IndyCar season review: James Jakes / Jack Hawksworth

By Marshall Pruett, Robin Miller and Mark Glendenning | November 9, 2015 6:11 PM ET

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.

JAMES JAKES
Schmidt Peterson Motorsport
2015 starts: 16
2015 best finish: 3rd (NOLA)
2015 championship position: 16th, 257pts

Inconsistency has been Jakes’ most consistent and readily identifiable trait in IndyCar. Is there a reason to believe it would change if he returns for a fifth season? And as a self-funded driver, if he’s fine with it, should it matter to anyone else?

MARSHALL PRUETT: It’s hard to dislike James Jakes. He’s a favorite among the drivers, always has something funny to say, and brings good energy to every team. Unfortunately, none of those positive personal attributes have anything to do with driving an Indy car. Inside the cockpit, something is continually lost in translation with Jakes as his raw speed and experience count for very little when adding up a season’s worth of championship points.

His season opened with a 22nd at St. Pete, closed with a 25th at Sonoma, and between those bookends, James was missing in action on too many occasions. After Indy, his SPM team had stellar oval cars at Texas, Fontana, and Pocono, and Jakes made the most of the equipment by finishing inside the top 10 in each instance. But at every other track – barring the rain-influenced NOLA round – I was left thinking an excellent car was being asked to meet or exceed its full potential.

Coming off a thoroughly impressive 2013 season with RLL (and a 2014 spent stewing without a ride), Jakes’ inspired form was nowhere to be found. It’s hard to remember a race where the 28-year-old had any of his SPM teammates covered, and that was another big surprise. From Hinch to Briscoe to Daly to Aleshin, the driver nicknamed “Buckshot” struggled to dig his way out from under their collective shadow.

With the highly refined Dallara DW12 package and the new 2015 aero kits requiring more attention than ever to find an advantage, the most successful drivers in the paddock arrived early and stayed late as they pored over data with their engineers. As one of the last to arrive and first to leave, Jakes’ run to 16th in the standings – sandwiched between this year’s top rookie and last year’s top rookie – was a cautionary tale to anyone who believes success can be found while taking shortcuts.

Ultimately, Jakes is in full control of his experiences in IndyCar. He should be a steady presence around the top 10, but it takes a level of commitment that could be more than James is willing to accept. After four seasons of trying to get by on raw talent, Jakes would need to make drastic changes to his approach to improve. Without it, there’s no reason to believe Year 5 would go differently than Years 1-4.

As a driver who brings sponsorship to secure rides, the real question is whether anyone other than Jakes should care about his effectiveness as an IndyCar driver. If Jakes is satisfied at his present level of effort with runs to 22nd, 22nd, 19th, and 16th in four seasons, there’s no reason for anyone else to be upset.

Thanks to Jakes, SPM was able to staff and run a second car, and if we’re looking at where his greatest impact was found in 2015, Buckshot’s role as a job creator should not be overlooked.

Was Hinchcliffe’s accident an opportunity for Jakes to establish himself as team leader? And if so, did he make the most of it?

MARK GLENDENNING: Well, his final championship position of 16th was the best of his career, although that might be a case of damning with faint praise.

Hinchcliffe’s accident certainly created an opportunity for someone within Schmidt to assert themselves in his absence. And before the season, Jakes himself was bullish about the prospect of driving for the team that had taken Simon Pagenaud into the top five in the points for the past three years in a row. So on that basis, the fact that he ended up with only 52 more points than Briscoe despite doing twice as many races looks like an opportunity missed.

But then, Jakes is one of the hardest drivers in the entire paddock to nail down: I genuinely don’t know whether he harbors any grander ambitions beyond having a place on the grid and enjoying the weekends where it all comes together. And that’s not intended as a judgement call; merely an admission that I can’t work out what sort of standard to measure him against. If he’s content with his status in the sport as a fast, inconsistent racer who pays his own way, then projecting any expectations beyond that onto him is meaningless.

Jakes has finished behind IndyCar’s Rookie of the Year in three out of his four IndyCar seasons, including 2015. Is this a fluke, or a fair reflection of where Jakes belongs in the IndyCar driver pecking order?

ROBIN MILLER: James is one of the toughest drivers to get a bead on because every time you forget he’s in the field he’ll jump up and grab your attention in qualifying or during a race. Taking a year off can’t help anyone and he’d really made some strides with RLL in 2013, so the jury remains out on this Brit. But 2015 was pretty forgettable because, except for a podium at NOLA and qualifying fifth at Milwaukee, there weren’t many memorable moments.

JACK HAWKSWORTH
AJ Foyt Racing
2015 starts: 16
2015 best finish: 7th (Detroit, both races)
2015 championship position: 17th, 256pts

What’s more significant: the fact that Hawksworth was only three places behind his teammate in the standings, or that he scored more than 100 points fewer than he did as rookie last year?

MARK GLENDENNING: The former. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who was looking forward to seeing what Hawksworth’s move to Foyt would deliver after a good rookie season with Herta, and the fact that he finished fairly closely to Takuma Sato in the final standings suggests to me that he wasn’t entirely to blame for what was a pretty unsatisfying season. Perhaps Foyt needs to get a better handle on how to run two competitive cars; perhaps Hawksworth and Sato – and their respective engineers – aren’t clicking as a unit; perhaps it’s something else entirely. Whatever the case, we already know from 2014 that he’s better than he looked this time around.

How well did Foyt adapt to running a second full-time car?

ROBIN MILLER: Normally, finishing 17th in the standings would either get you a pink slip or a cowboy boot up the ass from A.J. Foyt, but the Indy legend will give his first-year driver a reprieve and a second chance for 2016. “We didn’t give Jack very good cars and he had some rotten luck,” said Foyt. “He deserves another shot because he’s got talent and need to do a better job.” The 24-year-old Brit dazzled the IndyCar paddock in 2014 with Bryan Herta’s squad and we were prepped for Union Jack to possibly get A.J. back in victory lane. But NOLA pretty much summed up his season. After qualifying eighth he was taken out in a crash and that set the tone. He had to settle for four Top 10 finishes – a pair of sevenths and a pair of eighths – and never got a handle on qualifying.

Jack had an IndyCar teammate for the first time this year. Did it actually help, or did Sato’s all-eyes-on-me approach limit Hawksworth’s growth?

MARSHALL PRUETT: After the Foyt team stumbled and tripped out of the starting gates, any hope of seeing Jack develop at a faster rate thanks to having a veteran teammate was quickly forgotten. Without a solid foundation to build from, both programs went in their respective directions to find solutions, and that made the Nos. 14 and 41 entries more like distant cousins than twins.

Taku and Hawksworth seemed to get along quite well all season, but even in a perfect world, I’m not sure Sato – at least, while he’s still an active driver – would play the role of mentor to a young teammate. Beyond picking up a few things by looking over Taku’s data, Jack spent the year on his own. If the team can find its way in 2016, we might get to see if they can work in tandem.

Missed one of the earlier reviews? You can go back and read them here: