 21st century. Change is coming. Whether that shapes up to be what is desired will be found out soon enough. Until then, here are how a dozen predictions played out for this season. 

1. Team Penske will not have a driver make the final four in the Cup Series

Correct!

The magic did not continue into 2025 as Team Penske was unable to extend its streak of consecutive Cup championships to four, though it had a good chance of at least having a contender. 

Both Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano made the semifinal round, and each driver was one victory away from being a finalist and flipping this prediction to incorrect, however neither could win nor could either score enough points to take the one spot reserved for a non-winner. 

This was a year where Blaney had a good argument that he could have been champion or at least been in the top four. Blaney had three victories in the first 35 races. The only drivers with more victories prior to the finale were Denny Hamlin, Shane van Gisbergen and Christopher Bell. Blaney picked up his fourth victory in the finale. 

Logano had another rather underwhelming season. One top ten finish in the first ten races and then he won the 11th race at Texas to get a playoff spot. He had three top five finishes in the regular season, and he was 12th in points. Then Logano had four top five finishes in the playoffs and was suddenly a threat. But it wasn't enough.

2. There will be at least two occasions where a driver wins consecutive races

Correct!

We got this one taken care of early. It only took three races to have a driver win consecutive events in the 2025 season. Christopher Bell won the second race of the season from Atlanta. Then he won Austin. For good measure, he won three consecutive races and took the checkered flag first at Phoenix.

Part one, done. 

Part two, Denny Hamlin won the seventh race of the season at Martinsville only to follow that up with a victory at Darlington. Prediction achieved in two months of racing. 

And just for the hell of it, there was a third driver to win consecutive races in 2025. Shane van Gisbergen won at Chicago and Sonoma in July. 

3. At least three non-playoff drivers in 2024 will have clinched a playoff spot within the first 13 races of 2025

Incorrect!

This one kind of hinged on whether or not Shane van Gisbergen won the third race of the season from Austin. Van Gisbergen didn't, but Josh Berry won the fifth race of the season at Las Vegas, and this put Berry into the playoffs.

But Berry was the only non-playoff driver from 2024 to win one of the first 13 races in 2025. There were a few close calls Carson Hocevar was second in the second race of the season from Atlanta. Even if Berry did not win at Las Vegas, Daniel Suárez was second and Ryan Preece was third. Either of those drivers would have contributed to this prediction. Michael McDowell was leading with five laps to go at Texas before Joey Logano passed him and then McDowell spun in turn two.

This prediction came up short.

4. Josh Berry will be the best sophomore driver in the championship

Correct!

As we covered above, Berry won the fifth race of the season from Las Vegas and that put Berry into the playoffs. That put the pressure on the rest of the sophomore field to be the best in class, and by the rest of the sophomore field, I mean Carson Hocevar. It was Berry vs. Hocevar.

Hocevar gave it his all, and he nearly had full control of this battle with a runner-up at Atlanta. Hocevar had another runner-up result at Nashville, but he did not do enough to make the playoffs. That meant Berry could finish no worse than 16th, where he did finish, and Hocevar could finish no better than 17th.

5. Kyle Larson will have at least one stretch with five consecutive top ten finishes

Incorrect!

In 2024, Larson never had more than two consecutive top ten finishes, but he had not had a streak of five consecutive top ten finishes since 2021, his first championship season. Guess what happened in 2025?

On three separate occasions, Larson had four-race top ten finish streaks, but he never got to five!

The first one happened early. Over the fourth through seventh race of the season, Larson finished third, ninth, first and fifth at Phoenix, Las Vegas, Homestead and Martinsville respectively. What happened in the next race? Suspension issues took him out early at Darlington and he was 37th. 

But don't worry! Because immediately after Darlington Larson went on to finish first, second, fourth and first. That is looking good. What happened next? He was 37th in the Coca-Cola 600 from Charlotte after an accident. 

Then the old Larson returned. He did not have a more than two consecutive top ten finishes for the rest of the regular season. In the playoffs, he went on a little run.

At Loudon, he was seventh. At Kansas, he was sixth. At Charlotte, he was second on the roval. In Las Vegas, he was second again. What happened next? Larson ran out of fuel on the final lap at Talladega was running in the top five to finish 26th. 

That was the last shot because there were only two more races in the 2025 season. He could not get five consecutive top five finishes in the final two races. Of course, Larson went on to finish fifth and third in those races. 

6. Shane van Gisbergen will end the season with at least ten playoff points

Correct!

I think we all felt good that van Gisbergen could win at least two road course races. At worst, he would win one road course race and then have a bunch of road course races where he was competitive, win some stages, but shenanigans would keep him from victory.

Van Gisbergen won five of six road course races. He had 22 playoff points in the regular season alone. With another victory and another stage victory, he had 28 playoff points at the end of the season. 

7. The finalists in NASCAR's in-season tournament will both be ranked in the top ten in points entering Indianapolis

Wrong!

The inaugural NASCAR In-Season Challenge was a mess from the very first race. With Atlanta kicking off proceedings, the tournament saw three of the top four seeds eliminated in the first round. Six of the quarterfinalists were seeded outside the top ten. 

The final ended up being Tyler Dillon versus Ty Gibbs. This wound up being the 32-seed vs. the 6-seed. Gibbs won the tournament with a finish of 21st over Dillon in 28th after Dillon had issues at Indianapolis and was never really competitive. 

Gibbs and Dillon were 16th and 30th respectively in points entering the final. Neither of those positions are in the top ten. Swing and a miss. 

8. Front Row Motorsports will win no more than two pole positions

Correct! 

Zane Smith won Front Row Motorsports only pole position at Talladega in April. Outside of that, Smith never started in the top five for another Cup race in 2025. Todd Gilliland's only top five starting position of the season was fifth in the second race of the season from Atlanta. 

9. At least one driver in NASCAR's second division will have at least five victories

Correct!

At least one driver did win at least five races. In fact, it was only one driver who won at least five races as Connor Zilisch won ten times. The next closest driver was Austin Hill on four. 

Despite winning ten times, Zilisch was not champion, and for the 16th consecutive season the driver with the most victories did not win the championship in NASCAR's second division.

10. Sheldon Creed will have more victories than runner-up finishes

Incorrect!

For this prediction to be correct, Creed needed to win at least one race. Creed did not win one race, so it had no prayer of being correct. Creed did have two runner-up finishes, at Martinsville in April and Bristol in September. Three victories was going to be asking a lot for this prediction to be correct. 

It is still remarkable that Creed has 15 runner-up finishes at NASCAR's second level and zero victories. He only has 35 career top five finishes. Over 42% is in one specific position and another accounts for 0%. 

To give you an idea of the rest of the break down, Creed has six finishes of third, six finishes of fourth, and  eight finishes of fifth. Those are proportions of 17.142%, 17.142% and 22.857%. Just based on math, he should have about seven finishes at each position for equal distribution, and yet he has finished second over 40% of the time he has finished in the top five, but never finished first! 

Staggering!

Brandon Jones won twice this season, and Jones has won seven times over 11 seasons in the series. Creed cannot have one race fall his way? Jones has 48 top five finishes in his career and only ten of those have been runner-up finishes. In combined first and second-place finishes, Jones has only two more than Creed and Jones has made 335 starts at this level, 199 more than Creed, and Creed still has zero victories!

11. Corey Heim wins at least nine races in NASCAR national series competition

Correct!

Not only did Heim win at least nine times in NASCAR national series competition, he won 12 times in the Truck Series to set a single-season record for victories. It was the greatest Truck Series season we have ever seen. 

Heim did compete in the other two national series, but he didn't win in either of then. He did finish eighth at Bristol in the spring race for NASCAR's second division, his third and final start at that level in 2025. Heim was then sixth in the Bristol Cup race in September. 

12. One driver wins a race in all three national touring series

Correct!

With Heim winning nearly half the Truck races in 2025, it was going to be hard for any driver to achieve this, but Kyle Larson exists, and he killed two birds with one stone at Homestead. He won the Truck race on Friday night and then won the Cup race on Sunday. The victory to cap off this prediction as being correct came a month later when he won in the second division at Bristol. 

Eight-for-12! 

That is more like it! Even a few that were incorrect were close to happening. We didn't even mention this was a season where none of the 94 races (98 if you include four exhibition races) in the national series were rain-delayed. That hasn't happened since 1994, and that was a year before the Truck Series began competition. I sense a slight market correction in the future. 

Doing the Math: An Alternate NASCAR Point System

During Monday's Musings From the Weekend, I lamented the NASCAR points system rewarding too much for finishing second, third and so on in proportion to first-place. I also suggested another points system that would address such a problem. 

The system would pay 100 points for a victory with 70 points for second. Third-place would pay 50 points with 40 for fourth before paying 35-30-25-20-15-12-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 and every position beyond 21st also getting a point because it is NASCAR and everyone should get a point! No bonus points. No stage points. It is all based on finishing position.

It is pretty straight-forward, not much else must be explained. These standings are based on a full season aggregate. Let's break it down in sections.

1. Denny Hamlin: 1,201

2. Christopher Bell: 1,152

3. Kyle Larson: 1,123

In case you are wondering, the championship would have come down to the final race, and these three drivers would have entered the finale with a chance at the title. 

Hamlin would have entered the finale with 1,171 points, 29 points more than Bell and 98 points ahead of Larson. 

Larson would have needed to win with Bell finishing sixth or worse and Hamlin finishing 20th or worse. That wasn't an impossible result. 

For Bell, he needed to score at least 30 points more than Hamlin to win the championship. Bell could have won the title with a victory with Hamlin finishing second, which is what NASCAR wants based on the current "winner-take-all" finale, but the worst Bell could finish and win the title would be fifth, and then he would need Hamlin to finish 16th or worse, a plausible result. 

It wouldn't be guaranteed that it would come down to the final lap, but it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility either. 

We would have had the driver with the most victories (six with Hamlin), a driver with the third-most victories (four with Bell) and one of four drivers who entered the finale with three victories (Larson) competing for the title. All three of these drivers had at least 13 top five finishes entering the finale. Bell and Larson both had over 20. Hamlin would have been on the low side with only 17 top ten finishes entering Phoenix.

That feels like a championship picture entering the finale that we saw for year-after-year in the Cup Series, and we all would have been fine with the drivers competing. Two of those three ended up competing for the championship anyway in 2025, and there was a strong case that Bell should have been in the final four drivers. 

This would have been a satisfying championship finale. Hamlin could have finished second and lost the title to Bell. The last lap dramatics would still have been there. Larson would have needed his best race and the luckiest pair of results to win the championship. It was a stretch, but it wasn't impossible. In the current Cup series, such days aren't out of the norm. 

Of course, it must be acknowledged that even in this system, William Byron losing a tire and hitting the wall with three laps to go, forcing overtime, would have still presented a situation where a two-tire or four-tire stop could determine the championship. That might require another conversation about whether NASCAR should keep overtime or how overtime rules should work. We will save that for another day. 

The argument in this case is, with the full season aggregate, it would at least be organic. What happened this year was Hamlin had no safety. The only way to win the championship would be to finish ahead of Larson, Bell and Chase Briscoe. Everything Hamlin did in that race and in every race prior had no bearing on how the championship was decided. 

With this proposed system, Bell could finish third and Hamlin could finish seventh, and Hamlin would have won the title by four points. It would have been stressful but it wouldn't have been a case of Hamlin had too many cars between him and the car he must pass in a two-lap shootout. 

There would have been plenty to watch and keep you on edge in the final race of the season, and it would not have involved the points resetting. There would not be multiple rounds. It would be one season, every race played into deciding who was champion, and the trophy still could have changed hands on the final day of the season. We can live with that even if it didn't turn out to be the most thrilling finale we ever saw. 

Let's cover the rest of the standings.

4. Ryan Blaney: 1,055

5. Chase Briscoe: 1,018

6. William Byron: 909

7: Chase Elliott: 803

8: Shane van Gisbergen: 605

9: Alex Bowman: 577

10. Tyler Reddick: 571

Blaney's fourth victory of the season in the finale would have jumped him ahead of Briscoe for fourth. 

Byron would have been sixth. Let's acknowledge in a 15-race span from Michigan in one to Bristol in September, Byron had two top five finishes, four top ten finishes and 11 races outside the top ten, six of which were outside the top 20. He also ended the season with three finishes of 25th or worse in the final four races. That Martinsville victory did a lot of heavy-lifting to put him in the top four.

Chase Elliott's good season places him seventh

The next section is where you can see how important winning races is because Shane van Gisbergen would have been eighth, thanks to five victories. Van Gisbergen won five races in 2025, the second-most in the Cup Series! I don't think that part has been mentioned enough. The only driver with more victories was Hamlin. Van Gisbergen won more races than Larson, Bell, Blaney, Byron, Briscoe, Elliott and everyone else behind him in the championship. They were all road course races, and we all thought van Gisbergen was going to win at least two of them. I don't think anyone imagined he would win five of six road course races. 

With how fluky NASCAR races can be with untimely cautions, double-file restarts, driving standards, being caught in the middle of the field because of pitting before a stage break and then drivers staying out, it felt natural to think van Gisbergen wasn't going to win two or three road course races just because of how races shake out. There was bound to be one go against him, and the worst race he had was sixth at Austin when he didn't quite have the pace but was still one of the better cars. 

Van Gisbergen's victories get him eighth in the championship, but it goes to show how well you must do to just bank a lot of victories and win with many poor finishes. Van Gisbergen finished 20th or worse 21 times. It would have taken at least 12 victories to beat Hamlin this season if you finished 20th or worse in all the remaining races. The likelihood of that happening is dismal at best. Van Gisbergen gives us the best example of what happens if a driver is feast or famine. It will end in a flattering championship position, but not necessarily a championship or a shot at one. 

Bowman and Reddick went winless but would have rounded out the top ten. That makes sense. Both didn't have great year. Both did well. This is what consistency looks like without victories. They had 16 and 14 top ten finishes respectively. Both had over six top five finishes. 

11. Bubba Wallace: 543

12. Joey Logano: 532

13. Chris Buescher: 520

14. Ross Chastain: 518

15: Brad Keselowski: 488

16. Ryan Preece: 438

17. Ty Gibbs: 418

18: Josh Berry: 385

19. Carson Hocevar: 331

20. Daniel Suárez: 302

This feels right for a bunch of drivers who had good races but not a great number of good races. Wallace and Logano each won once. Each maybe should have won one more. Buescher did well with top ten finishes, but he only had five top five finishes. Chastain won once but had four top five finishes the entire season. 

Keselowski had 13 top ten finishes all season, and Preece had 14 with only three top five finishes. 

Gibbs had 15 finishes of 20th or worse. How high in the championship do you think he should finish?

Drivers that had one or two great days are properly positioned. Berry won at Las Vegas, but he had two other top five finishes the rest of the season, one was the race before his Las Vegas victory when he was fourth at Phoenix. His only other top five was second at Loudon. Berry completed the fewest laps this season among the full-time drivers as he had nine retirements. The only full-time driver who failed to finish more races was Cody Ware, and Ware only failed to finish two more than Berry. 

Hocevar and Suárez each had a pair of runner-up finishes this season, Hocevar at Atlanta and Nashville; Suárez at Las Vegas and Daytona. They both had 19 finishes outside the top twenty. They both should be on the fringe of the top 20 in the championship.

21. Kyle Busch: 302

22. Michael McDowell: 294

23. Austin Cindric: 284

24. Erik Jones: 281

25. John Hunter Nemechek: 276

26. A.J. Allmendinger: 249

27. Austin Dillon: 237

28. Zane Smith: 231

29. Todd Gilliland: 228

30. Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.: 163

Busch would have lost the tiebreaker to Suárez as Busch's best finish all season was fifth. Looking at these standings, seven of these drivers would have finished exactly where they finished in the actual 2025 standings. The three exceptions are two drivers who made the playoffs thanks to one victory (Cindric and Dillon) and Gilliland would have dropped from 27th to 29th. 

Cindric had two top five finishes and five top tens. Dillon's only top five was his Richmond victory, and his best finish in the 11 races after that night was 13th with eight finishes of 20th or worse. 

This is where they should have finished in the championship! Let's not confuse winning one race with being championship worthy. 

31. Justin Haley: 153

32. Cole Custer: 141

33. Noah Gragson: 132

34. Tyler Dillon: 90

35. Riley Herbst: 60

36. Jimmie Johnson: 51

37. Cody Ware: 43

For the sake of fullness, here are the remaining full-time championship drivers, plus Jimmie Johnson because Johnson was third in the Daytona 500.

We will know soon enough what NASCAR decides to do with its championship format. I do not suspect it will fully change points distribution, but it should if it wants to properly award winning and prevent drivers from just finishing eighth every race and winning a championship. It is more likely going to be the 3-3-4 playoff format or reverting to a ten-race aggregate like the original Chase for the Cup. Even with those systems, the points distribution should still be addressed to award winning more.