Sweet season for Kiwis McLaughlin, Dixon
INDIANAPOLIS – I’m not the betting type, nor would I suggest anyone wager any serious amounts of money on my predictions before a lap is turned in St. Pete.
But here’s a stat for you: Had you put down $10 on each of my 2022 preseason IndyCar race winner picks, you would’ve come away more than $100 richer. Four correct picks across the 17 events (including three in a row from Toronto through Iowa) will do that.
Will I have the same success in 2023? Probably not, but across a 2022 season filled with team in-fighting, a surprise Indianapolis 500 winner and a dark horse season champ, this annual preseason exercise hit on some interesting storylines. Pato O’Ward was crowned the oval champ. Josef Newgarden and Scott Dixon finished frustratingly close to another title. Alex Palou fell back a bit after his surprise 2021 title run.
Of course, there were massive misses: Will Power winning the title (rather than taking 10th), Scott McLaughlin seriously contending for the championship in fourth place (rather than outside the top 10 in 12th), Colton Herta struggling mightily with inconsistency (rather than clinching his first Astor Cup) and Jack Harvey taking a massive step backward in his move to RLL (rather than keeping hold of his 13thplace championship finish from 2021).
With six correct race winner predictions in my three seasons on the IndyCar beat at IndyStar, I’ve yet to connect on a series champion (Alexander Rossi, Newgarden and Herta in order) or 500 winner (Ed Carpenter, Rossi and O’Ward). In Year No. 4, I’ve added two new names to those lists, with the belief that past performance will continue to snowball into massive career achievements for a pair of Kiwis.
Race 1: Streets of St. Petersburg
Winner: Colton Herta, Andretti Autosport Takeaway: Herta and the Andretti cars have consistently had solid speed on the streets of St. Pete in recent years, and though preseason testing times aren’t always reflective of a team’s speed against the paddock, doing well doesn’t hurt. After an up-anddown 2022 campaign, I think Andretti and Herta are in for a rebound.
Race 2: Texas Motor Speedway
Winner: Scott McLaughlin, Team Penske Takeaway: Through his two full-time IndyCar seasons, the three-time Supercars champ has performed his best at TMS, finishing runner-up in two of his three starts. In a year in which I see McLaughlin pulling out his first IndyCar title, it’s critical for the New Zealander to get on the board with an early win, and the year’s first oval seems the most logical spot.
Race 3: Streets of Long Beach
Winner: Romain Grosjean, Andretti Autosport Takeaway: Outside of his Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course runner-up as a rookie in 2021, Grosjean’s closest challenge for his first IndyCar victory came a year ago in Long Beach. I expect the secondyear Andretti Autosport driver to break through for his first motor sports victory in 12 years, and I can’t get out of my head how racey the Swiss-born Frenchman was on Newgarden’s heels a year ago.
Race 4: Barber Motorsports Park
Winner: Alexander Rossi, Arrow McLaren Takeaway: Rossi’s never been shy about his lack of love for the permanent road course outside Birmingham, Alabama, but qualifying fifth and other moments across his weekend (even with a ninth-place finish) hinted that answers may be there. I don’t expect his first season with Arrow McLaren to go completely smooth but there will be times when his speed show sparks, and at a track where new teammate Pato O’Ward took the pole in 2021 and won in 2022, Barber could be a sneaky spot for Rossi to land his first IndyCar win outside the Andretti stable.
Race 5: IMS Road Course
Winner: Will Power, Team Penske Takeaway: Last year’s IndyCar champion carries a 16-season streak with at least one win. I wouldn’t expect anything to change in Power’s winning ways. The Team Penske veteran has won five times on the IMS road course and has finished on the podium in four of his last five starts there.
Race 6: 107th Indianapolis 500
Winner: Scott Dixon, Chip Ganassi Racing Takeaway: Historians will remember Dixon’s terrible luck in the Greatest Spectacle in Racing the last three years for decades to come. Ill-timed cautions (2020, ’21) and running a tick of a mph over the pit lane limit with fewer than 30 laps to go (’22) have robbed the driver who had the best car each race day. He is due.
Race 7: Streets of Detroit
Winner: Josef Newgarden, Team Penske Takeaway: There’s but one other driver (Dixon) I trust as much coming into a race weekend full of unknowns as I do Newgarden. And should he clear the 500 without a win in 2023, there will be no one on the grid wanting a victory in the first race on a new downtown Detroit layout more than the two-time champ.
Race 8: Road America
Winner: Colton Herta, Andretti Autosport Takeaway: As a rookie, Herta took the pole at Road America in 2019 and fell back to eighth. Since? He’s finished no worse than fifth. With the title race incredibly bunched up with seven winners in the first seven races (and no double-points at the 500), the pool of a half-dozen serious title contenders will be fighting to see who can grab that important second victory of the year. Count on a resurgent Herta to notch his ninth win in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.
Race 9: Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course
Winner: Scott Dixon, Chip Ganassi Racing Takeaway: The six-time Mid-Ohio winner will tack on No. 7 at the famed permanent road course in Lexington. With that, Dixon will hope to erase a stat that took me by surprise: In the 16 seasons since IndyCar returned to Mid-Ohio, he has six Mid-Ohio wins and five championships – but none in the same year.
Race 10: Streets of Toronto
Winner: Colton Herta, Andretti Autosport Takeaway: A year after starting on the pole, losing his lead on Dixon in his first pit stop and racing looking at the back of the No. 9 Honda for the remainder of the 80-lap race, I expect a championship-hunting Herta to take hold of the title race with his third win of 2023, while just Dixon will have more than one. After four IndyCar seasons of flirting with title contention, Herta ensures he’ll firmly be in the picture.
Race 11: Iowa Speedway
Winner: Josef Newgarden, Team Penske Takeaway: If you take away his freak crash from a year ago in Race 2 that, in all likelihood, stole what would’ve been a weekend sweep, Newgarden would be the winner of four of the last five IndyCar races on the Newton, Iowa, short oval. In the midst of a doubleheader weekend, it seems almost too easy to assume Newgarden snags victory in at least one.
Race 12: Iowa Speedway
Winner: Pato O’Ward, Arrow McLaren Takeaway: Though Newgarden’s crash helped O’Ward take control of last year’s second race of the weekend, there’s no doubting O’Ward’s speed and skill at Iowa – and on ovals at-large. In another frustrating season, O’Ward will finally break through for his first win of 2023 at a track he’s excelled at in his young career.
Race 13: Streets of Nashville
Winner: Alex Palou, Chip Ganassi Racing Takeaway: In the first two years of this race, CGR drivers have taken up four of the six podium spots (and both victories with Dixon and Marcus Ericsson). With so much attrition (including 69 of the 160 laps run under caution), the race’s early days seems to favor drivers who consistently run up front, which Palou has overwhelmingly done. The Spaniard’s title run in 2021 and resilience against off-track noise in 2022 have pointed to him becoming an annual race winner.
Race 14: IMS Road Course
Winner: Christian Lundgaard, RLL Racing Takeaway: Breakouts in drivers’ second seasons (whether it be in the sport or with a new team) seem to be the trend of late, and the young Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing driver seems primed for one. Even if he’s unable to crack the top 10 in points this year (there are nearly a dozen drivers with outside shots at title contention), the 21-year-old Danish driver knocked on the door enough times as a rookie to have a real shot for a win in 2023. And there’s no more likely track for it to happen at than the IMS road course, where Lundgaard has made two Fast Six appearances (in three starts) and finished runner-up in Race No. 2 a year ago. Say goodbye to the mustache.
Race 15: World Wide Technology Raceway
Winner: Scott McLaughlin, Team Penske Takeaway: Beware a Team Penske driver’s late-season surge. We’ve seen it with Newgarden, where the twotime champ has won multiple races in the back half of all but one season since joining Roger Penske’s squad. McLaughlin’s end to 2022 was no less stunning, including five consecutive top-4 finishes and just two outside the top 7 in the final 10 races. McLaughlin had nothing for Newgarden’s late-race pace at WWT Raceway a year ago, but special drivers in the midst of special seasons typically find another gear.
Race 16: Portland International Raceway
Winner: Scott McLaughlin, Team Penske Takeaway: With this win, McLaughlin snags what will now have been a lengthy time atop the title battle from Herta, joining the Andretti driver with three wins apiece. Herta’s three wins in the first 10 races created a comfortable pad, not unlike Ericsson’s mid-season journey a year ago following his 500 victory. But McLaughlin’s consistency in rattling off top-5s over the course of the season will have kept him within striking distance, allowing wins in two of the final three races to push him into the lead.
Race 17: WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca
Winner: Josef Newgarden, Team Penske Takeaway: Newgarden’s third win of the year will propel him into rarefied air: never in American openwheel championships has a driver finished runner-up in four consecutive seasons. Newgarden became just the fourth to do so across three consecutive seasons a year ago. His trio of wins in 2023 will create an enticing title battle with his good friend/teammate/ YouTube show cohost McLaughlin and Herta, but it will be McLaughlin’s steadiness across a whole season that prevails in yet another season-finale title clash. With his three wins, the 2023 champ will continue to inch closer to becoming Team Penske’s all-time leader in wins, trailing only Brad Keselowski (66) and Mark Donohue (59) with 56 by the end of 2023.