What will you remember the 2015 IndyCar season for? Juan Pablo Montoya’s teflon coating wearing off right at the time he needed it most? The introduction of the aero kits, several years after they were first mooted? Rocky Moran Jr’s inspiring hour of track time at Long Beach?
To try to make sense of it all, RACER’s Marshall Pruett, Robin Miller and Mark Glendenning asked each other some searching questions about all of 2015’s regulars, which for the purpose of this review, includes anyone who started a minimum of half the races. Look for new installments every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
RYAN BRISCOE
Schmidt Peterson Motorsport
2015 starts: 8
2015 best finish: 5th (Sonoma)
2015 championship position: 18th; 205 pts
Briscoe ended the year just 52 points behind his teammate, despite only doing half the races. Does that mean that Schmidt was better than it looked in 2015?
MARSHALL PRUETT: Without a doubt. Keep Hinch in the No. 5 for the entire season, or wind the clock back and drop a hungry Briscoe into the seat at St. Pete, and we’d probably be talking about how SPM’s lead driver fought Graham Rahal and Ryan Hunter-Reay for Honda’s best-in-class.
SPM technical director Nick Snyder and No. 5 race engineer Allen McDonald recorded an impressive body of work after Simon Pagenaud and his engineer Ben Bretzman bolted for Penske, and if it weren’t for Hinch’s season-ending crash while practicing for the Indy 500, his results through the first five rounds foreshadowed a strong championship run was on the cards.
For the sake of early-season comparisons, 2015 IndyCar champion Scott Dixon won one of the first five races (and struggled at three) to earn an average finishing position of 8.0. Hinch also won one of the first five (and struggled at three of those five), and had an average finishing position of 9.8.
Does that mean he would have fought Dixie for the title? No, but if we take Conor Daly’s sixth at the second Detroit race, Briscoe’s trio of eighths at Texas, Iowa and Pocono, the quality finish lost in Ryan’s blameless crash and barrel roll at Fontana, plus his fifth to close the season at Sonoma, I’m confident in saying SPM seriously overachieved in the midst of trying circumstances. And they did it without the steady presence of a team leader in the No. 5.
Take the finishes earned by Hinch, Daly, and Briscoe in the No. 5, add them together, and you have 392 points, which would split Sebastien Bourdais and Pagenaud, the car’s former driver, in the standings…
Briscoe could transition to sportscars full-time in 2016. At 34, does he still have what it takes to vie for championships in IndyCar, or should he focus his energies on a new career in IMSA?
ROBIN MILLER: Logic says Briscoe had his chances with Ganassi, then Penske, and it’s time to go on down the road with sportscars. Of course if he doesn’t crash leaving the pits in Japan in 2009 and wins the title for The Captain, we’re probably not having this conversation. And he might not be championship material anymore, but he’s certainly quick enough to run up front many places as he showed in 2015 while filling in at SPM.
Not sure anybody passed more cars on the ovals than Briscoe did (especially at Indy, Fontana and Iowa, ABOVE), and qualifying second at Milwaukee was damn impressive to watch. Closing out ’15 with a fifth place at Sonoma evidently gave a couple teams pause for thought about hiring the 34-year-old Aussie for next year. More than likely he’ll score a good ride for Indy and be a full-timer in IMSA, but there’s still plenty of good miles left on this veteran.
Based on his stellar oval performances for SPM this year, does Briscoe have a future as an IndyCar oval ringer?
MARK GLENDENNING: Never mind oval ringer; he’s still be an excellent choice for most teams as a full-timer. If money were no object it would be great to see he and James Hinchcliffe side-by-side at Schmidt next year. That said, the prestige of the 100th running of the Indy 500 is going to put a higher premium on Indy specialists than ever, so if circumstances dictate that he is indeed a gun for hire next May, it’s hard to see him remaining available for long.
STEFANO COLETTI
KV Racing Technology
2015 starts: 16
2015 best finish: 8th (IMS road course)
2015 championship position: 19th; 203 pts
Does Coletti’s season say anything about the differences between European and American racing?
ROBIN MILLER: The rookie from Monaco was the talk of spring training at Barber, but that faded into the ‘where did he go’ conversation. A winner in GP2, Coletti just seemed lost most of the season and never showed that early promise except when he finished eighth at the Indy GP and qualified eighth at Detroit. A favorite of Dallara because of all his accidents, Stefano struggled with ovals as expected, but didn’t have the pace everywhere else. Was it the heavy steering? Compressed practice time? Ten minute qualifying sessions? Length of races? All of the above? There’s no denying racing in Europe prepares you for lots of things, but Coletti seemed ill-prepared for his culture shock in the USA.
MARK GLENDENNING: I saw a bit of Coletti when he was still in Europe. He first came to my attention when he was excluded from the results of an F3 round at Norisring in 2009 for punching Jules Bianchi in the face behind the podium, but I followed him a little more closely a year later when he moved across into GP3 and GP2. And it was a similar scenario back then: sometimes really quick, sometimes erratic.
Yes, he’s a seven-time GP2 race-winner (eight if you count GP2 Asia), but when you drill a little deeper, you notice that all of those wins came in sprint races, which have partially-reversed grids. Given that he did almost four full seasons of GP2, it would have been more reassuring to see at least one feature race victory somewhere along the way. But things like compressed practice time certainly shouldn’t have been a factor: in GP2, drivers only get a single 45 minute practice session and 30 minutes for qualifying before their two races, so the available practice time in IndyCar is comparatively luxurious.
Did Coletti’s damage bill ruin any chances he might have of being picked up by KVSH or another team in the future?
MARK GLENDENNING: If we lived in a world where drivers earned seats on the basis of pure results and nothing else, then Coletti would have his work cut out selling himself as KVSH’s best option for next year. I don’t know whether IndyCar keeps stats for how many yellows a driver is responsible for, but if it did then you’d have to think that the Monagasque would have been near the top in 2015. It was as if the only way he could gauge the limit was to overstep it.
But in reality, if Coletti has the budget and the inclination then he’ll be on the grid, whether with KV or elsewhere. Teams need to pay the bills. All that said, if he were to come back, it would be interesting to see what sort of progress he could make. I’m not sure that there’s a IndyCar title in his future, but based on what I’ve seen of him in the past, I think Coletti is capable of better than he showed us.
Who recorded more impressive results with the second KV entry in 2015: Coletti or his engineer Matt Curry?
MARSHALL PRUETT: That one’s easy: Matt Curry. Coletti, billed as “better than a young Will Power” by one of KVs co-owners during Spring Training, was a wonderful addition to the blend of personalities in IndyCar, but failed to live up to the hype.
Curry, whose 2014 season ended in a dust-up on the timing stand when Sebastian Saavedra’s father went postal, watched as veteran engineer Dave Cripps took over for the finale at Fontana, and unlike Coletti, Matt came into 2015 with zero expectations.
Considering the fact that Coletti spent the first day at most tracks learning the circuit, his pace was respectable on a number of road and street circuits where Curry helped his driver to show glimpses of promise.
Faced with his driver’s inexperience and constant crash-related setbacks, not to mention a humbling, disheartening close to 2014 with Saavedra, I thought Curry shined while dealing with Coletti’s self-generated adversity.
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