IndyCar thrives with plenty of parity
Dale Coyne paused in the IndyCar garage at Texas Motor Speedway. He considered the word, and he approved.
“Parity. That’s a good word,” he said Friday. “I think it’ll arrive next year.”
Then what is this year? Seven drivers have won the first nine races of the 2017 Verizon IndyCar Series season, with Coyne’s Sebastien Bourdais signaling a trend in a season-opening victory in St. Petersburg, Fla. With five teams claiming wins, upset is a dynamic in which heavily resourced teams such as Team Penske and Ganassi Racing and those using the power-of-moment engine or body kit were alone in realistically harboring ambitions of victory at each race.
The streak ended last week when Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s Graham Rahal swept both street courses races in Detroit and Penske’s Will Power won for the second time this season with a victory Saturday at Texas. But IndyCar competitors don’t foresee an end to the trend because the reasons for it remain: a deeper pool of drivers and teams than at any point in series history, a marked improvement by Honda and regulations that favor competitive balance.
The introduction of a universal aero kit in 2018 figures to heighten the trend, team owner Chip Ganassi said, as the inherent advantages Chevrolet and Honda individually exploited at certain tracks should, in theory, be negated. While larger teams could be expected to benefit early in the season, the paddock is likely to equalize the field quickly as they observe each other.
“It’s just not going to be the same kind of season as last year,” said defending series champion Simon Pagenaud, who won five times for Penske last season and currently has one victory. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t win the championship.” Pagenaud is second in points after finishing third at Texas.
Bourdais’ victory in St. Petersburg presaged a trend that had its roots last season. Coyne had in the offseason signed the veteran and engineer Craig Hampson, who won four consecutive Champ Car titles together and increased expenditures in engineering. The win was just Coyne’s fifth in 33 years.
“Sometimes you engineer so hard you start chasing things that don’t gain you much and you go back to basics and you can make a bigger leap,” Coyne said. “I think that’s what we’ve done this year in a much deeper way. I think it’s refreshing, everybody having a greater chance every week.”
Parity is good for drivers, who must be confident enough to believe they can win with the proper set of factors, including their execution and their team’s, a strong car and not having strategy plays or wrecks bedevil them. It’s good for teams, driver-owner Ed Carpenter Jr. said, because it can help attract and retain sponsors and quality employees. And it could be good for the series, Hulman and Co. chairman Mark Miles said, because it shows potential new teams and engine manufacturers that they can compete quickly. Such is Miles’ hope with the relationship sparked with Formula One team McLaren, which allowed twotime champion Fernando Alonso to skip the Monaco Grand Prix for a first run this May in the Indianapolis 500.
Pardon Team Penske President Tim Cindric for not being fully aboard. After Pagenaud claimed the organization’s second championship in two seasons, a Penske driver had led the standings after 43 of the previous 44 races. The organization won 10 of 16 races last season (four this season), fielded the top three drivers in the final 2016 standings and signed the fourth — Josef Newgarden — in the offseason.
“I don’t think someone dominating or a team dominating in a sport is necessarily bad for the sport,” Cindric said, “because I think you get as many people in- terested in the sport to cheer for or against you. Many people want to know they can pick the winner, and there’s many people that want the underdog. And when you look back and you see ultimate parity in any sport, I’m not sure that equates to popularity.”
Miles disagrees as long as there is a perception of quality.
“There are times when having 17 races and 17 winners might not be great, if it means that no one is seen as top of the class,” he said. “But in our sport, the fact that we still have the teams, I think, is interesting. So we’ve kind of got the driver dynamic, but you also have Penske, the big guy-little guy in terms of the team owners.”
Ganassi and Penske are observing the phenomenon in two series. Ten drivers had won 14 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races entering this weekend at Pocono Raceway. Ganassi called the development of more quality teams “the long-term effect of controlling the engine architecture.”
“Both the sanctioning bodies have been working on parity, and I think you have rules that keep drivers on the lead lap,” he said. “You’re never out of it, so it makes for more winners.”