If you missed yesterday’s installment, check it out here.
What Rinus VeeKay needs this season is to find whatever went missing after his cycling crash.
Pre-accident VeeKay was in an impressive groove, rising as high as fourth in the championship before the road cycling accident and broken collar bone seemed to destroy the momentum he built through Detroit in June. After missing Road America due to injury, a different Dutchman returned to produce seven consecutive finishes of 16th or lower, which came on the back of a bunch of painful qualifying runs.
Before the crash, VeeKay was spoken of in the same sentences as next-generation stars like Herta and O’Ward. Those flowery associations with the two championship contenders stalled afterwards, and with his status as a free agent after the 2022 season, the next 17 races are where VeeKay must get back on track and remind folks he’s a beast.
What Jack Harvey needs this season is to win a race.
He came close more than once while at Meyer Shank Racing, and with his new Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team placing its full confidence behind the Briton, the time is now for Harvey to show he’s made of race-winning material.
It stung to watch as new MSR teammate Helio Castroneves won the team’s first race — at the Indy 500, no less — and the hunger to rectify his winless situation is just what RLL needs. How good is Harvey, and for that matter, how good was his former team?
If he leaps from 13th in last year’s championship to sixth, seventh, or eighth with RLL, we’ll know the answer. And if he’s kept out of the win column and finishes somewhere outside the top 10 in the final standings, we’ll have the other answer. Like Chip Ganassi, Bobby Rahal likes winners. If Harvey can become a that guy for RLL, he’s got a long-term place to call home.
What Scott McLaughlin needs this season is to lean into his new race engineer.
Placing Ben Bretzman with the New Zealander was among the smartest calls by Team Penske during the offseason. With McLaughlin’s former race engineer Jonathan Diuguid moved across to lead the new Porsche Penske Motorsport sports car project, the shift from Diuguid to Bretzman is happening at a crucial moment for the Kiwi.
Bretzman’s known for an engineering approach that embraces simplicity over complexity, and that should make it easier for his new driver to find the tiny fractions of time that are waiting to be discovered at every track he returns to as an IndyCar sophomore. Young driver and new drivers can get lost by trying too hard, thinking too much, and placing too much pressure on themselves to make an impression when they aren’t quite ready to do so.
Bretzman will keep things light and easy, keep McLaughlin locked in on getting the basics right, and from there, the No. 3 Chevy should become a frequent visitor inside the top 10.
McLaughlin heads into 2022 with a nice basket of ingredients; all that’s needed is to put them together properly. Mike Levitt/Lumen
What Romain Grosjean needs this season is to find the steadiest version of himself.
The Swiss-born Frenchman is ready to win with his new Andretti Autosport team. Frankly, it would be a shock if he failed to take multiple victories. He might even vie for the championship. And the way that happens is by turning the bad days into better days, which hasn’t been a core strength over the last decade.
As a rookie with Dale Coyne Racing, there were some incredibly strong results with three memorable podiums from 13 races. Cleaning up the others where he placed 13th or worse seven times — and they weren’t all of his making, but alas, the scorekeepers don’t care — is where Grosjean fights for a title in the No. 28 Andretti Honda.
The need for Grosjean is the same need for his new Andretti teammate Colton Herta. Smooth out the peaks and valleys, drum out the boom-or-bust results, and big things become possible. If he adds consistency to his arsenal as an IndyCar sophomore – while learning at all but one of the ovals –Andretti’s power move to sign Grosjean will reap immediate rewards. And if that consistency turns up missing (I love that phrase), there could be some buyer’s remorse.
What Conor Daly needs this season is to prove that he’s real.
Not that he’s funny, smart, or entertaining. But that he’s a real threat and a real challenge to his young race-winning teammate Rinus VeeKay. Daly takes his racing more seriously than most assume, and that’s part of the problem. He should command a higher level of respect than he receives, and with his first full-time IndyCar opportunity since the 2017 season, the time is right for Daly to recalibrate the paddock’s impression of his skills and potential. At the moment, he isn’t feared, nor is he viewed as a predicament the leaders will need to overcome at every round.
Primed with a new multi-year deal at Ed Carpenter Racing, the best thing Daly can do for himself is to out-qualify and out-race VeeKay on a regular basis. ECR hasn’t been a title threat in recent years, so at minimum, Daly will be able to measure himself against his young Dutch teammate and, whether they’re positive or negative, the results will speak volumes.
The process starts with improving his qualifying performances; Daly started 15th or worse at 10 of 16 races last season, and in the races, he finished outside the top 10 at every round. Granted, there were more than a few race-day maladies to complicate his output, but even on the days where no issues were at hand, too many distant finishes were recorded.
Buckled into the same car with the same engineer for the duration of 2022, this is Daly’s best — and possibly the last – shot to rewrite the story of his IndyCar career.
Time for Daly to make some magic happen. Mike Levitt/Motorsport Images
What Felix Rosenqvist needs this season is to earn a long-term home in the series.
Entering his fourth year in IndyCar, the Arrow McLaren SP driver is coming off the toughest experience of his career where a dire lack of pace, forgettable results, and a major crash turned his debut with AMSP into a rolling nightmare.
The team stepped in with the incomparable Craig Hampson as Rosenqvist’s new race engineer and have been busy during the offseason in the R&D department to develop a car that handles to the Swede’s liking. In 2021, he and month of May teammate Juan Pablo Montoya were befuddled by the cars that were perfect for Pato O’Ward. Towards the end of the season, AMSP started to find something that allowed Rosenqvist to unleash his raw speed, and with Hampson in his corner, there’s nothing stopping the 30-year-old from reviving the form that produced sixth in the championship as a rookie with Chip Ganassi Racing.
And now it’s up to Rosenqvist to narrow the gap to O’Ward and show AMSP he’s worthy of a contract extension. If 2022 looks at all like his 2021, he’s out after the season finale and possibly done in IndyCar. If 2022 looks like what it should with Hampson giving him a car that’s tailor-made to his needs, he’ll be signing a new contract before the year’s done.
What Helio Castroneves needs this season is to convince his team owners to keep the kids at bay.
I’m confident that Mike and Mary Beth Shank and Jim Meyer will have an Indy 500 seat waiting for the four-time winner as long as he wants it. I’m less convinced he’ll have the No. 06 Meyer Shank Racing Honda bearing his name for the entirety of 2023 and beyond if the upcoming season brings mixed results.
MSR’s defending Indy 500 winner turns 47 in May; his new MSR teammate Simon Pagenaud turns 38 a few days later, and only one is part of the program’s long-term plans. The win brought Helio the thing he craved — another crack at winning an IndyCar championship — and the team will do everything in its power to try and make it happen. There’s also a ‘prove it’ aspect that comes with the opportunity. If Castroneves can regularly run inside the top 10 and show that he’s the same guy who brought Team Penske to the brink of numerous titles, look for MSR to keep him in the seat.
But if Pagenaud establishes himself as the clear team leader in the championship standings, there’s no shortage of young drivers waiting to take Helio’s place next year. Reigning Formula E champion Nyck de Vries was stunningly fast in a recent test with the team, and he’s searching for a new job in 2023. It might sound cold, especially for a person who changed the lives of MSR’s owners with his Indy win, but the MSR team went to two cars to have two-front-running performers; it’s his seat to hold onto. The cool thing is everybody inside the team is rooting for Castroneves to kick ass and get a new contract.
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