The wait is almost over. In one day, the IZOD IndyCar Series will return to the track for another year of racing.
While the championship is expected to be decided solely between the Target Chip Ganassi Racing duo of defending series champion Dario Franchitti and Scott Dixon and the Team Penske trio of Ryan Briscoe, Helio Castroneves and Will Power, there’s still a lot to think about as this season gets ready to start. Here are ten questions that will, hopefully, be answered by the time we get to the season finale at Homestead-Miami in October.
1. Which new team/driver combination will make the biggest impact?
You may need a spotter’s guide to figure out who went where for this season. Among the biggest shifts: Justin Wilson headed over to Dreyer and Reinbold Racing, E.J. Viso and former F1 driver Takuma Sato are now with KV Racing Technology, Ryan Hunter-Reay is at Andretti Autosport, Simona de Silvestro has hit the big time with HVM Racing, and Alex Tagliani hopes his own FAZZT Race Team will be solid.
The one with the most potential has to be RHR with Andretti. Many fans would love to see the American in a full-time program and it could still happen eventually, but even at its current state, it’s Hunter-Reay’s best opportunity to date. While AA must improve upon where it’s been lately, Hunter-Reay has shown that he can get the job done in inferior equipment and you have to believe that he can do something special in his new surroundings.
However, keep Sato and KVRT in the back of your minds — especially when the road and street courses come around. However, the Japanese driver will have a tough learning process on oval racing. Let’s see if Viso and Mario Moraes can help their new teammate adapt quickly to the speedways.
2. Can IZOD bring new fans to the sport?
The apparel company has been all over television in recent months promoting their new role as title sponsor of the IndyCar Series, as well as this Sunday’s race in Brazil. It’s a welcome change after years of having to see advertising for the season start just days before it began. Not only that, they make some snazzy-looking swag. But with all of that said, how much can they really do if they wind up being hindered by a boring on-track product or fans getting hung up on the lack of homegrown competitors? There’s only so much shine that IZOD can muster up before the stench of something rotten starts getting noticed.
IZOD can do a lot for open-wheel racing in its new capacity, but it also needs help from the series that it’s trying to push to mainstream America. Will they get it?
3. Is Andretti Autosport ready to make a comeback?
More than just a new name, the former Andretti Green Racing reorganized and now Michael Andretti is the sole captain of the ship. He’s also brought in Tom Anderson, a former managing director at Chip Ganassi Racing, to be the team’s new senior vice president of racing operations. We’ll see if they’ll manage to pull the team out of its recent funk, which hit a low point last year when all four of their pilots — Danica Patrick, Tony Kanaan, Marco Andretti, and Hideki Mutoh — went winless. Mutoh’s left for Newman/Haas/Lanigan and Ryan Hunter-Reay has taken his place, so the team’s road/street course prowess may have increased nicely. But AA has been decidedly off the pace of the Ganassi and Penske squads, to the point that there’s no longer a “Big Three.”
Can one off-season of changes really bring them back to the front? We’ll find out.
4. Is Danica Patrick gone after this season?
You get the growing sense from fans that Danica Patrick is already signed, sealed and delivered to the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and that it’s just a matter of time before it’s official. The racing superstar has hit headlines from coast to coast for her part-time exploits in the NASCAR Nationwide Series and it seems like her full-time job as an IndyCar driver is getting pushed off to the side by the media. So with that in mind, will she really stay in IndyCar for the next two seasons? I’ve got a feeling that 2010 could be her last open-wheel campaign. What’s to stop big money getting thrown at Andretti Autosport in order to move her into stock car racing on a full-time basis?
I remember tweeting that the IRL has two seasons to build up other stars to the point where an exit by Patrick wouldn’t hurt so bad. I’ve changed my mind. They have one season. That’s a tough burden for the series to have to deal with, and it’s got plenty of those already.
5. How much will the lack of American drivers hurt the series?
Patrick and Marco Andretti are the only full-time Americans in the IZOD IndyCar Series and that can be a recipe for disaster amongst domestic fans that are either not able to find the races on Versus or don’t give a damn about IndyCar altogether. There’s been a void left behind by Sam Hornish Jr., who served as the USA’s open-wheel heavyweight before he flipped to NASCAR, and unfortunately, no one’s been able to fill it.
The economic downturn is also causing problems on this front. American companies are being stingy and that’s opened the league up for a wave of foreigners bringing sponsorship from international locales. As a result, talent is trumped by cash as team owners do what they have to do to keep their cars on track. But how many fans want to hear that? They want to see more homegrown talent rising up and challenging the best in the world — and that’s all there is to it.
It will be interesting to see how this year’s global lineup of drivers will resonate with the public.
Check back later on Friday for Part Two!
