After what felt like an endless IndyCar silly season that provided more weekly twists, turns, and lawsuits than we could keep track of, I’m happy to say the first stretch of the offseason has downshifted a few gears.
Well, except for that ongoing contractual messiness between Andretti Global and Romain Grosjean, but hey, some things never change.
Of IndyCar’s 10 full-time teams, there are six – Arrow McLaren, Chip Ganassi Racing, Ed Carpenter Racing, Juncos Hollinger Racing, Meyer Shank Racing and Team Penske – that have completed their lineups.
At Arrow McLaren, it’s Pato O’Ward, Alexander Rossi, David Malukas, and Kyle Larson for the Indy 500.
At Chip Ganassi Racing, it’s Alex Palou, Scott Dixon, Marcus Armstrong, Linus Lundqvist, and rookie Kyffin Simpson.
At Ed Carpenter Racing, it’s Rinus VeeKay and a combo entry for Ed Carpenter and Christian Rasmussen.
At Juncos Hollinger Racing, it’s Romain Grosjean and Agustin Canapino.
At Meyer Shank Racing, it’s an all-new lineup of Felix Rosenqvist and Tom Blomqvist with Helio Castroneves making another run at winning his fifth Indy 500.
And at Team Penske, we have the only outfit with a complete carryover of its 2023 roster with Josef Newgarden, Will Power, and Scott McLaughlin.
That leaves A.J. Foyt Racing, Andretti Global, Dale Coyne Racing, and Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing as the remaining teams who need to fill or confirm one or more seats in order to join the list of outfits who are ready to go racing.
Of those four, Coyne and Foyt will have a significant influence on the silly season, and Andretti holds the keys to another angle of interest. We’ve covered some of the items below in individual team updates, but since it’s been a little while since our last silly season update, it’s worth packaging all of the recent info into this story for those who might have missed the standalone pieces we’ve filed in recent weeks.
As we’ve chronicled since August, Andretti Global has been debating whether it would be better to downsize from four cars to three, continue at four with the fourth being an entry where funding was brought to the team, and if outsourcing the running of that fourth car to longtime partner Bryan Herta would be the smarter play.
Herta, whose Indy-based Bryan Herta Autosport team — which fielded IndyCar entries from 2010-2015 before merging with Andretti — has been dominant in IMSA’s Michelin Pilot Challenge TCR class, winning its latest title in October with Robert Wickens and Harry Gottsacker. BHA has been mentioned along with former IndyCar entrant Beth Paretta as an option to run part-time 2022 Foyt driver Tatiana Calderon in a fourth entry, provided Andretti elects to go forward with the effort, and does not run it directly alongside Colton Herta, Kyle Kirkwood, and Marcus Ericsson.
And while the topic of Andretti’s final car count is of interest to fans of the team and for those who are eager to know exactly how many full-time entries will be on the grid, the question of three or four Andretti cars is of particular interest to some of its Honda-powered rivals.
By contract, Honda Performance Development is obligated to supply Andretti with four season-long engine leases, and if a fourth entry is confirmed, it would dash the hopes of Coyne and Rahal to expand their stables.
The tipping point on engine availability can be traced to Ganassi’s late decision to field a car for Kyffin Simpson, whose fifth entry was considered little more than a remote possibility throughout summer. But with Simpson’s elevation to full-time IndyCar status by HPD’s defending series champions, a key engine lease was apportioned to Ganassi which, in a knock-on effect, removed the one ‘floating’ motor Honda had left to offer and has placed Andretti’s fourth car in the spotlight.
If Andretti were to hold at three and HPD elected to make the unused fourth available, a Coyne could entertain running a third entry on occasion, and/or an RLL could put Juri Vips to work in a part-time fourth car. As Andretti recently told us, it has yet to make the call on three or four, so watch this space.
By the middle of the season, Coyne’s team looked poised to have another all-new lineup on its hands as David Malukas was headed out the door and Sting Ray Robb had the appearance of a rookie who’d be one-and-done.
Malukas ended up signing with Arrow McLaren, which was an amazing development for both parties. Robb, whose management group shopped him to most of the teams with rides in need of funding, and despite improving in the latter stages of the season, wasn’t gaining much traction to continue in IndyCar. But all of that changed when Robb’s team found an almighty amount of funding to offer — rumored to be just under eight figures — and it’s here where a return to Coyne is said to be possible. But DCR is not his only option.