Here is a rundown of what got me thinking...
It was a good weekend for the Márquez family. Cadillac laid an egg in Qatar. Ferrari swept a podium, and Corvette came out on top. The fastest car in Formula One testing from Bahrain was a Williams. Everyone believes in McLaren, are uncertain about Red Bull, think Ferrari is good but not great, and Mercedes looks destined for a long season. There was a popular result in Daytona. Austin came up with a shortcut. Álex Palou led a Chip Ganassi Racing 1-2 at St. Petersburg ahead of Scott Dixon with Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin making it a Team Penske 3-4. That has me thinking...
We Need a Season Where Ganassi and Penske Are Not a Factor
With another IndyCar season opener brings the usual excitement for the year ahead.
Drivers have moved around. Some have remained put. New names are ready to surprise us. Old names look to keep status quo. Anything can happen in an IndyCar season.
And yet, we all know the season will have one of three possible outcomes.
Either a Team Penske driver is going to control the championship and win without really feeling like they are in that much danger.
Álex Palou will continue to be Álex Palou and no one will be able to exceed his level of output.
Or Scott Dixon is going to do something unthinkable and leave us all amazed.
Anybody can win in IndyCar, but we all know who the champion will be.
It is the vexing state of the series. In any given race, anybody could win.
Alexander Rossi and Ed Carpenter Racing find great balance in the car at Gatewayand turn that into a victory? Absolutely plausible.
Felix Rosenqvist being lightning quick at Long Beach and nobody is able to keep up as he wins after leading 81 of 90 laps to give Meyer Shank Racing its second victory? We could all see it happening.
Graham Rahal getting off the snide as Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing continues to find its sweet spot on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course? History would suggest it was bound to happen.
Seven teams could win a race this year and no one would think it was strange. There would be no surprise if A.J. Foyt Racing won an oval event or even Conor Daly winning with Juncos Hollinger Racing on an oval. A team can find its wheelhouse and have all the stars align. They don't even need luck. These teams can produce a car capable of winning and then nail a race from start to finish to take an unlikely victory, and none of us would be stunned to see it.
When it comes to the championship though... naturally, that's harder to win than a single race.
Anyone can have one sensational day or possibly even two, but a championship requires a full season of great days. Perhaps a team can overcome a mulligan or two, but no team is getting lucky 15 times in a season. The best win championships. They arrive and perform at the highest level nine times out of ten.
For over a decade now, the only teams capable of that are Team Penske and Chip Ganassi Racing. The two organizations have combined to win the last 12 championships. The "Big Three" was declared dead a few years ago. There are two options.
Chocolate or vanilla?
Paper or plastic?
Great taste or less filling?
The only thing that saves IndyCar from the entire season being a complete bore is neither team has a dedicated number one driver. It hasn't exactly been "A" or "B" for a decade where we know what driver each team wants to win. It will be one of their drivers, but the door is open to any of them, and the teams will let the drivers battle it out on the track. You just have to hope you enjoy which of three flavors you get.
Consider the 2017 season.
There were seven different winners in the first seven races. And none of them were Chip Ganassi Racing drivers. The first repeat winner was Graham Rahal. That is what makes IndyCar fantastic. Something like that could happen and nobody would think it is peculiar. Sébastien Bourdais winning with Dale Coyne Racing? Makes sense. Takuma Sato winning the Indianapolis 500? With Andretti Autosport, sure! Rahal sweeping the Belle Isle doubleheader? That team had it clicking.
None of those results were fluky. These weren't cases of drivers getting lucky week after week and the winners not matching the result.
Of course, the season still ended with a Team Penske driver as champion, but it was tolerable and celebrated because it was Josef Newgarden breaking through in his first year with the team. Newgarden caught his opportunity and seized it immediately. He immediately showed he was up to the task and the hype was justified. For an American driver who had pulled off some impressive results with smaller teams, this is what we all hoped for, the next generation showing up and making a name for itself.
We can have Newgarden win a championship or Álex Palou win a championship out of nowhere and it overshadows the reality. Will Power can win a championship eight years after his first title and we can all be pleased with it. Scott Dixon can open a season with three consecutive victories and go wire-to-wire to claim a title and we are awed by it. We can find joy in those accomplishments and performances, but when you step back and take a 10,000-foot view of it, you cannot ignore how the landscape looks.
Dominance is common across all forms of motorsports, but it is the one thing IndyCar has not been able to buck. Anyone can win, but it is only a moment in the sun. It is never a seismic shift in the series. That next great superpower has not arose, and it has been quite sometime. You can only promote anyone can win for so long before you must acknowledge that it is never sustained over an entire season. We have yet to see it be “Ed Carpenter Racing’s year” or “Meyer Shank Racing’s year.” At best, those teams get a race.
IndyCar would benefit from a season where neither Ganassi nor Penske were in the picture for the championship. I am not saying have both teams nosedive and no longer be competitive for the rest of eternity, but a refreshing season with completely different names competing at the top would be a shift the series could use.
The organizations are there. Andretti Global was once considered part of the problem, but we are going on 13 years since it last won a championship. Arrow McLaren talks like it is there, but it must win now. Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing has been competitive in IndyCar and sports cars. Ten years ago, RLLR and even Ed Carpenter Racing had a driver with a shot at the title entering the final race of the season. Meyer Shank Racing is a championship team from sports cars. Any of those teams have what it takes, but it just never works out that way in IndyCar.
A year without Ganassi or Penske in the battle would put different names in view. It would also give us a storyline we have not see in two decades now, two powerhouse teams struggling. Penske's worst season in the last 20 years was a still season where it won three times, one of those races was the Indianapolis 500, and it only lost the championship on tiebreaker after three of its drivers entered the finale with a shot at the title. Ganassi has had a top five championship finisher in 18 of the last 19 seasons. In the one season it didn't, Dixon was sixth and won twice, a solid year for 85% of the grid.
For the sake of something different, it would be intriguing to watch Ganassi and Penske have to battle try to find its way back to the front. It would at least give us something else to watch. The races would have the unknown fighting at the front in a battle where we would be uncertain who would come out on top, and the stalwarts would be giving us something to watch at the back. Whether they could pull out the results or not would be the mystery. It would not be boring that is for sure.
Ganassi and Penske are not going anywhere. We can hope one day we will see greater variety in the championship battle, and a few different teams take control of an entire season. Theoretically, it could be this year, but after seeing both teams combine to sweep the top four positions in the season opener, it will likely have to be another year.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Álex Palou, but did you know...
Marc Márquez won MotoGP's Thailand Grand Prix and the sprint race. Manuel González won the Moto2 race. José Antonio Rueda won the Moto3 race.
The #50 Ferrari of Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen won the Qatar 1812. The #33 TF Sport Corvette of Daniel Juncadella, Jonny Edgar and Ben Keating won in LMGT3.
Christopher Bell won the NASCAR Cup race from Austin, his second consecutive victory. Connor Zilisch won the Grand National Series race.
Dennis Hauger won the Indy Lights race from St. Petersburg. Alessandro de Tullio and Max Garcia split the USF Pro 2000 races. Liam McNeilly swept the U.S. F2000 races.
Ken Roczen won the Supercross race from Daytona. R.J. Hampshire won the 250cc race.
Coming Up This Weekend
The best drivers in the world descend on Australia... for the Race of Champions in Sydney.
NASCAR will be in Phoenix.
Supercross heads north to Indianapolis.
Super Formula opens its season with a doubleheader at Suzuka.
