• Juncos Hollinger Racing’s impressive opening to its season took a step back at Long Beach and again, slightly, at Barber, and it wasn’t a coincidence as the team’s ace technical director Yves Touron was away for both races while tending to more important personal matters. The team’s strong start to the championship slowed once Touron was away, but he should be back in full force sometime soon. If there’s an award for the most underrated engineering mind in IndyCar, it belongs to the Frenchman.
• Reigning champion Will Power has been a vision of consistency, just as he was on the way to securing the IndyCar title last year. The difference, however, is where that consistency has been delivered. Power’s championship was earned through living on or near the podium with the No. 12 Chevy, and even though he only won one race, it was the capturing of big points at the other rounds where he outran rivals who won as many as five races in 2022. Over last year’s first four races, Power finished P3-P4-P4-P4 and went into the Indy GP fourth in points. Across 2023’s three opening races, Power went P7-P16-P6, which wasn’t bad, but wasn’t going to produce another championship as he arrived at Barber in ninth. Thanks to that charging finish to the Alabama race that netted P3, Power’s up to seventh in the standings, but he can’t afford to fall out of that podium groove if he wants to defend his title. Barber was a corrective result, and it needs to be the first of many or his hopes of going back to back will fade.
• On a related Power topic, IndyCar’s all-time pole winner, who earned five poles in 2022, hasn’t been close to capturing his first of 2023. This, too, would not have been predicted prior to the season; his best start so far is eighth at Texas and worst is 19th at Barber. Strange.
• It’s a good thing Christian Lundgaard’s under contract with RLL for next season. If he was a free agent, Lundgaard would be fielding offers from half the grid. Separate from its youngest driver, who’s P12 in the championship, the organizations is in a crucial phase of the season where another slow start has everyone on edge. Graham Rahal (P16) and Jack Harvey (P23) are at a tipping point where a good month can rewrite the trajectories of their year and a bad month could lead to some swift changes.
• Devlin DeFrancesco made good strides in the latter half of his rookie season. The start to his sophomore year has shown small glimpses of progress, but those moments have been mostly reserved for practice sessions. In the races, however, DeFrancesco’s been stuck in a nightmare. Presently last in the championship standings entering the month of May, things can only improve for the kind Canadian. Andretti’s resurgence with its other three drivers spread between fifth and 10th in the standings has only magnified DeFrancesco’s unfortunate grip on 27th.
• In my pre-season prediction pieces, I mentioned that Ed Carpenter Racing was almost unchanged from 2022 and that by maintaining the status quo, it would either emerge as a benefit and leapfrog ECR forward while other teams that made a lot of internal changes took time to get up to speed, or it would prove to be a setback as many of its rivals marched forward from the outset and left ECR behind. On the championship front, Rinus VeeKay is P18 and Conor Daly is P24 and the team continues to hunt for its first top 10, so the early data suggests the latter is more likely than the former. The team is often impressive on the Indy road course and at the Indy 500, so maybe a better version of itself will stand tall in May. Otherwise, ECR is in for a long year.
• P13 in the standings is strong for David Malukas after losing his race engineer to Scott Dixon. Even better, “Little Dave” is clicking with his new engineer and they’re directly ahead of Alexander Rossi, Felix Rosenqvist, Rahal, VeeKay and Pagenaud in the championship, which is impressive.
• Let’s talk about Marcus Armstrong. He’s missed one of the four races (Texas) in his debut season that’s limited to road and street courses, and with an average finishing position of 10.0 from those three rounds, he’s in P17 in the championship, right between Rahal and VeeKay who’ve done all four. Look higher in the standings and Armstrong’s teammate Dixon is P8, but his average finish is 10.5. Kirkwood, in P9, has an average of 13.75. On average, Armstrong is putting up numbers that say far more than his placement in the standings might suggest.
• So much of what stands out from the season’s 25-percent mark are the things that haven’t happened. Arrow McLaren is a perfect example. Not only is the expanded three-car team winless, but over the four races and 12 total runs by O’Ward, Rossi and Rosenqvist, only two podiums have been produced (both by O’Ward).
• Of the drivers in the top 16, all but two — Ericsson and Palou — have at least one terrible race result, if not two, which is just plain weird for a season that’s only put four races in the history books. Of the 14 in the top 16 with one or two races to forget, McLaren has a monopoly on the misery with Rossi (P4-P22-P22-P8) and Rosenqvist (P19-P26-P7-P9). Things have gone pear-shaped for Malukas of late (P10-P4-P20-P19), but the WTH King is still Kirkwood (P15-P27-P1-P12).
• We’ll close with Santino Ferrucci and Benjamin Pederson who, like the drivers at ECR, MSR, and RLL, are praying for relief at Indy after suffering in almost every race. Ferrucci’s P11 at Long Beach offered hope, and despite finishing three out of four races, Pedersen is behind Robb in the standings, who’s only finished one race. A pair of family losses within the Foyt team have only made things harder for the squad. I’m not sure if the Indy GP is where the sunshine starts to break through the clouds, but Foyt’s technical director took the last two 500 poles with Dixon and Ferrucci is an animal on the Speedway. Indy doesn’t owe anything to anybody, but nobody would begrudge the racing gods if they treated the Foyt team with kindness this month.
