IndyCar midseason report cards: Penske and Ganassi at the top, Rahal has major questions

The three-week break between IndyCar races is the longest IndyCar teams will have before the Astor Cup is doled out Sept. 11 at Laguna Seca. Along with the series of tests that took place, it's the time teams finally know what type of firepower they have across all circuits -- having now run at least twice on ovals, road and street courses.

Mechanics, engineers, team managers and drivers could either recharge or take a good, hard look in the mirror and decide what kind of metaphorical school year they could stomach having.

At the top, the race for the 2022 IndyCar title is fierce, with 11 drivers with at least a longshot's chance at contention. The fight for Rookie of the Year and those valuable Leaders Circle funds are tight as well, as are battles for life-changing rides and others' hopes just to remain in the series another year.

With all that, it's time to hand out midseason report cards. As always, there's no precise grading scale. Scores are based on an imprecise combination of expectations, raw results, trends and general feeling, and small teams have just as great a shot at high marks as the members of the Big Four.

Insider: 3 contenders finished 19th or worse at Road America. Here's where things are.

A GRADES

Team Penske: A-

With five wins combined across its three cars through eight races, Team Penske is off to its most dominant start since 2006 – when Helio Castroneves and Sam Hornish Jr. won six of the first eight. All three drivers have won (led by Josef Newgarden with three), and all have also stood on multiple podiums. And yet, Team Penske’s still been far from perfect.

“It’s been a little bit too up-and-down for us, feast-or-famine," Newgarden said following his victory at Road America. "I think we genuinely had the potential for four or five wins up to this point, so we’ve done three … but the other ones that we weren’t winning, we were finishing too far back. We’ve got to up our consistency, and that’s a little abnormal for us.”

Even when including Will Power’s impressive string of top-4 finishes (each of the first five races and six of the first seven), Team Penske has logged 14 top-10s through eight races (58.3% of their 24 starts) versus 18 at this point a year ago (56.3%) when they were running four full-time cars. It means we’re seeing those runner-up finishes from 2021 (five through eight races) turn into wins, and those 6th-7th-8th-place finishes turn into top-5s. When they’re in the hunt, they’re capitalizing a bit more.

But when they’re not, as Newgarden mentioned, they’re too far back. Jumping down to three full-time cars has led to better execution, but there’s still more refining to be done. The Indy 500 exists as a glaring example, where Newgarden finished a team-best 13th and none of the three cars were realistically in the window to challenge for pole or the victory. Scott McLaughlin started off with a win and a 2nd-place but finished no better than 19th between the GMR Grand Prix, the 500 and the Detroit Grand Prix.

Last year: Ganassi leads Penske, Andretti, AMSP at the front

Chip Ganassi Racing: A-

I find it useful to judge the three title contenders (Marcus Ericsson, Alex Palou and Scott Dixon) alone from Jimmie Johnson. With that in mind, you could argue the seasons of the Ganassi core trio has been stronger than any other team – including Team Penske.

They make up 19 top-10s and are almost always in the hunt – four of those five finishes outside the top-10 this year either came from single-car incident, a pitlane speed violation or Ericsson and Palou’s contact at Road America that eliminated Palou, who most agree was at fault. It shows in their average finishing position among full-time drivers, which ranks 2nd, 3rd and 4th, compared to Penske’s 1st, 5th and 11th. As Team Penske showed a year ago, when you flirt near wins long enough, they’re bound to come, though you’d certainly like to have seen it happen more frequently already.

Ganassi, of course, has one win so far – a big one, Ericsson’s 500 – and it shouldn’t be overlooked how dominant the team was across the two weeks around the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. Though they didn’t win the two previous years, you could argue they’ve had the car to beat each of the last three seasons, and they finally found their time.

When it comes to Johnson, his 2022 has been a mixed bag. His 6th-place at Texas, strong run of Indy 500 practices and all-in-all solid 500 qualifying weekend prove ovals are where he can thrive. But his lack of stronger, cleaner road and street course weekends have been quite a surprise. A year ago, he logged four finishes of 19th or better on those tracks but is yet to have any this season. Yes, IndyCar is as tight as ever, and yes, even rookies have far more open-wheel experience than he does, but even Johnson is growing increasingly more comfortable in the car, you’d hope we’d start to see more of that in his results.

B grades

Arrow McLaren SP: B+

Though Pato O’Ward’s results may not quite represent the level of consistency Arrow McLaren SP went searching for this past offseason, things look far better if you consider his 19th in the GMR Grand Prix came from a bit of a risk on tire strategy, and he ended up 26th at Road America due to an electrical failure. Outside those, he’s been 5th-1st-2nd-5th since the start of April. When it comes to qualifying, the young Mexican driver’s been one of the series’ best.

Paired with teammate Felix Rosenqvist’s surge, stringing together four consecutive top-10s and starting inside the top-10 in six of the last seven races, AMSP’s form across the board is clearly improved over what we saw in the latter-half of last year. Even if they only have a single win and two combined podiums (all O’Ward’s), there’s clearly a synergy there where both are working more in-sync than a year ago. In 2021, O'Ward's title hopes fell a strong west coast swing short and he’ll need to find a couple more wins and keep these top-5 finishes coming if he’s to be there in the end.

Even if 2022 leaves the team short of a championship yet again, you’d be hard to argue they’re not better off than they were a year ago, which is what matters most.

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Meyer Shank Racing: B

Because his teammate is in the midst of a comeback after having run just 13 IndyCar races in four years, Simon Pagenaud’s solid start with Meyer Shank Racing may be a better bellwether for how IndyCar’s newest two-car team is adjusting. And through eight races, Pagenaud sits 10th in points – just two spots behind where he finished in his final two seasons with Team Penske. With one podium and three other top-10s, the Frenchman's been in contention at the top nearly as often, but his weekends outside the top-15 have been less infrequent.

For Helio Castroneves, the bad luck and mistakes have been more frequent, and thus, we don't know just how good the four-time 500 winner can be on a consistent basis at 47 years old. On his best days, he can be a top-10 car, but whether he can do so often enough to continue to stick around in this series remains to be seen.

Ed Carpenter Racing: B

Very quietly, Conor Daly is enveloped in perhaps the best raw season in IndyCar’s midfield this year, and it’s come from his consistency. Currently 13th in points – just 32 out of 8th – the driver whose best points finish in his career was 17th looks to be blossoming into the type of driver that might not have to fight tooth and nail for his job every offseason. Certainly, you’d like to see a few more top-10s – particularly on road and street courses – but with four combined races at Iowa, the IMS road course and WWT Raceway, tracks Daly has excelled at of late, there’s reason to think he can maintain this.

On the flipside, with Daly 10 points ahead of his teammate after being head-and-shoulders better a year ago, there’s reason to wonder just who Rinus VeeKay is 2.5 years into his IndyCar career. Through his rookie year and the first half of 2021, there was talk about rides at Penske and Ganassi in his future. The Dutchman could wind up in AMSP’s third ride in 2023, but he no longer comes across as the sure-fire talent he was billed as. He may simply need more time to iron out his edges, but his weekends like Barber this year (3rd-place) and his win a year ago at IMS look more like the exception at the moment.

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Juncos Hollinger Racing: B-

With a rookie driver and a team that had been pieced together in the offseason, currently running as IndyCar’s lone one-car team no less, expectations were incredibly low for the restart of Ricardo Juncos’ program. In so many ways, Juncos Hollinger Racing and Callum Ilott have been better than expected.

Though all but two of the race results (8th on the IMS road course and 11th at Road America) aren’t much to write home about, it’s notable that those finishes came from qualifying around the same positions (8th at IMS and 12th at Road America). Increasingly, this is a team that can unload a competitive car at the start of the weekend and keep it there as the track and weather conditions change. On top of those, Ilott qualified 11th at Barber, but spun on cold tires midway through and finished up 25th. After starting a respectable 19th for his maiden 500, the British driver crashed just under 70 laps in this season and wound up 32nd.

That’s four consecutive race weekends where, if not for mistakes from Ilott, the No. 77 Chevy likely would’ve come home with strong finishes. When you look at how much Carlin struggled as a one-car team the previous two seasons (particularly outside the ovals manned by Conor Daly), there’s clearly a lot to build upon here, which is all you can ask for as a team owner restarting your IndyCar dreams.

C grades

Dale Coyne Racing: C

After a string of DNFs for various reasons to start the year for both drivers, David Malukas and Takuma Sato have proven since May to be a worthwhile, if not odd-ball tandem, to build around. In a series where Penske, Andretti, Ganassi and AMSP bring a combined 13 cars to the grid, the 20-year-old rookie and 45-year-old veteran have increasingly been fighting in the upper-half of the IndyCar field.

As we saw at Detroit, there’s enough speed on their best weekends to fight among the contenders – even if the pair’s respective races didn’t go their way. They may not have wins in their near-future, but for a team that underwent a complete driver change in the offseason, there appears to be a foundation. Yes, top-15s aren’t what anyone wants nowadays, but in a series where 20 or so drivers could legitimately win a race, largely staying out of trouble and finishing around the midfield isn’t a bad place to be.

Andretti Autosport: C-

Outside Colton Herta’s 2020 campaign (3rd in points), 2022 is off to a third consecutive massively mixed-bag start for Andretti Autosport. Its best hope for a title, according to the current point standings, is a driver that’s known for some time he’d be leaving after this year. Outside rookie Devlin DeFrancesco, who’s logged three top-20 finishes, Andretti’s other three drivers have all flirted with wins at least once this year – and Herta came through on the IMS road course.

But it’s notable Alexander Rossi’s three-race run of 5th-2nd-3rd has garnered standalone headlines. At two (and perhaps three) other teams, such a streak wouldn’t look all that remarkable. But the fact we’re talking about a career resurgence says everything you need to know about where things have been.

At the right tracks and on the right days, Andretti’s top three drivers have what it takes to be the best, but it’s all too rare recently to have more than one driver within a sniff of race-win contention. Road America’s 3rd-4th-5th was nice, but like Rossi’s own run, it’s going to take more than that to prove it’s the norm and not the exception to the rule.

More IndyCar news: Alexander Rossi snaps lengthy pole drought, but 3-year winless streak looms

D grades

A.J. Foyt Racing: D+

We continue to see brief glimpses of what this Foyt team aspires to be, whether it be Kyle Kirkwood’s 10th-place finish at Long Beach, Dalton Kellet qualifying 14th at St. Pete or Tatiana Calderon finishing 15th on the IMS road course. But those moments continue to come far too infrequently. The team surprised many by landing Kirkwood last offseason, but there was little hope he'd be here long when a seat opened up at Andretti.

Until the team’s driver lineup isn’t both a turnstile and a home for extremely raw talent with a resource deficit, it will continue to be a long, tough road toward becoming consistently competitive again.

More coverage: IndyCar winners and losers from Road America

Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing: D

That Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing has been the biggest disappointment across the paddock this season speaks to the expectations the team has built in recent years, as well as the three drivers management had pulled together for the 2022 season. Led by veteran Graham Rahal, many expected this new three-car outfit to be the true coming-out party for Jack Harvey, who’d spent his entire career helping build much smaller MSR from the ground up. Rookie Christian Lundgaard had only spent one weekend in an Indy car, but it had been enough to some fans thinking he would stand on a podium or two before the season ended.

And he may still, but there’s an awfully long way to go for a team where top-10s are something to be genuinely excited about. Rahal said the team’s setbacks stem from a lack of engineering depth, which isn’t something you can fix overnight. One would’ve hoped those concerns would’ve been taken care of before the team opted to jump from two to three full-time cars around this time a year ago, but solidifying personnel departments in a growing series, amidst other simultaneous motorsports growth, is no easy task. Clearly, though, this process wasn’t nearly as turnkey as one might have hoped.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar midseason report cards: Penske, Ganassi battling at the top