Yahoo Autos IndyCar's 2021 Field Will Be Something To Behold
IndyCar's format, built around a spec chassis and a limited pool of engine suppliers, makes both building a new team and expanding an existing one relatively easy.
Unfortunately, it makes contraction similarly straightforward.
The result of this is a consistent ebb and flow of power; At its worst, this is former championship-level teams like Panther Racing and KV Racing Technologies disappearing overnight.
At its best, the IndyCar field can expand massively overnight, and every major team in the series can bring in their own new, major talent in the same season.
This could be the case in 2021. Even if the field doesn't grow any further from here, we will be talking about the strongest and most accomplished IndyCar field in a generation.
The foundation of the grid is nothing new.
The five best drivers in the series are Chip Ganassi Racing's many-time champion Scott Dixon, Andretti Autosport's Indianapolis 500 winner Alexander Rossi, and Team Penske's championship winning trio of Simon Pagenaud, Will Power, and Josef Newgarden.
Each driver has been in IndyCar for some time, and each has shown a distinct set of strengths and weaknesses that can be predicted week to week. Power is, by far, the fastest on the grid in a single lap, but he is far from the most consistent. Dixon is just the opposite, the ultimate fuel saver and the best driver a strategist could possibly ask to be paired with.
Rossi is the most reckless, but he has the pace to back up his consistent capacity to take risks. Both Pagenaud and Newgarden are more steady, but, while Pagenaud's runs of enormous success are streaky, Newgarden seems to always find himself in the top seven or so at the end of a race.
Last year, these five finished first through fifth in the championship standings; The year before that, they made up five of the top six.
These are the headliners, but they are joined in weekly race contention by the category's middle class of race winners, made up of some combination of Sebastian Bourdais, Ryan Hunter-Reay, James Hinchcliffe, Graham Rahal, and Takuma Sato. These drivers have had very different years, and both Hinchcliffe and Bourdais had been relegated to part-time competition by funding woes, but each is capable of winning any race they enter.
The same can be said about the younger class of traditional open wheel racing prospects that has begun to filter in over the past two years, the likes of Rinus VeeKay, Felix Rosenqvist, Patricio O'Ward, Oliver Askew, and, most notably, Colton Herta. This is a rising group, only Rosenqvist and Herta have race wins to their name to date, but each of the five have proven they can contend for race wins on a weekly basis. Herta and O'Ward will likely each finish the 2020 season in the top five in the championship standings, VeeKay will win Rookie of the Year, and Rosenqvist will parlay his finish of sixth in the 2019 series standings and his unbelievable win at Road America this season into a ride with Arrow McLaren SP next year. Unfortunately, that will come at the cost of Askew, whose strong rookie year with the same team will end with him unemployed; After a public disagreement over mishandling of an in-season injury, the two will be going their separate ways. Askew was able to show his talent this year even after missing a few races due to the injury, and would be a strong hire for any interested team next season.
